Recent content by Fid

I'm growing hops for the first time and its time to get my trellis up. I rent my house and I've been given the greenlight to do basically whatever I want with the backyard so in theory I could put a wooden structure up but I don't want to take on the expense/extra work of building something...

I had a yeast cake sitting at the bottom of a carboy for about 4 months that had maybe an inch of beer sitting on top of it. I transfered it to a mason jar when I finally got around to cleaning it out and brewed a brown ale that I split between two fermentors. 2.5 gallons pitched with a fresh...

I've seriously considered throwing a party to kill the beer but we're moving quick and I don't have time to carb, party, clean up, and pack! We've gotta be on the road on the 8th. This move was slightly unexpected and happened rapidly (wife got a job offer in Nebraska). That said, once I...

Hey all, I'm going to be moving from Seattle to Nebraska (of all places) here in the next couple of weeks and I have 10 gallons of beer that is currently sitting in carboys that needs to come with me. I keg and its ready to be transferred so no worries there but I've got a few questions...

I'd assume if it was an infection you'd be seeing a change in your gravity readings. Your fg is lower than expected but fg estimates are just estimates. Also, that is a pretty large beer, I'm not surprised that it might taste "off" after only 5 weeks. Bottle it, give it another 5 weeks, and...

Have you tested your hydrometer in plain water to make sure that it reads 1.000? Your og reading seems almost impossibly low if you followed the steps as stated.

So last Sunday I tried to catch myself some wild yeast. After a couple days I took a look at my experiment and saw this.... Some Bubbles... that's cool What the hell is this thing? Its fuzzy...

Looks like your OG should be around 1.110 with all of those fermentables in there. I would definitely either make a starter or use two packets of yeast if the starter is not an option. Here's a pitching calculator you can play around with. Also, in response to not being able to ferment too...

Thanks for the input everybody. I ended up going out and picking up a new cooler. Here's the result... no regrets.

This is pretty much exactly what I had in mind. Someone is trying to get rid of this wine fridge for $20 which is why I'm interested in it. I was also thinking that the higher temperature settings required for wine storage might mean I could skip on the Temperature Controller.

Yeah that's exactly what I'm trying to counteract. The ambient temp in my fermentation closet right now is ~65° and the two batches of beer I've got going right now are clocking in at around 10°-12° above that. I've thrown together a swamp cooler to take care of it for now but moving forward...

So I'm looking to piece together a Ferm Chamber big enough to hold 2 or maybe 3 carboys. I stumbled across a used, small, 8 bottle, wine fridge like this. Manufacturer says that it gets to 46 degrees at the lowest temp... I'm trying to figure out if something like this would be powerful enough...

Ha! I have visions of me scraping burnt grains out of the bottom of my kettle.

I considered this as well. Any experience mashing in a boil kettle? I was a little concerned about temp loss.

Yeah, that's basically what I've been thinking to myself too. The silicone is food safe and temp resistant up to 300 degrees (yada, yada, ect) but after dumping this much time into this I'm pretty much spent and I'm assuming that sealing it up is going to end up just being a temporary band aid...