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Messages - bunderbunder

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1
Kegging and Bottling / Re: Home Depot Deal of the Day!!
« on: December 19, 2012, 01:14:51 PM »
Fair enough.  I think building one would be a heck of a lot more fun, anyway.

2
Beer Recipes / Re: Baltic Porter Recipe Critique
« on: December 19, 2012, 10:44:50 AM »
I'm not convinced that BJCP is necesssarily the end-all be-all for deciding whether a beer really deserves its name.  BJCP guidelines are meant for competitions, where there's a lot of value in defining relatively narrow guidelines in order to make sure that everyone has a common target to shoot for.  Traditional brewing isn't necessarily like that that; it's a much more organic, living thing. There's been a whole lot of variation from region to region and decade to decade in response to all sorts of factors.

So to me, there's a huge difference between saying "That's not a Baltic porter" and saying "I wouldn't submit that to a BJCP competition under category 12C."

3
Kegging and Bottling / Re: Home Depot Deal of the Day!!
« on: December 19, 2012, 10:35:15 AM »
They are set up for corny kets.

The product description says it fits full size and 1/2 barrel kegs.  Don't those always have Sankey couplers?

4
Other Fermentables / Re: Water Profile For Mead
« on: December 19, 2012, 08:09:36 AM »
Don't know enough to speak on water; I've only got one batch under my belt and I just used tap water for it.

I didn't have any krausen, but it did foam up enough to overflow the fermentor once while I was degassing it.

5
Kegging and Bottling / Re: Home Depot Deal of the Day!!
« on: December 19, 2012, 08:04:49 AM »
How much work does it take to modify one of these to work with corny kegs?  With more than one tap, for preference.

6
General Homebrew Discussion / Re: 2 questions
« on: December 18, 2012, 07:52:15 PM »
Sugar, maltodextrin, toasted defatted soy flour, barley malt extract, whey, and a bunch of other stuff.

I'm curious to know what kind of attenuation you can get out of it.

7
Zymurgy / Re: eZymurgy Q's
« on: December 18, 2012, 06:06:18 PM »
Ha, as soon as I ask I think to check and see if it works in Chrome on the same computer.  Turns out it does. 

8
Zymurgy / eZymurgy Q's
« on: December 18, 2012, 06:03:59 PM »
First off, just wondering if there's still an eZymurgy mobile app in the works.  Did some Googling, but haven't found anything said about it since late 2011.  And of course the ever-present "Coming in 2012" bullet point on the webpage.

Second, I'm not sure where to submit it but I've been having trouble reading eZymurgy on my Mac.  (Works fine on the PC.)  The first few pages of each issue will load, but after maybe the 5th page or so they all come up blank.  Not even the "Loading" progress indicator.  This is with OS X 10.7.5, Safari 6.0, and Flash 11.5.502.136. 

9
General Homebrew Discussion / Re: copper v.s. stainless steele
« on: December 18, 2012, 02:18:01 PM »
Might be fun do do a back-of-the-envelope calculation for starters.  Was that 1/2" ID or OD?

10
Equipment and Software / Re: Going Fermometer?
« on: December 18, 2012, 01:16:54 PM »
The main drawback is that if you submerge one in water for an extended period it will stop working.

Good to know.  I'm going to go put clear boxing tape over all mine now.

11
General Homebrew Discussion / Re: copper v.s. stainless steele
« on: December 18, 2012, 01:13:20 PM »
Copper has a much higher thermal conductivity than stainless steel - about 400 W/(mK) versus 15 or 20.

I'd assume that means that a copper chiller will cool the wort more quickly than a stainless steel one, all other factors being equal.  But I haven't done any calculations, so I'm not sure how great the difference would actually be. Probably fairly small, since your average immersion chiller as a wall thickness of much less than a meter.  That and copper and stainless steel pipes probably don't need the same wall thickness, perhaps steel pipe ends up being enough thinner to mitigate a lot of what difference there is.  So maybe it's not really an issue in practice.

12
Commercial Beer Reviews / Re: Crispin Artisanal Ciders
« on: December 18, 2012, 08:32:12 AM »
I'll agree with that.  The Landsowne might just be the most disheartening thing I've ever poured out of a bottle.  And I'm pretty sure I like molasses more than just about anyone else I know.

13
Commercial Beer Reviews / Re: Crispin Artisanal Ciders
« on: December 17, 2012, 11:45:21 AM »
As far as major commercial ciders go, I think they're fine.  There's all sorts of better stuff out there, sure, assuming you're lucky enough to have a good local ciderer, or live near a liquor store that's curated by someone with an interest in cider.  For something that's readily available, though, Crispin Original (blue label) is pretty decent as a go-to.

That said, I'll agree that most of their "artisanal reserve" stuff is more gimmicky than good.  Just like most things that feature the word artisanal prominently on the label, really.

14
For that matter, I still find it interesting that the cap on how much beer you could make and still qualify as a "craft brewery" suddenly got tripled when it seemed that a certain large publicly-traded company with a market cap of $1.8bn and a ubiquitous national brand was about to blow past that limit.

I realize the BA needs to have an identity.  But it still strikes me as being stuck in the amusing position of being a punk band that became popular.  I'll be interested to see how (or if) they manage to reconcile their mission of expanding sales and mass market appeal with their desire to maintain an image of representing the beer counterculture.

15
They're saying "this is what craft brewing is" and they're defining it as small, independent, with no adjuncts to "lighten flavor," whatever that means.

I fear it means they've gotten so hung up on trying to define themselves in terms of what they aren't that they're in danger of losing sight of what they are.  There's a whole lot of great traditional beer that uses adjuncts to lighten the flavor.  I mean, at the very least it's kind of hard to ignore that great big elephant in the room named Belgium. 

Now maybe if they wanted to criticize the use of adjuncts purely as a cost-cutting measure in the interest of making cheap mass-market beer. But implying that it's anathema for one's explorations in adjusting the flavor of beer to stray outside the narrow lines of malted grain?  Might as well try passing the Reinhetisgebot off as a "beer quality law" while you're at it.

(Edit:  And a little more rant about their apparently strong conviction that using adjuncts in beer makes it somehow not "traditional."  I'm a budding beer history nerd, starting to get into recreating historical recipes.  Yesterday's brew was a first step in that direction - a mid 18th century Porter.  Heck yeah there was adjunct in there.  If it didn't have any adjunct, it wouldn't be what my great-great-great grandparents were drinking.)

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