Greetings

[jeffg]

Hi, a quick hello to introduce myself.
I'm Jeff, I live just outside of Boston, and i have been brewing for about 11-12years now off and on. I imagine I went through the fairly typical progression from extract kits to partial mashes to all grain. Unfortunately, I also went from 10-15 batches a year to 2-3 as of late, but I am hoping to get back in the upward swing. I do most of my brweing in the winter now, outdoors on a high pressure cooker (frequently in the snow), and I use a fairly simple system from Williams Brewing which has an 8 gallon plastic bucket with a plastic false bottom as the mashtun with an insulating jacket to hold temperatures. I sparge the old fashioned way (apparently) with a sparge arm as I was completely unfamiliar with batch sparging before finding this site a week ago. I only have a few friends who brew so I have never had much opportunity to compare notes with other brewers, and I look forward to doing so and learing a thing or two. Most of my brewing info comes from the Papazian books, a lot of trial and error, and the good folks at the Modern Brewer in Cambridge, MA, so it is pretty limited. I spent some time working at the Flying Dog Brew Pub in Colorado in the early 90's, where I really learned to love craft brews. I still copy their imperial stout. I am an admitted hop head, and prefer the domestic northwest variaties like Chinook, Cascade, Centenniel etc.

Thanks for having me on board.

 

[BlightyBrewer]

Welcome to the forum Jeff!

I've always wanted to visit Boston. I've heard you have a few roundabouts there?

Re Batch sparging, I thought it was the older method, but I could be wrong about this? Batch sparging is apparently a US technique. Then there is "English sparging".....

 

[Darth Konvel]

Welcome aboard, Jeff! What would the English sparging method be?

 

[BlightyBrewer]

Completely draining the wort and brewing one ale (the main ale), sparging by adding hot water and draining off immediatley, using the wort collected from this run-off for a lighter, quaffable ale.

 

[david_42]

Batch sparging is the older method and brewing different ales from first, second and sometimes third runnings, even older. Commonly, you would get a barley wine-like first run, the standard ale from the second and a small beer from the third. The small beer was consumed in place of water.

Conventional sparging allows the maximum grain bill for a given tun size, which makes it popular for commercial operations. I think of batch sparging as the lazy way & it's what I use.

 

[Truble]

Welcome Jeff!! I, too, am in the "outside Boston" region----I live in Upton, and yes, Blighty, we do have roundabouts-they are a New England Tradition!!!! What part of this Communist Territory (I am conservative) are you pitching your tent???

 

[DeRoux's Broux]

hey Jeff, welcome aboard! sounds like you got a good thing going. look forward to years of brewing wisdom!

 

[jeffg]

Thanks guys. I was being a little tounge in cheek about the "old school" sparging method. Blighty, we do have a lot of roundabouts, also known as rotaries. At one point i had a commute where I navigated five each way to and from work--you get to see some amazingly bad driving that way. Truble, I am down on the south shore in Norwell--I may need the map to find Upton.

Gearing up for a huge weekend of brewing and football.......