BeerTools Discussion Forum

Congrats !!! I'm expecting my first in June. Funny... I was born in Germany too (southern Germany) and remember enjoying beer as early as age 6. I still have several contacts in Bavaria who send me beers on occasion, like Czechvar (the beer formerly known as Budvar). Ed....Please lemme know how brew...

I had a similar concern the past, and i did what "entguy" suggested. I tried it out by preparing a starter. After a few hours, the starter was bubbling just fine. My only other concern was that micorbes other than yeast could have been causing the reaction, but this was not he case, I used the start...

Without knowing the type of beer & yeast, I'd say your OK, unless you had some severe lapses in sanitary practices. I've had several batches peak (high krausen) within 12-20hrs. Just because your not blowing foam through your airlock doesn't mean your done fermenting, it has just slowed significantl...

Dartedplus, You do know about the speise thing, you nailed the formula for speise gasse (adding unfermented wort to prime). Its a common misunderstanding to call this process "krausening", but krausening is the addition of "beer" at high krausen to the fermented batch to prime, i.e. when one batch i...

Jayhawk,

Check out previous post on plastic conis 4/4/02. Also, I don't have one yet, but CF chillers are the sh##t!!! Check out the one for sale @ www.stpats.com.

Andy

Its my understanding that "turkey fryer" burners can only be used outdoors due to CO produced by incomplete combustion. Is this true?? I brew in my kitchen and would hate the thought of lugging a brewpot w/ 13+ gallons of wort out to the porch. I have a 135KBTU burner from my turkey fryer but I am s...

This sounds like a hard question but here goes; From what I know about these options (very little), Spiese priming is the addition of sterile, unfermented wort to the fermented beer before bottling. The drawbacks are such "(1) Malt takes longer to be processed by the yeast than sugar, resulting in s...

My brewclub has moved up to 11.5gal batches last October. I start heating the water kettles at about 7am and we finish about 1pm. As far as equipment; we still use our old 5gal brewpots to heat the water for mashing and sparging, we have added a 15 gallon pot for boiling the wort, for a mash/lauter ...

I switched to gold some time ago and have not regretted it. Although I can't remember what features the "free" tools have, with the upgrade you can; 1) Load any recipe from the database into the recipe calculator and modify as desired. 2)Keep a stash of your personal recipes in your own little libra...

I agree, do what you can to keep your hands off of the batch for at least a month. As a rule, we always try to condition at least one month. I brewed a honey porter once that tasted like hell after a week, but really mellowed into a great beer after two months. Please consider doing what we say, not...

I recall seeing "cooling jackets" for fermentors at some brewing supply sites. It seems to me that a whole lot of tubing, a "water heater blanket" , a recirculating pump, a copper coil, and a fridge could be mangled into a working cooling jacket. I have seen the "fridge & wooden box" design but woul...

Less than a year ago, myself and another member of my brewclub purchased 15 gallon HD polyethelene conical fermentors. We have had such great success that we recently purchased another (mini-brew makes them for $200). The advantages are as follows; 1) The removable lid offers full access for skimmin...

From my experiences, stainless is easier to clean and much less reactive than copper. I would be afraid that if you ever put away the copper pot a little wet, you would have big green stains. I'm not sure how it would react to cleaning chemicals, but then again, you don't need to sanitize the brewpo...

I live in Apollo, PA (spell it backwards!) about 40mi northwest of Pittsburgh. I live in the country and have a gas well on my place, so we (our small club) can brew alot w/o having to worry about running up utility costs. My spring water, though somewhat acidic, has reliably produced good mash resu...

Fortunately I've moved onto corny kegs so I don't have to deal with the bottle labels anymore, but heres what we used to do; I kept a cooler hidden away in my kitchen with a water/clorox solution. After pouring a beer, I'd dunk the bottle,and leave it in the cooler, therefore softening the label and...