Recent content by idylldon

I'm going to jump here since, like Bob, I have experience building and then opening a brewpub from the buildout forward. His advice is spot on and his experience shows. Listen carefully. Yep. While I'm sure there are some folks who started out this way, it's not ideal, IMHO. This isn't for...

To a certain extent, I totally understand where most of you are coming from. When I started building my brewery, my goal was to have as diverse a selection of beer styles that I could reasonably maintain with the emphasis NOT on IPAs. While I think they're a wonderful style of beer and are...

Yes, good point. As we all know, age does change a beer but usually for the better unless, as you pointed out, it's a highly hopped style. We have 21 house-brewed beers on tap (max of 3 IPAs at any given point in time) and I usually have two or three "on deck" waiting for a tap to open up...

It's basically that. I see home brewers (and myself when I was home brewing) measuring down to the gram for this and that, which is not really as important doing a larger batch. Yes, there are still slight batch-to-batch variations when doing larger batches due to the grain, hops, etc., but...

As a home brewer who turned pro, I second pretty much everything said in this thread so far. Attention to detail is paramount, and if you're not Type-A while you're brewing, it's going to be harder for you to reach your goals regarding the quality of your beers. One thing that hasn't been...

This hasn't been my experience in our brewpub over the past two years--the beer floats the boat. The profit margin on food isn't even close to what it is on house-brewed beer and the staffing requirements and the resultant labor costs on the food side pretty much make the food end a push most...

This. The rest is irrelevant for now. Hire somebody who knows the ropes in the brewhouse or get more years/study under your belt and wait for the market reset, which is coming. At that point, you'll be able to pick up equipment a lot cheaper and you will hopefully have the experience...

I thought the same thing. Cheers, -- Don

That is the CIP arm and it's used for cleaning and also for blow off during active fermentation. Also, while technically it's not fermenting under pressure, there is a slight back pressure present when the blow-off tube is in the sanitizer during fermentation. I've never measured it, but it's...

Yes. This was my first thought when I read your post. Towers that don't have cooling will tend to heat the beverage up just at a critical point, which then allows the CO2 to escape the beer/soda. In our pub, we have two keg coolers with four taps on each and use small blowers to push the...

I agree about #4 being the likely cause of the off flavors. While 001 is a really clean yeast when it's in the right temperature range, it gets nasty fast if things heat up too much. I've been brewing since '89 (and now brew professionally) and the only batch I've ever tossed was due to an 001...

Agreed. I just bottled a sour that had been going for 1.5 years. I used CBC dry yeast that I picked up at a brewer's conference last fall and it worked really well. It's designed to be neutral and can tolerate low pH and high alcohol (for those BIG beers)...

Well, as I told the investor who is backing a brewpub I'm going to brew at: "When I pour that first glass, it's for you. It will be the most expensive beer you've ever tasted. They get cheaper after that." Cheers, -- Don

This. A decent pond pump works fine at glycol temps. I run my system at 27F and I've never had a problem, and I've had the same pump since 1995. Cheers, -- Don

A recent Tripel fermentation with 530: Cheers, -- Don