Messages

16

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Homebrew Store In Evanston IL

« on: April 03, 2012, 07:15:10 PM »

I might be worried about how close Evanston is to Libertyville.  There's a great homebrew store up there called Perfect Brewing.  They're about a minute off of I-94, and only a few exits up from Evanston/Skokie.  That said, if you are closer to the lake and Northwestern, you should have a good basis for customers.

I would think about establishing and/or pairing up with a local homebrew club, and teaching a bunch of the students how to brew on a semi-regular basis if you go with Evanston.

You should give PB a try, regardless.  They share space with a local woodworker, and often have carvings and furniture for sale in the same showroom as all the brewing ingredients.

17

All Grain Brewing / Re: Specific gravity issue...Dump or Keep?

« on: March 25, 2012, 07:27:04 PM »

It seems from all the feed back the recipe itself was not all to good.

The recipe is fine. It the method of wort extraction that need to be tweaked.

Yes.  And, despite what someone else said, 45 minutes should be plenty for a mash with modern grains.

1) Were the grains just "cracked" or actually milled?  If you remember what they looked like, was there a lot of dust and little pieces of grain, or did you have mostly whole kernels that were completely intact without much little stuff?  Ideally, you should have hulls that are mostly intact, and the hard pieces of grain should be in 3-5 little pieces with a decent amount of "flour."

2) Based on what you said, there should still have been a LOT of sugar left in your grains.  You say you only boiled 3 gallons of wort; is this because of the size of you pot?  If so, can you fit 2 pots on your stove and start off with ~ 6 gallons of wort?  If so, then you should do:
  - Mash like you just did.  If possible, add about 3.5 gal of water to your grain to start.
  - Drain off the water, split between the 2 pots
  - add 3 more gallons, mix well, and drain off (you should get the whole 3 gallons back this time)
  - Now, mix both pots well, and check your gravity (this is pre-boil)  You should be doing much better.

This process is called batch sparging (you drain 100% of the water off the grains multiple times).  If you can't fit the 3.5 gallons of water in your lauter tun, then you can use the same process, but mix and drain off more than 2 times.  Just split each collection between your two pots.

If you can NOT boil 2 pots (or don't have them), then you will need to collect a lot of much stronger wort (so that you can dilute it after the boil).  Either start off with a lot more grain, or add some malt extract to make up your pre-boil gravity.  Let us know more about your situation and we can help more.

18

Equipment and Software / Re: BetterBottle transport

« on: March 22, 2012, 05:17:51 PM »

One of the nice things about better bottles, is that they are OK to pick up by the neck when full; unlike glass carboys.

Mine usually come clean with a soak in PBW.  If they don't, then I put a washcloth in there with the last 1/2c of PBW or so, cap it, and swirl the rag all around the inside.

Sparkling clean, and easy.

19

Beer Recipes / Re: Another irish red

« on: February 27, 2012, 09:52:32 AM »

Thanks for the support and feedback.  I appreciate it, in fact all the feedback I've recieved on this forum has been very useful.  Unfortunately I constantly over analyze my beers and the process that goes into making them.  I guess it comes from being a real scientist, but some of it comes from wanting to know I'm giving my friends and relatives a quality beer, that I did the best possible job brewing it.

You think over-analyzing is an issue as a scientist?  I'm an engineer.  Trust me, at /LEAST/ as bad.  Probably worse. 

Enjoy.

20

Beer Recipes / Re: Another irish red

« on: February 27, 2012, 08:40:22 AM »

Thanks.  Yea, the LME was a carryover from another recipe.  I had some extra Munich LME which I was planning on using, but I'm afraid that would be too much malty base with the Crystal, Chocolate and roasted barley.  I can use DME, and actually I typically do.  I cut the crystal down to 6oz (I will see if I can get some british), and I cut out the 15 min EKG addition and just made it Willamette.

I think you'll like the British Crystal, if you can get it.  Beyond that, do what you like... you asked for thoughts, so I put some out there.

Remember: It's just beer.  Whatever you brew will be better than most store-bought stuff.  Even if it's "out of style" it can be delicious.  Don't over-analyze.

21

Equipment and Software / Re: DIY pumps

« on: February 27, 2012, 06:24:31 AM »

Well, that's good, thanks for finding that.  Still, these specs can cause some problems:

Specific Gravity to 1.1
Fluid Temperature to 200 Degrees F
Ambient Air Temperature to 77 Degrees F

Even here in the PNW it gets over 77 sometimes.  And you might want to pump liquid hotter than 200 or thicker than 1.100 SG.

Personally, I had the same concern over the 200F fluid temperature, but given how short a time anything hotter than that is in the pump, it doesn't seem to be a huge issue.  There are a bunch of 3-MD-HC users on homebrewtalk, and they also haven't reported a problem so far.

The air temp can be taken care of with a fan, if needed, but if you are in texas or something that might be more of an issue as an everyday thing.

SG is definitely not a problem... your flow rate would just drop down a little bit.  Not a huge deal, given that it's 750GPH (12.5GPM).

22

Equipment and Software / Re: DIY pumps

« on: February 26, 2012, 06:53:38 PM »

I personally use a Little Giant 3-MD-HC pump.  You can buy their pump-heads sans motor if you like.  They retail for about the same price as the March pumps, but have a higher flow-rate and are MUCH quieter.  The head is also made for easy disassembly, if that's something that matters to you (comes with wing-nuts).

The inlet is a 3/4" FNPT thread straight in to the middle of the impeller, and you can rotate the pump head to align the output in 90-degree increments.

23

Beer Recipes / Re: Another irish red

« on: February 26, 2012, 06:50:24 PM »

So i'm making an irish red ale for my brother in law and need some feedback.

Thoughts, suggestions?  Thanks!

You say you are using "LME" and "DME."  I would, of course, recommend that you get british extract.  Personally, I use 100% DME, but if you like trying to scrape the cans of LME out, that's pretty much user preference, as long as the LME is fresh.

I would consider Pale chocolate, instead of chocolate.  This is pretty close to what I remember the BCS version of Irish red is, and while that's a great beer, it's very dark.  And it uses pale chocolate (200L), not the full-up 400-500L stuff.  Be prepared for a dark beer.

Also, I would consider swapping in some British crystal.  I have recently used some simpsons crystal, and it's great stuff.  The downside is they are all a range of degL, but that really shouldn't batter too much.  The Medium is 60-70L, which should fit well.

I don't have the style guidelines in front of me, but I believe this is supposed to be a hop-restrained beer (I might be wrong, so check!).  Your flavor/aroma hop additions may drown out some of the malty character that is what I, personally, really love about this style.

24

Kegging and Bottling / Re: Keg Carbonating

« on: February 23, 2012, 08:48:02 PM »

I can't speak to the physics of it, but you will want to use less sugar and 1/3 cup sounds about right.

I've badly overcarbed mini-kegs not following this rule and the pressure punches them out into little metal footballs.

At 60 degrees, carbonating to 2 volumes of CO2, the nomagraph (http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter11-4.html) calls for a bit over 2 oz of cane sugar.  2.3oz of sugar is 1/3 c, so the 1/3c might be right. 2.5 volumes of CO2 would be 4oz, which is closer to 1/2 c.

I'm just saying that bottle vs keg should be the same.  How do you calculate your sugar for bottling?

25

All Things Food / Re: Chicken pot pies :O

« on: February 23, 2012, 07:48:40 PM »

I think the secret to a great chicken pot pie lies in the crust (no pun intended). A great pie crust is the secret ingredient IMO. 

Oh yeah.  Have you tried the Cream-cheese pie crust from Berenbaum's Pie and Pastry bible?

26

All Things Food / Re: Chicken pot pies :O

« on: February 23, 2012, 07:48:07 PM »

One thing I did find though is that the use of some modified starch in the gravy (to thicken) is a good idea for freezer bound pot pies;   Straight flour or cornstarch thickened gravies break down in storage and become watery thin.

Have you tried a roux?  It seems to work for me, and I haven't had any issues with freezing my pot-pies.

27

Kegging and Bottling / Re: Keg Carbonating

« on: February 23, 2012, 07:22:11 PM »

Also, if you were going to prime the keg with sugar - you use less due to the difference in headspace in the keg vs bottles. Usually 1/3 cup is about all that's needed to carbonate it.

Huh??  Unless you are knocking out lots of CO2 during the bottling process, it should take exactly the same amount of sugar to carb a keg as bottles.  It takes the same number of molecules of CO2 to get beer to a given volume of CO2 disolved.  Now, temperature during fermentation and bottling make a difference.  A lager should take much less sugar than an ale, due to the larger amount of fermentation-derived CO2 in the beer at a colder temperature. 

The head space might make a teeny tiny difference, but it shouldn't make much.

28

General Homebrew Discussion / Re: Adding body to a beer

« on: January 29, 2012, 02:14:01 PM »

The recipe was Jamil's Best Bitter.  I don't have OG and FG readings for my last few batches, but I have brewed the same recipe successfully a few times.  The only difference this time was changing from the London Ale yeast to the London ESB, so I expect that it's the yeast to blame.  Thanks for the thoughts on Malto-Dextrin.  I may try dosing a pint once it finishes carbing; if it helps I can scale up to a full keg.

29

General Homebrew Discussion / Adding body to a beer

« on: January 29, 2012, 06:35:09 AM »

I brewed a beer with a new yeast a while ago.  It was an extract batch, so I don't have much control over mashing parameters.  Unfortunately, post-fermentation, the beer seems a little thin on the mouthfeel side.  Not a lot, but definitely somewhat watery.  Any suggestions on how to correct this?  I assume there's not much to do at this point with the current batch (in a keg, carbing).

30

Equipment and Software / Re: Blichmann Beer Gun

« on: January 14, 2012, 11:08:54 AM »

I just got my beer gun from Blichmann Engineering today, and I love it.  I've been using a traditional counter-pressure filler for a while now, typically don't bottle but now that we're going pro kind of have too, and in the time it usually took me to bottle a case of 22's with the CPF, I bottled 2 1/2 cases with the beer gun.  It's easy to use with one hand, and no more having to worry about the stopper sticking in the mouth of the bottle or adjusting the filler for different size bottles.  I wanna hear what other people think.

Glad you enjoy it!  My bottle filler is based on the Ghetto Bottle filler that I saw on HBF.  You can see it in this presentation here: http://www.clubwort.net/Other/BeerTransference.mov

Total cost: $10.  It has counter pressure, is adjustable to bottles, 2L soda bottles, or 5L soda bottles, and has a short hose so I don't waste too much beer.