Hi everyone It's nice to see some of the old names from the borg. It's been a few years since I've been here. I had to give up brewing and drinking beer because of a gout diagnosis. I can't drink let alone brew beer. Every once in a while I'll have a beer but it's few and far between. I've been spen...

Thanks for the welcome back messages! I brewed an oatmeal stout a couple of days ago using the Mash and Boil. My mash temps and water volumes were really off. I ended up with a 1.066 beer and the sample tasted great. I split the 5 gallon batch in 1/2 using 2.5 gallons with Safale 04 and the other ha...

Hi all. I've been away and have sold off a lot of my brewing gear. It's amazing how much stuff I've acquired over the years! I was diagnosed with gout last year. One of the first items to eliminate from your diet is beer when you have gout. At first I was really diligent with my diet, I stopped cons...

I’ve been using a bread machine that I bought for my wife at least 20 years ago, I don’t think she used it once. I’m running out of yeast and there’s no yeast in the store right now. I think that I could build a starter to propagate the one packet of Fleischmans that I have left. Has anyone done thi...

berryman wrote:

Banjo-guy wrote:Thanks! I think I’m ready for Monday’s brew.
I’m using a kit with it’s pretty existing recipe.
I’m just hoping to get close to the numbers in the recipe,

What is the projected OG on this? 13.5 bill should put you in the 1.060 range.

The OG target is 1.065

Thanks! I think I’m ready for Monday’s brew.
I’m using a kit with it’s pretty existing recipe.
I’m just hoping to get close to the numbers in the recipe,

I think I should do a mash and sparge. I've never brewed that way and I'm unsure of how to do the mash and sparge. The MB manual shows these volume calculations: Mash strike water grain wt x .3 or 13.5 x .3 = 4.05 Sparge water mash water x .75. or 4.05 x .75= 3.0375 Basically 4 gallons to mash and ...

I've done 13, and survived the process. But the water was like 1/2 inch from the top. If you are going for a 5 gallon batch with a 60 minute boil, I think you can just barely do 13.5. That would be something like a 6.35 gallons of water and 7.45 gallons of total mash volume. It will be water *all t...

Hello Borg! I hope everyone is healthy and that we all get through this Covid madness intact. My wife and I have been holed up in the house for 3 weeks now. I haven’t brewed in months but I’m going to dust off the M and B and brew a 5 gallon batch of Two Hearted Ale. I also posted on the Facebook bo...

Is anyone going to Providence for the Conference?

I just pitched Wyeast 3711 into a Saison yesterday. I’m using Drew Beechum’s Citra Saison recipe. The ingredients for a 2.5 gallon batch are: 2 lbs 12 oz Pilsner 2 lbs Wheat malt 4 oz Munich 5.6 oz Cane sugar .35 oz Magnum @ 60 minutes 1 oz Citra @ 5 minutes Total IBU 39 1. 3711 pitched at 66 for th...

That’s great Dave!
I entered an Oatmeal Stout and Dunkel. I knew they had flaws but was curious if the judges would pickup the same issues. They did which makes feel like I can evaluate my own beers pretty well.

I have a chiller. The temperature was so cold that I was worried about using the outside faucet. I didn’t want to freeze my pipes. Maybe there was nothing to worry about but I didn’t want to take a chance.

I like the overnight chill method. It leaves you one less thing to clean.

I thought that might be the case but I wasn’t sure. I did pull the hops at the end of the boil anyway. I hope it helped lower the bitterness a bit. I’m using the Wyeast Staro Lager yeast, Wyeast recommends bumping up the bitterness to compensate for the increased maltines that this yeast brings to t...

Thanks. That all makes sense, I’m not adding any hops after the 20 minute addition I’m doing a standard bittering addition at 90 minutes and a 20 minute addition. The 20 minute addition probably ends up being equivalent to a 60 minute ( or so ) bittering addition. It takes a long time to drop to 185...