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I'm in the same boat - only 3 brews under my belt and the worst thing that's happen was cycling above and below mash temp by adding too much hot/cold water. But, when I finally get around to royally f-ing something up, I will remember this thread fondly with the realization that you probably...

Ooh - blow off tube is a great idea! Riffing off of that, I'd probably put the DI in my Erlenmeyer flask and run the blowoff tube from there. Little less volume to make up, and the borosilicate glass should have no trouble with the temps. Thanks!

Thanks all. Interesting thought about flash freezing plastic - I do use both plastic carboys as well as buckets. The bucket is easily rectifiable by placing the DI in a second container that offers a bit of insulation to the surface of the bucket (I'm thinking one of those Glad containers)...

Well, I'm going from advice given by a local, experienced home brewer. My primary reason is I loves me some IPAs. My first brew was an IIPA, that was incredible when I transferred it from the primary to the bottling bucket - I mean, the hop aromas were out of this world. However, now that it...

Hey all, I'm getting ready for a brew day on this end, pondering how I could purge my secondary and bottling bucket with CO2 since I don't have a keg setup yet. And I got the idea - why not dry ice? CO2 is slightly heavier than air (at least, that's what Google tells me), so it would seem...

A very new brewer here - so grain of salt is highly recommended, but one of the first things I tried doing was harvesting some Two Hearted yeast (I did this before I even brewed my first beer). I collected the dregs from three bottles, stuck it in a 1L starter on a stir plate. It took it a...

Great minds, brother. Down in Syracuse myself, enjoying a croissant, bacon and coffee. Staring at the absolutely stupid amount of snow in our back yard. My fermenter and bottling bucket are shaming me into bottling the Dunkel today. Considering naming it "The Waning Banana - a Middle Aged beer."

Wow - chuck my name in that hat!

Disclaimer: amateur roaster opinions ahead. I think it really depends a lot on the process that the bean went through prior to roasting as much (if not even more so than) the roasting. I always feel like I get more floral & berry flavors from a dry processed coffee vs. wet hulled. And you want...

One of my favorites that I've seen on the forums was a very simple label, with "BEER #XX" and the style. Something about it was just very very pleasing to me.

Well, considering I'm a whole 2 batches into the hobby, and have named 50% of my beers... A buddy of mine is a creative director at a marketing company. We're both somewhat movie people (Coen bros are my speed, Tarantino is his, we both dig The Godfather I & II), so we bat ideas back and forth...

99% of the coffee I really like I roast myself (but there is a bag of 8-oclock in my cupboard for backup. NO JUDGING!!) For commercially available roasted fodder, the best that I've had is from a tiny roaster in the town where my brother in law lives in Kentucky. Kifu Coffee Roasters...

I've been using a Behmor for a few years now (been roasting for...what, almost 10 years now?). I agree that the control with that machine isn't what I would consider ideal, but you can do little things to control the ramp, lengthen the time between 1st and 2nd cracks, etc... Never used the...

I use an old Starbucks Aroma for usual daily auto drip, but when I want a really good cup I reach for my Chemex. Aeropress is great for trips.

Probably for me, the worst was a Shipyard Monky Fist IPA - tasted like hopped soapy dishwater. I gave the remains of the 6 pack (5 beers) to a hophead friend of mine. He liked it. But then, this is the same guy who HATED Two Hearted, so I think he may be a little off in the head.

I think I like that idea a lot also. I'll have to see if I can get my hands on some.

Got a dunkelweizen planned for this weekend! I hope to not have too many empty fermenter days this winter.

It's an IIPA (finished at about 9%) and I used 3.5oz of sugar (4 gallons bottled). Stored at about 67º. It's pretty flat, and definitely will benefit from a bit of aging. This is a good exercise for certain - definitely interesting to taste where it has gone on its journey. I think this is...

I read on here about the pepsi bottle trick right after I bottled. Will ABSOLUTELY be doing that next time. Brilliant idea, that. Well, I'm going to go for it with the encouragement I've gotten here (that was encouragement, right? Yes, I'm sure it was.) After all, how can I answer some...

So, I bottled my first brew 6 days ago. Any chance there will be any carbonation after that short time frame? I'm dying to try one, but don't want to waste it. And now I'm bracing for the "dude... it's going to be really flat" replies that I know are coming. But I can hope, can't I?