Search results

+1 on this Harbor Freight Hydraulic Cart. For me this is better than a rope lifting system because it can be rolled around my room or garage. I can haul jugs of water, my fermenter, my boil kettle, etc. Once I jack it up to my table heights, it is easy to slide the weight from the cart to a...

I just exchanged a 20 lb CO2 tank in Wisconsin for $34 with tax at the local welding shop.

I have a small front door refrigerator that I bought fairly cheap at Home Depot that holds the SS Brewtech fermenter that I first bought when I started home brewing several years ago. I then bought an ALL Rounder to have a second fermenter. Unfortunately the All Rounder doesn't fit in my...

Here is a comparison. The SPundit is a high quality, very sturdy, highly accurate instrument built to last a long time. It has very accurate adjustments and the attached blow off bottle allows me to monitor the fermentation activity by watching the bubbling. It is like most things, you get...

One of my best purchases ever for home brewing was a Spundit 2.0 spunding valve to use with my All Rounder. I now almost always ferment under pressure with it. I fill and seal the fermenter on brew day and attach the Spundit setting it at 12 psi throughout fermentation. I also then attach a...

I would bet that the chemical that has been consumed in Big Corp beer that has caused the most overall harm to the world's population is, in fact, alcohol. It is what it is.

It is inexpensive with small oxygen canisters that are readily available locally and it only take a minute or two. There is no reason for me to skip this simple step.

I think you have 2 choices. The first is just throw the gypsum out and don't worry about it. You can make beer without messing with the water. The second choice is to take the time to educate yourself on water chemistry and water adjustments for homebrewing. It isn't that difficult to learn...

I would just pressurize it to 12 psi every few days when you walk past it. It just takes a few seconds and then disconnect the hose again. In fact, this is what I always do now. I lost a tank of CO2 once when I must have had a small leak somewhere. Now as my beer is aging in the keg, I just...

Spundit 2.0, worth every penny.

The one problem that I would see with this is that you won't ever be able to get the dry hops out of the beer unless you then do a pressure transfer to a different keg. If you are going to serve out of that same keg, your dry hops will remain in the beer for the life of the beer. You could...

If you are really into pressure fermenting, it is worth buying a Spundit 2.0 spunding valve although they may be hard to find now. This is the cadillac of spunding valves. It makes it easy to dial in the exact and consistent pressure. It is one of my best home brewing purchases.

The first step in my brew day is to use an old turkey fryer burner to heat up a couple gallons of water to 170 degrees or so to dump in my Igloo Cooler mash tun to warm it up. This usually takes 10 min or so. At the same time I am heating up my 5 gal of strike water with my good Blichmann...

I also shut off the valve on the propane tanks on my gas grill and on my home brewing propane burner after I use them although I don't think I have any leaks so I should be able to leave them on 24/7. I agree with you that if you meticulously check and maintain every single gasket, seal, valve...

Several years ago I had a leak and discovered my tank was empty (frustrating). It certainly isn't that difficult to prevent leaks but I also solved the problem by just not leaving the CO2 tank on all the time. Now after I keg, I pressurize the keg to the correct CO2 pressure once or twice a...

I do all of my 5 gal batches in a cheap 5 gal Igloo Cooler. It works perfect although I rarely do bigger beers > 7.0 % ABV's. I can't even remember the last time that I didn't hit my goal efficiencies and numbers right on the money now that I have my processes down. The $25 round Igloo cooler...

I still brew but probably only about half as much as prior. I bet there is a pretty high rate of dropout or at least decreased participation compared to many other hobbies. Here are some of the reasons that I brew less. It is time consuming. A high percentage of the task is cleaning. I...

When I still buy beer recipe kits (all grain for me), they almost always still include the directions to transfer to a secondary fermenter. They even have this on oxidation prone IPA's. These supply companies need to get rid of these directions that probably do more harm than good. They are...

The obvious choice would be John Palmer's book on water chemistry as a good place to start.

If you have a keg and you have a CO2 tank, why would you bother with priming sugar? After I transfer my beer to the keg, I simply apply 12 psi of CO2 (or slight adjustments depending on the beer style) to the keg and I end up with perfect carbonation every time. There is no advantage to...