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Sorry to hear about the burns. I've learned not to brew in shorts or bare feet for a similar reason; just too much hot stuff (and heavy things to drop on your feet.) BTW if you have blisters you don't have third degree burns. Third degree burns means you have killed all the skin in that...

?? I'm glad Jim Koch got a tax break for so long, and that that was part of his success. This is a story of tax breaks working, not failing. I hope it works as well for other breweries. And I don't want to screw the government _or_ Jim Koch (ew.) The reason I post here (and the reason I...

I just entered a bunch of beer in a local comp. Got a gold for an extract, a silver for an all-grain. (And I didn't even malt my own grain!)

5 weeks to get to "final" carbonation.

I just got the judge's notes and it all makes sense now. The American stout I did (the one I was really proud of, got a silver) scored a 40, and the Belgian scored a 37, which got a gold. So it was more about what the competition was than the relative merits of the beers (at least compared to...

I'd add them after primary fermentation. Boiling and to a lesser degree fermentation drives off a lot of the flavor.

Yes it is. Keeps it cold a bit longer, and this beer seems to want to be pretty cold.

Yes, they just moved it up to the "big facility" in Scripps Ranch.

Well, sanitizing kills most wild yeast or bacteria. Sterilizing kills everything and we usually don't do that. I think every beer, from the time you put the wort in the fermentor, has wild bugs in it. Usually it turns out OK because we add a carefully engineered, very aggressive yeast to...

OK, almost two months have gone by since I made this, and I tried another one last night. Gotten much better. It's almost belgian-y; it's gotten much more complex somehow, like a farmhouse saison without the esters. It looks good too.

Or after fermentation, before either kegging or bottling. I'd boil it first just to be sure on sanitation, especially if you do it before pitching yeast. If you have fermentor size limits I'd stick to a 5 gallon ferment (since the headspace can come in handy if you have a rowdy fermentation.)...

Give it a shot. If you don't like it add some water back in.

Strange but true! I just got a silver at the Hangar 24 competition for my Swooper Stout, an all grain that I was really proud of. I also got a gold for a simple extract-based belgian dubbel and a silver for an even simpler extract brown. Which I was really happy about, but the brown was just...

Or just ignore it. You can't control other people's arrogance or stupidity, but you can be better than them. "Whooping someone's as5" just brings you down to their level. I probably know more about brewing than a random guy drinking his Miller Lite at a bar. He can pontificate all he likes...

From Neva's email: Higher gravity generally means greater metabolic byproducts (fusels & esters) Higher metabolic activity generally means greater flavor byproducts (esters, fusels) Higher pitching rate generally means lower acetaldehyde, higher fusels Higher oxygen at start generally means...

Wal-Mart has some 32 quart aluminum tamale-steamer pots for $19.95; they even come with a false bottom. Which makes them underpriced and flimsy. But if you don't plan on lifting the pot when it's full they work OK.

I think that to see it as a fight in which the goal is to humiliate the other guy by exposing him to your superior knowledge, you pretty much have to be a (beer/wine/food) snob.

Yes, and indeed that was the main thrust of her talk - that you should choose your pitching rate to determine what taste you wanted from metabolites rather than desired final gravity. Replicating yeast produce metabolites that people perceive as "yeasty" for example. I've emailed her for more...

Listened to a talk by a researcher from White Labs last night at the San Diego QUAFF meeting. She talked about pitching yeast for high gravity ales (above about 1.090.) For one experiment, she did four starter sizes, from small to large, each one twice as large as the last. (I don't remember...

I made a two-row SMaSH that I bet she would like. A woman at Lost Abbey compared it to Bud Light Lime. "This is the first beer I've had today that doesn't take like ass!" she told me. To each their own.