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Thought I'd follow up. Tried the coat hanger (stainless kabob skewer) trick with no luck. I didn't get super aggressive bc I didn't want to risk disturbing the beer. Transferred to keg tonight and scooped trub with my stirring spoon to try and save/wash yeast that way. Figured I'd give it a...

Thought about this, but was gonna go through the valve at bottom)

All - Was setting out for my first trub dump / yeast harvest in my new chronical fermenter....but no joy. Left the dump valve open for about 30 minutes and got squat. Obviously the trub is compacted enough to hold. I'm sure there's a lesson here...wondering what the veterans have to say...

The place is awesome. Great brew. Growlers and howlers (half sized). Yes cornies but they ask you call ahead. You can find some of their stuff at berkots in new Lenox. But do yourself a favor and go to the taproom

186th I believe. I think they have incredibly good beers there. For a startup I think they're outstanding. Just cracked some barrel aged stuff too. Give em a look! (No affiliation, for the record)

If you venture out a bit, there's a small new brewery in Tinley Park called Hailstorm that I think is turning out some incredibly good beer.

Into the fermenter it goes. I think i need a little gravity knowledge... I'm reading things correctly, my refractometer is calibrated per instructions. But the OG came in at more like 1.043 (at 80ish degrees) than the 1.056 Beersmith says it was. My guess is that the small drops used on a...

Well - I'm into the brew session now - have my 6(ish) gallons on the burner coming up to the boil. Here's how things went so far: I put just under 3.5 gallons into the mash at 163 degrees, the mash came to 151 and settled. After one hour i was at 150. I drained just under two gallons of wort...

Well here I got the impression that fly sparking was actually easier? Maybe I have my terms screwed up? I planned on the version where I trickle water onto the grain bed being sure to leave about 2" water "on top"? Thanks for the input so far. Yooper, I'll take your advice on strike temp.

Hi all... I've finished getting my equipment ready and have the kit for my first foray into AG. I've been reading about the process and I just want to post my plan here to get any feedback or tips y'all may have. I've got a single hop simcoe kit (which actually also has some magnum...

the containers were $30 for both plus a sheet of rigid foam ($20) and a couple cans of spray foam. The PVC was less than $10 - the shower flange I think might have been $10 as well. As for the tapping guts it's a 2-keg fridge conversion kit, so thats $180ish (2 faucets, regulator, CO2...

Evening all - thought I'd share a project I've been working on. I"ve been after a kegerator I could take camping (mostly for race weekend duty). I wanted it to be "off the grid" b/c some of the places it will get used won't allow me to have something that requires electricity 24/7. I spent a...

Yeast rafts.....that's a new one to me...thanks! Some of the pics I've now searched do look like what's been described as yeast rafts. One (comforting) thing was that what I saw didn't resemble any of the infection pictures I've seen (and looked at right away) as those seem to have a more...

Hi all... I've been happily chugging along with regular extract brewing for about a year and a half now. All has gone well. This weekend i brewed an otherwise simple ipa and used a wyeast American ale smack pack...which swelled up when activated as others I've used have. I got concerned...

I've just cracked a batch of B3 stout from morebeer and it is fantastic

and man it feels good! I started this homebrewing thing about 4 years ago, but really only made 3 batches in that time...all very good, but life was just sort of in the way at that time. Over the holidays i got a wild hair and jumped in with both feet (fridge for kegging, actually studying...

Establishing the pipeline was my primary objective. It's hard as can be to be patient, but now that the kegs are ready it's a lot easier to let the newer batches take their time. I'm going to stick with extract kits for a while just to form a baseline. Then maybe piece together my own...

Howdy all - New guy from Illinois (southwest burbs) checking in. Been lurking on here for a solid month now. I've had a basic homebrew kit for 5 or so years and brewed a few extract batches here and there, but hardly regularly....but man were those brews pretty good. bottling was alwasy...