Recent content by tbeard

I just got off the phone with a guy at ECCOtemp who manufacture a small unit for about $250 which runs on LP and he says that while it would void the warranty it would be quite easy to remove the high-temp cutoff from the L10 unit. He would even give me directions over the phone if I needed to...

Ive been pushing around two names, Animas City Brewery, Animas city was a town in colorado where I grew up, but is now defunct and no longer exists, Beards Brewery, is what I produce my english ales out of, my last name is Beard

Yes I believe there are many dyes that can determine viablity, my understanding is their cost is prohibitive to a homebrewer. I believe methylene blue works for yeast, google yeast viability should give you a lot of information

This will be a quicky, the internet has more involved protocals for this. Essentially you need to dilute your culture so that when you plate 10-100 microliters of media, you will have a countable number of colonies form on a plate, this is ussually less than 300. As an example, a very turbid...

In general microbiology, you would need to do a battery of tests, to see what metabolisms your bug is capable of doing. Off the top of my head though, I would do a lactose test, lactobacillus can metabolize lactose, while yeast and most bacteria cannot.

In general the information you obtain from a microscope is minimal, you can tell a yeast cell from a bacterial cell, but if you want to identify the difference between an acetobacter vs a lacto, or a wild yeast to a brewers yeast the microscope is the wrong tool as they will appear the same.

The lense at the front of the microscope is 40X and the eyepiece gives a 10X extra magnification, for a total of 400X. As a microbiologist, I can tell you that a microscope will be a waste of time and money for you. If you want viable cell counts I would do a dilute to extinction plate...

Hop oils actually aid in forming a good hot break, early hopping can help you from having a boil over

I would suggest adding lactose to add sourness, the lactobacillus gets rid of all of the lactose, it will not contribute to the body. Lactose cannot be fermented by yeast, so this should give you pretty good control over sourness in your beer. On another note, if you are looking for more...

Decadent is 10% it will get your noodle going

the guy I got my regulator from was an idiot and used copper lines to run to the keg. Copper is great if you don't move the lines ever, but everytime i wanted to change kegs I had to move my lines, and the copper must has sprung a leak. I started losing one 5lb tank per night. I got fed up and...

That recipe is really a cream ale, style 6A for BJCP. Pre-prohibition style appears to be a specialty ale, with more malt and hop character. I am looking for any pre-prohibition recipes if anyone has any.

That method would likely work, I would be concerned with infections. I think you might be more successful by streaking a small amount of beer out on one of your slants then growing those isolated colonies. The reason being that it will be very hard to add sterile wort to a beer bottle, while...

Ingredients 10lb 2-row (rahr) 1lb caramel 40L (briess) 1lb Biscuit Malt (Castle) 1 oz cascade pellets flavor 1 oz cascade pellets aroma 1 oz Mt hood Pellets bittering Mash Protein rest 133F 30 min 157F for 50 min 159F 30 min 167F 30 min Sparge 4 gallons 170F Boil 60 min w/ Mt...

Thanks for clarifying dkershner, so a quick change to the calculation 20ppm in a 1:1000 dilution makes 20 ppb etc. could also do a 1:10000 dilution which gets you back at 2ppb. This would explain why these liquid yeasts are not GF.