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$10 for a carboy is awesome! And if you have a line on kegs that are cheap, get them now before the deal goes away. You'll want them. But DON'T get rootbeer kegs. That smell never comes out. Cheers :D

OK. I'll address these based on my experience...take it for what it's worth. You really don't need to worry much about the 170 degree thing. I don't. I heat it up to that general area, but you can sparge with water anywhere from 150-180 and really even wider range with no ill effects. So, you...

Yeah you have to dispose of the heat somehow. The best thing to do is collect the water an use it for the strike water for your next batch...but that's a slippery slope ;) I think that given the same temperature of water, counterflow chillers use less water. There are factors. Immersion...

Making hard candy isn't really any different from just adding table sugar except that you'll caramelize some of the sugar and change the color/flavor/fermentability a bit. If you want to use the ingredient "Belgian Candi Sugar", you can either spend a lot at the HBS or use bags of white sugar...

Yeah, I'm definitely not attempting this. It was as much a theoretical discussion as anything. Hopefully no one else will attempt it in the future. Maybe I should delete the thread to protect the children? ;)

Well, if you're a purist, you could probably smoke a few pounds of two row, crush it, and do a little steep and add that liquid to your brew. It'll dilute it a little more, but it could add some nice smokiness. I don't think it takes much to get a lot of smoke flavor in a beer, and if you do a...

LOL! That's a riot :D Brown grolsch bottles? Way cool! I always had green, but boy are those flip tops nice! Cheers :D

Hmm...I guess...do you mean because you don't necessarily need a hot liquor tank? But you do need some vessel to heat sparge water, right? I don't know where batch sparging really saves you except maybe on a sparge arm? But for years, I used a loop of vinyl hose with holes punched in it. Cost...

Hmm...I'm pretty sure that counterflow uses less water, especially in anything above 5 gallons. The most efficient chiller water-wise is a plate chiller. I'm with you, BTW. I always try to use all my chiller water. I clean with it or fill the dogs' baby pool in the summer.

All the rauch beers I've had have a pretty pronounced smoke flavor. That Alaska Porter(?) is nice...more subtle. I've had the Rogue and I don't remember it in detail (just tasted it...not my thing), and it was pretty smoky I think. Sounds to me like it's the rauch malt you used. A lot of smoked...

drengel - how do you brew without a chiller??? Essential piece of equipment. You can build a counterflow chiller pretty cheaply...immersion even cheaper.

Salts are to adjust water chemistry and they're still used. And draught beer without carbonation is called cask conditioned, aka "real ale" if you're one of these snobby British types ;) Sounds like a fun book. We used a book like that when we were getting started. It had a lot of nutty advice...

You're only shortchanging yourself ;) Seriously, another cooler and a sparge arm is, what, $30 tops?? You don't need flow controls other than a valve on your liquor tank and mash tun to control in and outflow. If you want to brew budget, brew extract. All-grain really won't produce good...

For one thing, blow off the protein rest. It's your first mash so go simple. Single infusion at 150 degrees all in the cooler. I have brewed thousands of all-grain batches and the vast majority of my batches are single infusion. You really don't want to mess around with applying heat directly to...

My bad...it's only 170K BTUs. Still, that's a lot more, and it can take the better part of an hour to get 12 gallons to a boil if I don't heat through the sparge. If you decide to upgrade, I can't recommend these burners enough. The stands are rock solid and just made to cradle a keg...

I'm suprised to hear you praise the consistency of Samuel Smith's. It's good beer, as I know from the very few times I have had it when it wasn't skunked. But I so often see it sitting warm on brightly lit shelves for $10+ a six-pack. Give me a break! Almost every time I have grabbed some, it...

Hmm...if it's 40K BTUs it may take a while. I'm recalling my burners are in the neighborhood of 250K BTUs but maybe I'm misremembering. They're beasts, though, and it still takes a good long time. Putting the lid on it helps, but only if you have a thermometer so you know when to get the lid...

LOL. That instructor is definitely into beer, huh? :D

Nope. Make a starter. Today. :D

You can't make a beer overly bitter with dry hopping. It adds aroma. Use a lot. Use whole hops. No bag. No marbles. Just toss em in. Putting them in before you rack may help them absorb liquid. In any event, it'll work great and you'll get a ton of hop aroma out of it (which adds to the...