| Universal grinding mills |
[Mar. 20th, 2010|02:11 pm] |
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The local antique shops are stocking a lot of the Universal hand-cranked meat grinders lately. I was curious as to whether or not any homebrewers have successfully co-opted one of these units for cracking malted barley, or milling grains. |
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| Beer into Wine |
[Mar. 16th, 2010|04:58 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  amused | ] |
While watching U.S. craft beer evolve –especially with the rise of tickers, I wondered if beer would become as pricey as wine.
About three years ago prices began rising for special releases and now it’s common to see $15-25 a bottle.
Aged beers on the second-hand market have gotten –CRAZY.
A friend recently unloaded his stash of Stone Vertical Epic Series on eBay and this is per 22.oz bottle:
02-02-02: $711.11
03-03-03, 1 of 2: $125.51
03-03-03, 2 of 2: $127.50
04-04-04: $47.00
05-05-05: $37.00
06-06-06, 1 of 2: $26.00
06-06-06, 2 of 2: $29.00
07-07-07: $31.00
Pure Insanity: 02-02-02, Starting Bid $900, or Buy It Now for $1,000 on eBay.
You can only age beer so long before breaks-up/turns boring. I’ve had five and ten year aged beers and they were lifeless.
Dark Belgians, Barleywines – even they have a shelf life.
This reminds me of people/restaurants that buy an ancient bottle of wine for tens of thousands of dollars, just to say they
have it [and it’s gone bad].
I imagine that ten years from now it’s going to be worse, nowhere near wine’s through the roof prices though. |
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| Gobsmacked |
[Mar. 16th, 2010|11:51 am] |
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It's not rare that I'm lost for words, so people around me should make the most of it, but I'm speechless. And I keep opening and shutting my jaw to try and get some noise to come out, but no, gobsmacked!!!!! |
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| specific gravity for agave nectar? |
[Mar. 14th, 2010|01:52 pm] |
I'm looking to make a margarita mead with orange blossom honey, orange and lime zest, and agave nectar.
My wife figured a nice, clean formula for figuring how much gravity you get for how much honey goes into a batch. She found SG = 40/n, where n is the number of gallons in your recipe. Works pretty nicely. I'm sure it's not news to everyone here but I've never seen that spelled out in the literature.
I think I've found a similar formula for agave nectar. A quick Google search found that one pound in one gallon of water yields 1.0343. Dividing that by 5 (to extrapolate to five gallons) gives 0.20686. I guess the simple formula could be SG = 34.3/n. That sound about right? |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 13th, 2010|01:32 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Passion Pit: "Moth's Wings" | ] |
I'm working on my second homebrew right now, a steam style beer. I moved it to the second fermenter yesterday (after a week in the primary), and before doing so, I checked the gravity and saw that it had reached the final gravity specified by the recipe I'm using. I'm wondering, since it's reached the specified gravity, is there any actual benefit to having it in the carboy for another week or so, or will it make no difference if I go ahead and bottle? |
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| Keg Cleaning |
[Mar. 12th, 2010|11:26 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | The Oak Grove | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  curious | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Kansas - How My Soul Cries Out For You | ] |
I just got some used 5 gallon and a used 3 gallon corney kegs. Does anyone have any tips for easy cleaning? |
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| grain volume |
[Mar. 9th, 2010|01:17 pm] |
I've finally gathered the equipment to go all grain and I'd like to brew up a batch this weekend. A bit short on time to buy grain by mail order and I don't care to pay for expedited shipping.
There are a few brew shops in biking distance but I have no idea what kind of volume crushed grain takes. How large of a box would ten pounds of malt be shipped in? I'm trying to guess if it will fit in my panniers. |
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| Beermergency! |
[Mar. 9th, 2010|07:59 am] |
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I just went down to check out my beer and it had blown the airlock and krausen was bubbling over the top. I won't be able to get the tubing to make an actual blowoff tube until at least this afternoon....if I siphon off, say, one or two Beer Thief's worth of beer will this give enough space that I won't have to worry about it? |
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| Mad Scientist Brew - H. West Reanimator EPA |
[Mar. 8th, 2010|10:00 pm] |
I posted earlier about this batch, asking for advice about dealing with infection. Here's a recap of the story and a report on how it turned out.
I goofed up this batch of beer. It got an infection that looked like a spiderweb on the surface. After researching infections, I racked out from under it and bottled it anyway. I only tasted the left over at the bottom of the bucket to discover that it was too sweet - it had not fermented. I almost poured it out, but decided to experiment - start over from scratch.
I opened all the bottles, brought it back up to 140+ degrees for about 20 minutes, put back into primary fermenter and started over with new yeast.
And the results?
TADA! A very good EPA.
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