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Bought my ticket for the pub crawl bus. I plan to get to the conference hotel around 3pm on Wednesday. I plan on getting into town the Sunday prior and working from the office there for a few days, so anybody who wants to meet up before the conference for some beers, shoot me a PM.

Smithwicks seems to be a lager, and uses mostly roasted barley. If you use a clean yeast and ferment as cool as you can you will get close with mine. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f65/irish-red-1st-place-hbt-comp-141086/

For what you want to do an inductor tank is a much better choice... the thickness will be sufficient to prevent too much O2 from entering. If you age for years in a thin plastic HDPE barrel you will end up with vinegar as acetobacter chew up all of the alcohol. Another advantage in an inductor...

Yeah I suspect it will be OK. Worst case you will end up with a steam-like beer, which isn't necessarily a bad thing...

Yeah unfermentable extract seems to have gotten you, I don't think this is a yeast problem. You actually achieved decent attenuation so I doubt it will taste like syrup. The coffee helps, too. A method that Chris Colby uses to increase extract fermentability for big beers like this is to stir...

Only explanation I can come up with is that your yeast was bad, and you ended up severely underpitching. I've had enough bad experiences with Nottingham, I used my last packet for a cider and will never buy it again.

Brett C is very mild... aromas of hay, mild barnyard, pleasant. Pineapple flavors, much like warm-fermented Cali ale, pretty clean overall. Most of the character is in the aroma. I really like this one for a light all-brett beer where B or L could be overpowering.

I like your plan. It sounds great! You will need lots of nutrients since you are trying to ferment just sugar. Assuming a 5 gallon batch (scale accordingly if you are going bigger/smaller), I would recommend boiling a few tablespoons of bread yeast and adding it to the fermenter, and oxygenate...

There are two reasons, I think, that wine and mead makers use them vs. CaCO3. Most importantly they are more soluable, so they can be added to the must directly. This is less of an issue for beer where the salts are added to the mash. Second, for commercial producers, TTB has limits on CaCO3...

I'm in Pflugerville, my water looks just like yours because they come from the same source, the highland lakes. (Austin does too, actually, but they lime slake their water to remove 2/3 of the alkalinity, and inject CO2 to bring the pH back down) For most beers in the 8-15 SRM range, I add...

Unless you are planning on letting your beer age for a long period of time it really doesn't matter if you add unpasteurized honey to the primary. There is plenty of yeast in there to dominate, and most of the spores in the honey will be things that won't survive at over 3% alcohol anyway. I'm...

That yeast is capable of 15% alcohol, I've done it... the key is to have plenty of fermentables, I've found it frequently takes a high percentage of sugar to get a level of attenuation with the Chico strain that you will achive with all malt using an attenuative Belgian yeast.

It won't budge. 1.028 is finished for a RIS that big... all that dark malt will not ferment. Mine finishes around the same and it's quite tasty... RDWHAHB. FWIW, a local brewery has a (now famous) imperial stout, to get theirs down to 1.014, they use corn sugar as 15% of the fermentables.

Yep works great. For winemaking if you are looking for an alternative, Saniclean works well. It's from the same guys as Starsan, but it has some advantages for winemaking... it doesn't foam up so it's better for bottle sanitizing, and it isn't slippery so it's better for corks (I used Starsan...

Dang Shawn you shouldn't have posted that pic, soooooooo sexy now Bob is gonna have to seriously watch out :eek: :D Cheers to Yooper and hopes for many more happy ones :tank:

They're my LHBS I shop there all the time, and am good friends with several guys who work there. They've had a few bumps here and there but overall they are good folks.

You got me there. Still recovering from it... *sniffle*

Shrimp? Chow-da? WTF is that. ??? :confused: A vegetarian in Texas is someone who only eats grass fed beef.

Brings a tear to my eye to hear I'm an honorary Masshole... *sniffle*...:cross:

If you don't want to use gelatin you could try kieselsol, if your LHBS carries it. Kieselsol is silicon dioxide which is not made from animal products, and it will settle a keg clear in about 36 hours.