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I buy frozen 5 lb bags of sour cherries from Gordon's Food Service, if there is one near you check them out. I have made Kreik and cherry wheat beers with them and have been very pleased. Price is fairly good and available year round.

I recently made a pineapple Saison using 4 small pineapples (about 5 lbs) that were cut up and minced and added at secondary. It is excellent and the flavor blends well with saison.

I have found some excellent beers in Italy and Rome has several top notch beer bars. Look for Brewfist, great American style IPA's. In Rome best beer bars are Open Baladin, Bir and Fud, Ma Che Siete Venuti a Fà. I use ratebeer as a resource for finding great beer in different countries...

Count me in, thank you!

I would not do the primary in the barrel, but would recommend using it for a short secondary. The first use of a fresh barrel only takes a week or two in secondary, I taste every day to make sure it is not overwhelmed. Distilleries typically age in oak at 2x normal strength then dilute post...

I have used two different rum barrels multiple times, in between batches I put a bottle of rum in and rotate on a regular basis to keep the entire inside wet. The alcohol from the rum is/should be adequate to kill any bugs. My first barrel was good for 4 batches this way, no issues with...

You can remove the bung by tapping softly on the sides with a hammer and slowly working it out. Replace it with a drilled and sanitized #10 rubber plug and airlock. I use a non-drilled #10 in between beers. The beers will continue to outgas and may begin a second fermentation and develop a...

I would recommend tasting the beer after a week using a wine thief. The small barrels have a very high surface area to volume ratio and do not need long aging. I have used two rum barrels and the first use of a new barrel for me was between 7 and 10 days. Bigger beers can handle a bit more...

Try WLP838 Southern German Lager yeast. This is my go-to for Ofest, dunkels and German lagers, Tastes great, ferments very clean and I have never had any diactyl problems. Gets even better attenuation after the 2nd or 3rd generation.

Should work fine, this is no different than plugging in a crock pot. Put it in a small cooler to hold the temps. 2 stage controller means it can control either a heater or fridge. They should all be able to handle these temps, they are not very high.

I have used the eBay probe immersed in water for chilling and warming beer for weeks at a time and with the sous vide up to much higher temps, works fine with no problems.

If this was used by a brewery, it will likely have residual yeast and left over beer that could cause infection. The barrels I use were freshly dumped by the distiller and were still wet inside. The rum or whiskey is typically aged at very high concentrations then diluted to the level it is...

Ohio locale, but those are European (france?) plugs. ? Good eye, I recently was sent to France for a 2 year assignment and haven't changed my location. Guess I'm trying to keep one foot on American soil. I have only found the STC-1000 temp controllers in Deg C, I'm still getting used to...

Easy sous vide with an eBay temp controller and crock pot, works perfectly! My wife has made ribs, pork, steak and lamb and all have been perfectly cooked.

Another believer here. I have used several other digital thermometers but nothing like the speed and accuracy of the thermapen. It reads in 3-4 seconds so it is very convenient for mashing and checking when your boil is getting close. Also use for smoking meats and barbecue. I don't mind...

Congrats on the job opportunity. Can't help you with Germany, but I moved to France in April for a 2 year assignment and have been homebrewing since then in the land of wine. I have not found a single homebrew shop in the entire country. Since I can't get good beer here (except belgians)...

The smaller barrels do not require a significant amount of aging... I have used two 5 gallon rum barrels and find that for the first use in a new barrel one week to 10 days is more than sufficient. There is much more surface area to volume in a 5 gal barrel vs. Large barrels and they do not...

Did you use lactose sugar in your milk stout? that does not ferment and will yield a higher FG... 1.030 may be all you are going to get. If you put your recipe out here, will be able to provide more input.

Welcome aboard! I agree that Cincinnati is a great homebrew town.

You can order Pacman from Rebel Brewer, they carry it year round. Rebelbrewer.com.