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I'm planning a weekend getaway and there are 7 breweries in the area. I want to hit em all. I've never actually taken the time to figure this stuff out. Prior to my introduction to craft beer and home brewing the goal was to get drunk. The beer used to accomplish that was completely irrelevant...

I used vodka twice to make coffee tinctures. The second time was just to make sure I didn't do something wrong the first time. In both cases it produced a faint medicinal astringent off flavor. It wasn't an in-your-face flavor, except that once you detected it it was impossible to ignore it. It...

Ha ha. Good points. Still not sold, but if we all did it the same it this forum would be pretty boring. I think Bobby at Brew Hardware sells the sight glass for like $28 or something, so it's never been about "ponying up the dollars." Once I got into this I spent a few years buying every gizmo...

I would love for my brewing to be a "social activity." My immediate neighbors are not very neighborly. EXAMPLE: At Christmas time my wife, her mother, and her sister-in-law get together and make TONS of cookies. It's an all-day tradition, and usually turns into several days when all is said...

Mostly I just never thought it was that necessary. I measure the wort going into the BK so I know (accurately) what the starting volume is. All of my fermentation vessels are marked so I know (accurately) how much I'm taking out. Inside the BK I always have hop bags, hop strainers, and...

I have the utmost respect for those who design these programs and calculators. Trying to determine how one unique ingredient might react with an infinite combination of other complex ingredients in an infinite number of situations seems impossible. That any of these calculators can even get us...

One of the best tools I've purchased so far: There are most likely better products and better methods. I bought this on a whim not sure if I'd find a use for it or not and it has proven to be indispensable. I can't imagine brewing without it, in fact I'm thinking about getting another...

Yes. When I first started out my methods were extremely simple and primitive due to the lack of everything, and the beer was okay. As my interest obsession has grown I've bought a lot more gadgets, (like pH meters and refractometers), to help zero in on... well... whatever the specific gadget is...

I was getting ready to brew my first pumpkin ale. I searched for an established recipe but that seemed a lot like looking for a piece of hay in a haystack. Basically take any of the billions of beer recipes out there . . . and add pumpkin... somewhere... cooked, baked, canned, fried, boiled...

Interesting. To be perfectly honest I was a lot more meticulous with my measuring and testing and note taking when I first started. I've gotten kind of lazy on all that. I kind of take the "close enough for who it's for" approach now. I use the refractometer more than I use the pH meter...

It's funny how easily one can get trapped into a certain mindset and develop habits based on that. A while back I read something (I believe on this forum) that a lower boil-off rate is better than a higher boil-off rate. To be honest it was quite awhile ago and I don't remember anything...

That looks nice. I want to get away from keggles and switch over to something like that. 10 gallon pots are plenty big enough for my needs. I've only ever brewed 5 to 6 gallon batches and this last batch was 3 gallons. I'm thinking about scaling back and just brewing 2.5 to 3 gallon batches from...

I forgot to add... Some regions produce lower acidic coffees than others. Brazil and Sumatra immediately come to mind. I've heard some say that darker roasted coffee has less acid as well, but I'm not sure. When coffee beans are roasted they create a compound called N-methylpyridinium (NMP)...

It is cold brewed to cut down on the acidity caused by hot brewing it. If you're going to add it to the boil there is no reason to cold brew it first, just do a coarse crush on the beans and throw them into the boil. If you are going to do a secondary fermentation anyway or if you don't mind...

The estimated OG and FG for this was 1.104 and 1.023 for an abv of 10.9%. The measured OG was 1.073 and FG was 1.010 for an abv of 8.3%. It's jet black with a strong alcohol smell and taste. Also from the sample I tasted it's quite a bit drier than I was shooting for. Going to do some serious...

That makes perfect sense now that I see it. When I was considering how to do the drain I was only concerned with not having too much space under the grain bed. I read some other posts where guys had issues with too much liquid underneath and they had to adjust volumes to keep the grain bed...

R/O water. Ca - 56 Mg - 8 Na - 26 SO4 - 54 Cl - 46 HCO3 - 129 I added the water to the mash tun at a little over 170* and let it come down to 164* My grain was at 80* I stirred it at least 5 minutes and the temp was dead on 153*. Closed it up and let it sit 45 min. I've always done...

No, I've always tried to stay around 1.25. I'm definitely going to try thinner next brew. Some of my problem is that I haven't wanted to change too many things from one brew to the next because then I have no way of knowing for sure where the problems might have been. So I've been trying to keep...

A good night sleep helped. I've always done batch sparges. This was only the third brew I tried fly sparging on. My efficiency has SUCKED for the past 6 or 7 brews and 100% of my focus and attention has been on that. Everything I read said fly sparging was more efficient than batch sparging...