Recent content by Piperlester

Hello! I am pondering the design of my new homebrewery and the question of lagering and conditioning came up. My current design has space for kegs ready for consumption, but nothing for longer term aging (i.e. bock, higher grav stouts, etc). I am thinking of 3 unitanks with glycol cooling to...

Aye - I've considered using a spunding valve and adding priming sugar, but I don't have a place warm enough that I'm allowed to keep the kegs to carb. Most beers don't last long enough for oxygen transfer to be much of a concern.

I'm building a carbonating rig to allow me to carbonate my full kegs before putting them into the keezer/kegerator. The basement temperature is around 61F year round (occasionally higher/lower but 8-10F). My understanding is that the only difference that temperature makes in regards to...

I appreciate all the insights, responses and debates! I got my sheets from another set of judges for the same beer and another noted low carbonation as an issue (though, some other comments seemed out of place, so perhaps it was a bad bottling job). All 4 judges scored the beer between 32 and...

There were fairly good comments all around - waiting on score sheets from a 2nd competition, hopefully they'll shed some more light. I've got time to brew another batch before an upcoming competition, so I'll tune a few things and see how it goes - either way it is a solid beer that I can quaff :)

Fair point - 2.3 is at the higher end for the style, which combined with a lighter body may very well lead to that perception. Now I can justify a secondary regulator to the wife!

13PSI @ ~45F, which puts it right in the sweet spot for a nicely carb'd 2.3 volumes. @Homergah I'm in the school that natural carbonation and forced carbonation are the same thing - pressure is pressure, aside from possibly how it builds (i.e. slowly from 0 with natural, rapidly from...

Hello all - I just got my score sheet from a competition and one of the comments was "carbonation is more bubbly than creamy", which is fair - the beer can feel almost soda bubble-ish on the palate at times. I'm hoping someone can shed some light on what might cause this - I force carbonate...

I'm giving away some beer for the first time and hoping to solicit some feedback, other than "tastes good". Does anyone have a link for a feedback card I can tuck into the 6-packs I'm giving - something not terribly complicated for someone to make notes but enough that I'd get actual...

I've found that my recipes still (as of Saturday) did not match the inventory - has anyone found an easy way to fix this, without re-adding all fermentables and hops? For my last batch, I just manually decremented the inventory, but that's a pain to do.

I ended up just running it for the last 15 minutes of the boil - it definitely did not care to run during the boil. Thanks all for the responses!

I'm curious if anyone else has tried or knows of any reason that running a chugger (stainless head) in a whirlpool configuration from the moment you started heating your kettle, until you rack to the fermenter, would be detrimental? My thoughts in support of this are: -More consistent heat...

Fair enough... seems getting the Blichmann up in Canada is not as easy as finding a Chugger, but seems like from the comments I'm seeing about it, I should put in the effort.

Thanks all - what's the real difference between the blichmann and the chugger? Seems like they're pretty similar, other than connections and a bleed valve on the blichmann.

I built a nice insulation wrap, but can't use it when the burner is on. My "challenge" is my burner is far too big for the size of kettle and keeping it low enough to just keep the temp warm usually results in it blowing out whenever a nearby squirrel farts.