Roundboy posted:

I just need another carboy

Docjowles posted:

It took a few batches before cracking, but I am a victim of this too. Now I put it in a cast iron pan and put that on the burner. Takes a little longer to boil but doesn't destroy my poo poo.

EnsignVix posted:

To my fellow Pumpkin Ale brewers, I just wanted to get a general consensus on how many of you use actual pumpkin, also if using pumpkin when do you add it? I do use canned pumpkin and add it to the mash which this year was pretty tricky to manage.

On a totally unrelated note, I finally got around to using my Blichmann beer gun and wow that thing is great. Too many bottle conditioning mishaps forced my hand. Not having sediment, a very specific and controllable carbonation level, and a very quick turnaround from brewing to ready bottles? Yes please!

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

It's possible, but so long as you exercise proper sanitation procedures it shouldn't happen. I mean during fermentation you're basically dealing with a giant pot of super tasty bug juice, so any microbes that you toss in there will be competing with the "good" microbes for the prize. I figure bottling would be less likely because of the alcohol content but the risk could still be there. So I guess I would avoid bottling or brewing while sick. A bigger risk would be sick while handling a 5 gallon pot of boiling wort or the risk of broken glass.

Speaking of brewing and being ill...



I had minor surgery yesterday, and while waiting for the procedure to start my wife and I figure out what we wanted to brew over the new few weekends. The hospital had wifi so we put together a shopping list from Annapolihs Home Brew, and it arrived today. They put everything together and shipped it the same day, and since we live in Maryland we got all 57 pounds of it the next day! Not bad for $7.95 flat rate shipping. What you see there is the all grain kit for their Belgian Tripel, the extract kits for the WH Honey Ale and Honey Porter kits, and finally the ingredients for Northern Brewer's Saison de Noel kit. I also picked up some FermCap-S, extra corn sugar, and some yeast nutrient. Total price was $202 shipped.

So yeah, if you guys are putting together a big order and want flat rate shipping I highly recommend giving Annapolis Homebrew a shot.

BTW has anyone checked out Northern Brewer's Megapot? Looks pretty nice, and $150 for a 10 gallon isn't terrible.

Beer4TheBeerGod posted:

How does that compare to the 3711?

Myron Baloney posted:

I've made basic pils/wheat saisons with 3711, 3724 and 3726. So far 3726 is the fruitiest and tartest of the 3, 3711 is lemony and lightly spicy and has that smooth mouthfeel, and 3724 (still my favorite) has lots of spice and moderate fruit and tartness (when fermented at 90-95F). I don't think you have to jack the temp up for 3726, I pitched at 70F and let it come up by itself in a room at 75F and it hit FG of 1.003 in 13 days. They'll all get down close to 1.000 if done right but 3711 is the most forgiving.

CapnBry posted:

I use the piece of 1/4" racking cane with 3/8" tubing over it that goes down to a blowoff collector and airlock:


3/8" tubing as worked without a clog for me (up to 1.089 OG), but I've had the airlock with 1/2" tubing explode on me before. The opening on some of my airlocks has a little grate on them that clogs sometimes. Even the airlocks without those, the hole is kinda small. It is made to let gas out, not gunk. That's why I think the piece of blowoff tubing is fine. If you need it to fit in less space, just get one of those right angle hose barbs from the hardware store.

The collection vessel (which has been sanitized) I bought at the grocery store but it sucks because it isn't airtight. Not because contamination because that will never ever happen, even with your orange carboy cap. My collection vessel sucks because it doesn't make the airlock bubble as much as it could. I'm going to replace it with an empty PET peanut butter jar once I empty out all the peanut butter. Germs and stuff that are going to infect your beer have no chance of getting up around seals which aren't airtight. In order for that to happen you'd have to be getting a good amount of airflow flowing into the fermenter. That just doesn't happen.

Clockwork Beast! posted:

I've started my first brew! My brother has had some experience so he and I worked on the first one. After taking it home, fermentation in the primary went fine. Hung out there for about 5 days then racked it to a clean, glass carboy secondary. I lost about a half-gallon of liquid; when the siphon started going dark I though I was getting into the trub but I guess it was just sediment or something right before it because I ended up pouring out a lot of liquid before getting to the solids. Didn't figure this was a big deal. Shortly after racking, white foam-like beads started forming on the surface of the beer. Some Google-fu told me this was most likely yeast being moved around by CO2. Fine.

Here's where the issue begins. At this point fermentation slowed considerably, stopping completely by day 2 or 3 in the secondary. The white beads did not foam any longer. Swirling it produced small amounts of activity in the airlock, but it stopped immediately. The bubbles that formed after swirling are still there after like three days, letting me know there is absolutely no reaction in the secondary any longer. I don't know if it is stalled or done. I would know except that while the kit I got has a hydrometer, it has no thief. Can I assume it's complete and bottle at this point or is there something else I should do first? Also, the airlock that came with my kit is apparently made for primary fermentation only I guess? It's the one that just basically looks like a shot glass, I don't have the S-curved airlock. Does this matter? Thanks to any beer doctors with some advice at this point. Not sure if it matters but it's a winter porter we followed the recipe on, I wanted to make sure I could follow basic instructions and get the process down before getting into any experimentation.

Prefect Six posted:

Has anyone seen the Wyeast Private Collection yeasts for oct-dec on sale anywhere? After what you guys said about Saison de Noel I think I'll brew it for New Years.

Daedalus Esquire posted:

Yesterday a Pepsi truck pulled up outside my house and a gentleman from my housemates softball team unloaded these on our driveway.

Prefect Six posted:

For you guys who have used 3726 before - what's a good temp to start fermentation and how high do I want to run it? I'm doing the Saison de Noel and wondering what my fermentation profile should be. Was thinking start at 70 for three days and then raise it a degree a day to 80-85?

Ubik posted:

I use Goose Island's house ale strain most of the time, though, since the lab guys will grab me a slug whenever I need it.

BLARGHLE posted:

Unrelated, but something I've noticed reading this thread- am I the only person here who doesn't like/make belgians? Am I alone in my love of british ales and random ciders?

Duxwig posted:

I used HTB's guide to make the starter
http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter6-5.html

It called for only 1/2 Quart(2 cups) water and 1/2c DME(used just over 2/3c LME[came with the kit] by conversion). Boiled, mixed, etc.

Two people say it should be ok so I'll stop being obsessed with it. I just want good drinkable poo poo on the first try!

Jo3sh posted:

Just saw this over on homebrewfinds:
http://www.homebrewfinds.com/2013/10/reader-tip-great-deal-buy-one-bubbler.html

BOGO on Bubbler PET carboys. These are the Northern Brewer brand of Better Bottle knockoffs. I got a pair of these, and they work just fine. I paid $36 for the pair, delivered, which is really only a couple of bucks more per fermenter than buckets and lids. It seems like a reasonable price for PET carboys.

hellfaucet posted:

SymmetryrtemmyS posted:

I had no idea a bung and airlock was so cheap. I have a few homebrew stores nearby, and I called one up for a quote - they said the very basic parts I need run about $15 all told, or a few bucks for the airlock. I think I'll try a batch of ginger beer in plastic bottles, and save up for glass to make cider in (as well as cider ingredients).

How essential/useful is it to buy raw/unfiltered apple juice for brewing? Is it worth making my own cider press? I have a tranny jack sitting around unused, and it would be -perfect- for pressing apples/fruit/things.

Jerome Louis posted:

Anyone have a preferred guide for wiring up an STC-1000 for a chest freezer fermentation chamber? Going to work on this tonight and I'm not super confident with wiring stuff.

ChickenArise posted:

What's a good length of time to give a starter? I'm actually using one for a bigger beer for the first time in what feels like forever. It's been bubbling away since last night and I'm hoping to brew this evening. I'm good, right? I know there was some conventional wisdom of 1-2 days, but I also seem to recall the girls from White Labs on the session talking about how most people don't give their starters nearly enough time. For reference, I think I'm shooting for around 1.08ish (I don't have it handy atm) and using US-05

Sistergodiva posted:

^^^^^
That looks really awesome, do you grow pears yourself?




Turns out getting bottles is a pain in the rear end. I don't know how it works in the US, but here in Sweden you pay a little extra for everything that comes in glass or PET bottles, and you get it back when you return it to the store. So the stores have loads and loads of plastic crates with bottles. Supposedly you are supposed to be able to buy them for the same price they pay for them when you "return" them, but all the places I looked in have said that they can't guarantee they are clean etc etc, so we can't sell them to you. I don't really want to order 20kgs of glass bottles in the mail either. Buying some soda or really weak beer and pouring it out would be cheaper than ordering bottles online also. Having no car sucks, since I can only carry 50+ bottles so far.

How well does the re-attachable lid ones work for homemade beer? I'm not sure what they are called in english, but the ones like the Grolsch bottles? I mean if I'm gonna waste money buying bottles, I might as well get something nice that doesn't require capping.

Martello posted:

My awesome father-in-law gave me a Brewer's Best starter kit for my birthday in April, and my wife and I finally brewed our first batch last month. The bottles are sitting in my basement meat-curing chamber, carbonating. They'll be ready in about two and a half weeks.

So now, of course, I want to brew about fifty different kinds of beer all at once. After Christmas we'll buy another extract recipe kit and do another big brew. After that, I want to start getting into partial mash and eventually all-grain. For partial mash, is it true that all you really need on top of the basic extract brewing equipment is a muslin bag for the grain? And is mini-mash the same thing?

What's the best homebrew supply site? My father-in-law likes Austin Homebrew and Midwest Brewing Supplies, but I find Austin to be a little pricey and Midwest doesn't have a great selection of recipes. Northern Brewer has a lot of nice equipment and somewhat cheaper recipe kits than Austin, and I just started looking at Adventures in Homebrewing and I like what I see so far.

Marathanes posted:

If you're in the Chicago area, I cannot recommend Brew Camp enough. The guys there are all amazingly helpful (I've learned pretty much everything I know about brewing from this thread, the internet, and the guys at this shop) and their prices aren't as outrageous as some I've seen. I can't speak to their shipping however, as I generally just go in when I want to make something.

Jacobey000 posted:

2 - Brew Camp is right down the street from me; are you or more falafel in Squarekegs? Are there goons in the homebrew club meetings I've been going to and didn't know

CapnBry posted:

I used to do this and it works great. If you assume that the yeast are equally distributed in the amount you pour off, a 1.040SG starter will have roughly 50 billion cells in it, plus a portion of whatever you started with. 50 billion isn't the 100 billion you could get from a fresh smack pack, but it doesn't seem to matter if you only do a few generations.

First step: 1L starter + smack pack + 0.5L additional for saving = roughly 250 billion cells. Pouring off 500ml you get 83 billion cells.
Second step: 1L starter + 83 billion + 0.5L additional for saving = 233 billion. Your 500ml is now only 77 billion.

What I've started doing instead is adding 1L of 1.040SG wort to the starter flask after I've pitched my yeast. The yeast left behind go to town on the new wort and make a new 100 billion cells. There's a limiting factor in yeast reproduction though so I'm not sure if I'm getting the full 100 billion but I do end up with more white stuff. Not really a fair example but:


The two on the left are from 250ml pour-offs and the one on the right is from a 1L re-started starter. I don't have the space to make an extra 1L when I make a starter so this re-starting process lets me use more yeast when I pitch at the expense of doing a new "starter" while the beer is fermenting.

Jacobey000 posted:

It's on the 19th; they moved it a week earlier due to x-mas. If you are interested. I think it's at the Grafton (maybe?) this month instead of the Dank Haus.