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I have a hard time believing the beer totally turned to foam... Maybe the poppet didn't seat and it leaked out there. I had a sour beer aging with low pressure that started leaking a little bit over several days (only a cup or so), but if it were at higher pressure, it would probably have...

You live next to a homeless shelter and keep your windows unlocked?

I generally just keep the starter on for 48 hours, as long as it shows signs of activity within 12 hours, and then pour in sanitized mason jars and store in the fridge. Some will build a small amount of pressure, but I don't ever open them once I put them in the fridge. Haven't had a cracked...

I use the Brewer's Friend starter calculator and make a starter every time I brew. I also grow oversized starters and store cultures of between 100-200 billion cells in mason jars in my fridge for future use.

This idea should have a disclaimer regarding possible bodily harm or damage to property.

Temperature calibration value is used to offset the probe temperature. For example, if you did a side-by-side with a reliable thermometer and the STC-1000 reads a degree off in one direction, you would adjust the temperature calibration value accordingly. You can also make an ice bath to check...

I put the probe on the carboy I expect to ferment quicker and/or more vigorously. If you notice the carboy without the probe starts to get going sooner, you can move the probe to that carboy to keep it from getting warmer than intended. Another thought is to control the WLP500 since its max...

I don't do BIAB, so don't know. I would guess that you would get some small increase in efficiency if you squeeze, maybe more so if you squeeze on the first runnings than the sparge runnings (since the absorbed water is higher strength during first running). More volume and more overall sugar...

Good weather in the forecast now, so now also a Citra Pale Ale, and Super Pine IPA (Simcoe, Chinook). Weeeee!

I used to mash -> drain -> sparge -> drain, now I mash -> mashout full volume -> drain. I used to get around 80% brewhouse efficiency, now I get around 70% brewhouse efficiency and adjust up the grain accordingly. It's like rinsing with one large volume vs a bunch of small volumes equal to...

I ferment in carboys, secondary in carboys for 6 months or so, then transfer to keg for extended aging. When the sour starts hitting the sweet spot, I fill bottles from keg and drop a sugar drop or two in the bottle and carbonate. I can fill individual bottles this way and keep bulk aging.

My solution is to brew all types of beer all the time. Ales to lagers to wild beers. I drank a ton of IPAs in college, then got a little tired of them, but now that I make all types of beer, I don't get tired of any one style.

Pilsener and Dunkel, as long as the weather permits on Friday or Saturday.

This is a very important point to make. The wort is churning around during the early phases of fermentation that create the most heat, so there shouldn't be much of a temperature gradient between the center and edge of the carboy. This is also the most important time to control temperature...

The outside of the fermenter is closer to the temp of the interior of the fermenter than a glass of water, which has no biological activity and associated heat production. Probably better to measure ambient air than ambient water temperature, since the air will heat up faster due to the heat of...

From the first water in kettle to finished clean-up, usually 6 hours (two 5-gallon batches staggered by 30 minutes). Then from sober to boozed, about 60 minutes.

I tape it to the side of the fermenter under a couple small pieces of pipe insulation, a few inches below the top of the liquid level.

I run a whirlpool in my kettle, let settle for at least 20 minutes, and drain direct into carboy without straining. I still get some trub, but a good mound of hops and break material is left behind. When the hell is someone going to manufacture a 7-gallon PET carboy???

In his sours book, Michael Tonsmiere (Mad Fermentationist) says that leaving a sour beer on primary cake for the entirety of the aging process will result in a rustic funk associated with autolysis (lambic-like) that will not be as clean as if you transferred to a secondary vessel. Not...

For wastewater reuse (inactivation of virtually all pathogenic bacteria), a rule of thumb UV dose is 100 mJ/cm2, or 100,000 uW-s/cm2 (for filtered treated wastewater). So to be conservative, I'll use that. Sunlight that hits the earth's surface is somewhere around 3% UV-C. Sunlight intensity...