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count me in!

Brewing 2-3 times a month in Elmhurst. And as for Ty's LHBS reviews here is my take: Brewer's Coop : Never been to. Chicagoland Winemakers in Elmhurst: More of a wine shop than beer if you ask me. I pick up most of my small items here but it has issues with stock especially yeast and...

I was a full time all grain brewer until I was able to pick up some DME for less than most HBS charge fro a LB of grain so let’s just say I got a few pounds! But I still brew 1 – 15+ gallon AG batch a month since I literally have a ton of grain and then 2-3 smaller 10 gallon extract with...

Yes I am racking onto the beans that I will give a short soak in some vodka or everclear first. I am going to go all out on the beans with these since I have 1/2 a pound of Madagascar beans so I want this to be like a Vanilla Dark Lord. And with the high % on this I thing I will need more than...

That’s too bad. Maybe you would have better luck with a fresh bottle if you can find one. All the small 11.2oz bottles that I used were fresh but I know most of my large bottles and magnums are anywhere from 2008-2010 vintage. And I would also suggest picking up a cheap stir plate to cultivate...

Nice! Let us know how it turns out! :mug: Cheers.

Is the fermenter level? Looks fine to me I would think that the currents in the fermenting wort pushed the heavier particles to one side rather the other for some reason. Maybe a heat source on one side and not the other or the fermenter is not completely level. It's not like half the beer can...

Got all 4 of mine and two are already in use! As for the condition 1 was almost perfect with just about 1" of the top pulling up and was fixed in seconds. Another had a top that completely was off which is actually really nice since I was able to completely clean it and the top of the keg and...

I brewed this on Saturday and got 16.25 gallons at 1.106 in my 22 gallon brewhemoth. I just got a call from home that the little lady heard some strange sounds coming from my brewery and when she opened the door the blow-off hose turned volcano! :( So I gave her instructions on how to replace...

I would get the 20lb since the charge to fill a 20 vs 10 can be almost the same. As for taking the keg upstairs to serve a few you can do that without having to buy anything extra depending on how much your going to serve. I take my kegs to parties often and just bump the psi up about 5 psi when...

Do you have it on a stir plate and at what temp? I started mine at about 70 but bumped the temp up every day until I hit about 75 in my brewery as I stepped it up. As for my experiment my Chimay batch shut down at 1.032 where my 1214 batches finished the job completely. So I racked one of the...

Thanks OP! I picked up 4 with lids. I have received free kegs in the past with loose tops/bottoms and just reattached them with some epoxy and they have not failed in two years plus of use.

I have one and use it for brewing and occasionally for cooking when I am smoking meat but I just got another. Also I have to give them props my old Thermapen that’s 2.5-3 years old died on me last week and I sent it in for a repair estimate and they responded back within 48 hours that they were...

So I finally got off my ass and started two of these kits. I took the bags out and soaked them in some Star San while I sanitized my two new wine buckets. The two that I opened looked good with a deep purple color and smelled and tasted like concentrated grape juice. Pretty damn tasty if you ask...

I really can’t answer the question for the double since I never tried it but realize you will need to make really big starter using the Chimay. I pitched a rather low cell count on purpose since that is what I read they do at Chimay. But I still pitched about 2500ML that was cultured over 10...

You can’t remove any of the screen heads from your faucets? If that is the case the only other thing I could think of is using a kettle with a valve and a pump. That’s how I clean mine by recirculating boiling water from my kettle.

X2^ 85-90 is too warm for pitching. It depends on what yeast and beer your brewing but in general you want to aim for 70 degrees to pitch an ale yeast.And glad to hear it going again! Let us know how it turns out.

I don’t think the lack of oxygen is the issue with these. The gravity is not that high and dry yeast should easily be able to ferment these even if he didn’t shake it or hit it with O2. I would suspect it's either bad or improperly stored yeast or the temps were off while proofing the yeast or...

It looks like he rehydrated the yeast at 90-100 which is fine, but what temp was the wort at when pitched OP?

The two on the ends are Wyeast and the center is the Chimay culture. The Wyeast have now pulled ahead of the Chimay this morning but the Chimay is going strong.