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Brew life at least. Story to date: Converted my brew kettle to electric a couple weeks ago using Kal's instructions. My kettle is aluminum, so it was not easy getting the locknut to thread due to the kettle wall thickness, but after a bit of cursing it worked. Installed a cheap direct...

All right...$50 for a spa panel, a few hours, some skinned knuckles and I think I'm in business. Hooked up the white wire on the main panel, moved a 120V outlet and installed a L14-30R receptacle in the vacated space. Wow, 10 gauge is enough of a pain to work with that I can't see how anyone...

Thanks P-J. Appreciate the offer. Right now, I'm just focusing on getting an outlet in place and then a kettle built so I can keep the wife happy and spend the winter putting a good automation design together. I'm definitely putting a Spa Panel in place as the next step. $100 for a breaker...

Good point. Not wanting to open up the panel again is no good reason for not hooking it up.

SWMBO has decided it would be nicer if I no longer took up the kitchen for hours on end, so I decided to go the electric route in the basement. The good...we have a 200 AMP 40 space/40 circuit main panel, so there should be plenty of space for expansion. The bad...the previous owner put an...

Yep...every couple days check out the clearance section on cornykeg.com for $14 pin locks. They show in stock now.

Thanks again. I don't really brew stouts very often, so haven't worked very much with heavily roasted grains and I haven't worked with them at all since brewing all-grain. Using 500 or even 425 for the roasted barley puts the numbers much more in line with where I would like them to be without...

No clue, a lot of the specialty grains are broken up and repackaged. The make is not listed on the label. I'll have to ask next time I go into the store, but they seem to buy everything through Crosby & Baker, so I would guess it's either Muntons or Weyermann. Probably whichever is cheaper.

whoops, just noticed I'd been undershooting my flaked barley all these years.

Unfortunately, the Lov on the roasted barley isn't listed, so I'm working off a baseline of 300. The Chocolate is 400 and Black Patent is 550. Maybe dropping the patent completely, lowering the chocolate to 4 oz and putting in 4 oz of Carafa III might work. or else, maybe I should just...

Hmm, what if I boost the Maris Otter a bit to 8.5 pounds and drop a couple ounces of the patent? This would be 8.5 lb Maris Otter 2 lb Flaked Barley 1 lb Roast Barley 8 oz Chocolate 2 oz Patent Should have an OG around 1.06 and FG around 1.012, while still maintaining a color above 35. The...

awesome, thanks for the feedback. Doubling the flaked barley and mashing lower sounds like a great idea.

My fathers birthday is coming up and I decided I would craft a beer to his specifications. We sat down today and came up with the following. He wants a Dry Stout that meets these criteria: very dark, very dry, thick (I take this to mean a lot of body), low on the bitter side, medium to...

Thunderstruck Pumpkin Ale today. Started at 9:30. Usual 4 hour brew day lasted 7 hours due to a 3 1/2 hour sparge. Ended up missing the first 7 or 8 minutes of the Pats game. Not a big deal...I'm a Jets fan, just don't tell my wife.

I wouldn't sweat it. I bought five lbs back in 2003 and still had about 3 lbs left when I took a 7 year hiatus from brewing. Earlier this year, I had about a lb of it left that never made it into one thing or another over the years. I used the last of it this Spring...No infection, no...

Check that the top of the picnic tap is screwed all the way down. Just had the same problem about an hour ago. Luckily, was just soda water at 25PSI in my case, so cleanup wasn't much of a problem.

I've been using MWRA water for all-grain without a problem. I do have a house filter as well as undersink. My last batch was in mid-May before things started to heat up, so it's possible the MWRA is increasing the chlorine now, which is going to mess things up if you don't filter.

Tried this with last night with a GE 7.0 CF. Ended up screwing the coarse screw in all the way (10-12 full turns) and setting the fine adjustment to 1. Best it would do was about 31 degrees. After 8 hours a mason jar of water was not quite frozen. When I get around to building a collar, I'm...

I ordered two sets of o-rings in case I needed them, but didn't end up having to use any. It would still probably make sense to order a set, because they're so cheap.

Over the last few months I've ordered 2 refurbished, 2 used and 2 clearance kegs. I've noticed very little difference between the used and refurbished. Both types came clean with the gaskets in good shape. The metal and gaskets on the damaged ones were very good too, just very rough handles...