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I see what you're saying and I thought the same. However with the traditional layout yes you are getting more surface contact (towards the end, at the beginning it would be the same) however all of the trub and sediment is at the bottom so even though you have more surface area to work with you...

So I bought a nice new 15 gallon kettle and proceeded to drill away at it for my ball valve and bazooka screen. Well I didn't account for the hop trub that would settle at the bottom of the kettle and consequently I drilled my hole to close to the bottom and I'm getting stuck flow. My first...

another point worth mentioning about whole cones is that they will soak up more wort meaning you will have to account for more wort loss during boil. I've done some big IPAs with 10oz of whole cone hops for a 5gallon batch and almost lost near a gallon!

Being a hop grower and a homebrewer, I would say whole cone hops out perform pellet hops any day! The main (and maybe only) advantages that pellets provide is more logistics than quality. Pellets can be stored longer, take up less storage space, be slightly more consistent, and many larger...

I think beer freshness is very important and not just a marketing ploy. In fact I just sat in on a tasting session at a commercial brewery and we were determining which beers were fit for being sent off to GABF for judging. We sampled various different batches of the same beer to determine...

Yup Mayor and Tap and Handle are good spots. Speaking of which the mayor is tapping a keg of Pliny in approximately one hour :mug:

There are many styles beyond 4% pales that can be turned around in 2 weeks and are much better fresh! Why do you think 80% of craft beer has an expiration date on the bottle? And anything that falls out of that 20% would be styles that are best to age (as I initially mentioned), but for the...

You're right up the road from me! Gotta love the local pints at High Hops. Cheers!

Yeah that's a good point! And that's why I was thinking even if something is leaching into my beer I don't drink enough beer (few pints a week) for it to really be an issue. I guess I'll update this thread when I'm old in age and see if there is any issues to speak of :)

I'm not sure how common the instant extract method is, just something a friend of mine and I came up with awhile back, but I'm sure many others have stumbled upon the success of this method as well. As far as the obnoxious posts go; I feel some people are like a bad itch, the more you scratch...

I agree. I won't be sad if you don't include my totals... I just wanted to share :) Our hops are unique in every way, and we always get water as being 4:1 the weight. But again we don't grow hops like anybody else in the world...so there will be some differences. :)

I've always made instant fruit extracts that have worked very well while using a small fraction of the fruit most suggest. For the saison I just took 3 fully ripe mangos chopped them up pretty fine tossed them in a flask covering the top of the fruit with white rum then putting it on a stir...

For the styles you're brewing that setup sounds perfect! I did a mango saison that I fermented at around 95F. I put my primary in a igloo cooler filled with water and an aquarium heater to keep it at 95F. The beer went on to take gold at the Colorado State Fair last year!

UPDATE- So I entered it once as a S/H/V beer and it scored low saying it should have been entered as an IPA because the vanilla was not prominent. Next comp. I entered it as an IPA and got a 36pt gold medal!

No it didn't really have any sour notes to it (surprisingly). However it did have some strong belgium ester like flavors, which is why I entered it as a dunkel and not as the intended hef. However this will be one beer that will be impossible to recreate! :) I'll dig up the scoresheet and post it.

36-48hrs seems way too fast for fermentation to be complete! What temps are you fermenting at? It seems with a fermentation done this quickly you would have a lot of fusel (hot) and possible ester (fruity) flavors that would definitely need time to mellow. I experienced a similar issue before...

UPDATE-- So I ended up bottling this and forgot about it in my closet for about 6 months! After opening some up it was fantastic!!! Entered it into a comp. as a dunkelwiezen and took Silver!! Glad I didn't dump it! Cheers.

I think as homebrewers we are "over-thinkers" at times. Some people swear that aluminum is bad for you as well, yet I've worked in commercial kitchens that exclusively use aluminum stock pots for cooking soups, etc. No deaths there! :)

Good hunting! I read that same review. That is what got me thinking I was poisoning myself! Then you read other people saying the only reason they say that is because they don't want to spend the money to test it as "food safe" so to cover their own they just say NO. Also I don't drink THAT...

This is strictly for my sparge tank, so it will never be in contact with wort (acidity). So I should be fine! Thanks for the inputs!