I'm tired of watching my temperatures bounce around and guessing at what my actual temperature is. I had a dial thermometer that wasn't adjustable and it became apparent it was off so I tossed that aside. I have two floating thermometers and they jump up and down in temperature swinging sometimes more than 10 degrees. I understand a uniform temperature across a mash or in a pot of water isn't likely, but it just seems it bounces around too much with these thermometers. What do you use and do… Continue

Partigyle Write Up

This is a link to a documentation of the recipe formulation for our partigyle, just in case someone is interested in how we did it.

Well I got my Brew kettle converted! YAY! Now I can brew larger batches! However , Cooling has become a more pressing need. Next project is a wort chiller.

Sunday I brewed a first batch to try things out. I didn't want to do one of my big projects (Beire de guard or brown ale) in case the spigot started to leak or something bad. So we went with the 16.50 american lite kit that B3 had on sale when we stopped in there Saturday.

Brew day went off great, and I got my starter going for my Beire de… Continue

Wow.. Time flies when you are brewing!

I didn't realize that it had been almost a full year since I posted anything up here. I've made several beers since my last post.

A Vanilla Imperial Russian Stout
A Cream Ale
A Gruit/Braggot
and my first IPA (still in the fermenter)

I've also got Eric's Bodacious Brown ale kit and a Beire de Gaurde from Brewing classic styles ready to brew.

I'm also in the process of upgrading my brew kettle to a brew Keggle, which I'm very excited about!

Let me know i… Continue

Looks like we'll get 5 beers from two mash tuns. A quad, a tripel, a dubbel, and two sourmash belgian who knows whats.

Ger funky

http://armpithomestead.blogspot.com/2009/11/partigyle.html

Went pretty well. Got a bigger Quad and Tripel than expected and a not too shabby Dubbel either. And as a bonus, perhaps two sourmash beers to boot!

I hate projects. I'm not good at them and I typically do a bad job. That's one reason that I hate my fixer upper house that is still more fixer than upper. I don't know why I thought building a kegerator would be any different. I'm finally almost done, and thought that I'd be able to get a keg on today. I was going to clean my lines and shanks with hot PBW in the handy cleaning pump that screws into the faucet end of the shank and pushes cleaner through, then use some Star San to make sure every… Continue

is it just me or do you get a lot of announcements without the products showing up?
I recommended looking at the refractometer with specific gravity scale to a group of brewers on LinkedIn, and it was gone from the website.
then I get the email about the pressurize-able conicals (which look suspiciously like Blichmanns, only welded) and there is no link, no pricing, no better pictures!
I'm not spending over 500 dollars on something I can't see in depth pictures of. (Hint, hint, hint)

Well, we've got our plans about 90% together. Here are the calculations and recipe formulations if anyone is interested:
http://tinyurl.com/yz9zxyl

The Tripel plan: http://tinyurl.com/ylnv3c9
Tripel recipe: http://tinyurl.com/yl35dn2
Tripel adjusted grain bill: http://tinyurl.com/yhfrygn

The Quad plan:… Continue

I stopped in the other day, and was amazed to find Jolly Pumpkin, Russian River, BrewDog, Lost Abbey, Port Brewing, and a whole bunch of obscure Belgian, British and Danish beers! I haven't seen a selection like that since Ledger's Liquors in Berkeley, and K&L has the virtue of being a few minutes from my house. I asked the folks when they started carrying all these great beers, and they told me that project started this year. I plan to support them on that! K&L is in Menlo Park on El Ca… Continue