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Princess, I never said a single word about how good of a beer they make.

Fortunately, that has been done already by the groups that define these things in this country: the US Government and the Brewer's Association. http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/business-tools/craft-brewing-statistics/craft-brewer-defined Drink it if you like it. It won't bother me...

Don't be obtuse. You might have a point if Goose Island had direct control over these beers and were still brewing them at their own brewery, but when A) A company is bought by the largest beer company in the world and B) their beer becomes a brand name tacked on to a beverage that is no longer...

AB InBev has the ability to make Budweiser in multiple breweries around the country, using water that exactly matches the profile they established in St. Louis. The water is most likely not the difference in Beck's, though it could be part of it. They could be using domestic hops and/or malt...

Since they don't brew Honker's, 312, etc. at their own brewery anymore.

Awesome, except for prices. More than double the price for crystal, for example, than similar places online. And those places give a discount if you pick it up at the shop. :confused:

I thought we were talking about craft beer? Not sure why people are mentioning Leinenkugel's either.

I get 80%-92% and I batch sparge. The range is determined by grain bill size, but since getting my own mill, I haven't gotten less than 80%, even with a 22lbs. bill.

The amount of ginger really depends on the ginger itself. I have fairly mild, young ginger available fresh, and I have to use a lot to get strong ginger flavor that lasts without fading. By a lot, I mean two pounds for a 5 gallon batch. It was delicious.

The setting for steel in BeerSmith 2 is .12. Are you using the first version of BeerSmith? In BS2, you can make mash profiles where you specify the starting temp of the mash tun, and it uses the "Mash Tun Specific Heat" in its calculation for strike water temp. No reason to lower the temp, just...

You can always make your own, as it's just an invert syrup.

"Mash Tun Specific Heat" is not related to how fast your rig loses heat, it's about how much heat the material of your mash tun absorbs before reaching equilibrium. If the interior of your mash tun is steel, then .12 is what you want to use. You'll input the temp of your mash tun itself in...

So, I'd like to use my dishwasher's sanitation setting to sanitize my bottles. However, I'm leery if it's actually going to get hot enough to meet the FDA-required temps to sanitize. As I understand it, the FDA requires 140F for 40 minutes, or 160F for 40 seconds for an object to be...

Make a pouch from layer of cheesecloth and a few cups of non-clumping crystalline cat litter. Drop in in the freezer. Replace every few months.

Why not? It's even more expensive at Midwest. Keep in mind that DME has almost twice the sugar per pound as grain, not to mention that you automatically get 100% efficiency from it.

Keep in mind that he did a partial mash, and most of the fermentables are coming from DME. While 170 is too high, that's most likely not the main culprit here.

He used a half pound of hulls. That's a huge amount. Even a handful should be enough with 60% of the bill being barley. Most likely culprit was the crush. Wheat or not, you probably needed a finer crush. He certainly used enough hulls to make his sparge painless.

What fun would that be? There'd be like 20 posts then. :p

Right, mashing out was the context the rest of my post was referring to. I should have been more clear though, thanks. :mug: Yup, mash out, then sparge. The only infection you might worry about is lacto, as that could sour the wort. Pretty unlikely though, as the mash-out temps should kill...

Are you going to mash out? If you get your sparge water hot enough to raise the grain temp to 170+, that should halt any enzymatic activity and then your only concern is sanitation. If your sparge water isn't hot enough, the wort will continue to get more fermentable.