Been a long time since I've posted. Our small beer / homebrew group finally got back together about a month ago; and before the "meeting" ended, we all agreed to do a SMaSH beer to bring to the October meeting. I've been wanting to try to do an NA beer. And it will be fall. And it's fun to try...

I have entered 2 or 3 bigger BJCP contests each year over the past few, won nothing. Scores good, but there's always something. Nit picky on defined style conformity. Enter smaller local "open" contests, not looking at style conformity and do well. Just won another one at the local craft beer...

I bought one, because at the time the place I was ordering from didn't have any non-flow control in stock and figured what the heck for an extra $10.... so it worked fine the first keg. Now it's flowing like a bottle of honey being squeezed very gently. I'm told you need to reset these flow...

I just now opened the ferment fridge and gawked at the pale ale I brewed yesterday morning. :p

Coming up on five years with this hobby now and I still like to gawk at it. :)

Not much head space, about 4" (?) at the top of a 5 gallon glass carboy. I ran CO2 straight over the top of it for a good 2 minutes before putting it away in the basement in a giant cardboard box. Checking the airlock to make sure it stays full of star san.

I brewed the KBS clone from AHA and I'll be damned if it doesn't pretty much taste like KBS (so far). The instructions stated to let it sit with the oak cubes (1/2 ounce) for 2 to 6 months. So I'm going to the long side and would plan to bottle this one in October (it's been sitting for a month...

^ RDWHAHB. :) Then adjust and try it again.

Well now I just feel silly for sticking the wand in the carboy and cranking the hell of it for 30 seconds! :)

Adjust everything to land at 12.5L, 1079, so when you dilute with additional water you'll hit 1047. Or enjoy that low ABV beer, you can't drink more of those!

I make a Light Lager that turns out really nice. Clean. Easy Drinker. Been said like Coors Light. (have at it, break out the canoe jokes, ask why, etc. The style has it's place and it's fun to actually be able to pull it off clean) Anyway, it mixes really good with lemonade for a shandy, so...

Just ran into this two weeks ago with yeast calculator... per date on package it was past date, expired, zero. Came up with my own way of interpreting new longer shelf life. This morning I find this. Good to know: http://www.whitelabs.com/news/purepitch-shelf-life

^ That, yes. I find myself in the habit of adding BYO often to google searches for that exact reason. There's a lot of goofy BS out there on the interweb.

Simple is good.

Make my own, but with a lot of research. The longer I go, the more I am brewing repeats of my own recipes with maybe some minor tweaks. The years schedule has 7 brews that will be completely new. The other 15 are "regulars" or ongoing development. (Yes, I actually have the whole year planned in...

I haven't had to fill a CO2 tank yet. When I bought the stuff used from a buddy at work, he included the 20# tank, which was pretty much full. $80 got me the tank, one tap, 3 way manifold, bunch of tubing, one corney keg, two more sanke kegs (for future bigger system build) and I already had...

It just seemed reasonable.

I made a hop spider. Used it once. Threw it away. Prefer to just toss them in. I do use bags for heavy doses of late additions, but that's it.

All I can figure is that it fell off when I put the lid on two weeks ago (or 3?) and I didn't notice it. The seals on two of my keg lids are really sloppy; I need buy some new ones. I had put a short burst of CO2 on there for sit time, so when I pulled the pressure relief and got nothing, I knew...

Kegging problems: Beer one, tap line split beer spewing out, so fixed that. Beer two: pulled out the next keg that has been sitting cold (lager) for 2 weeks, to add gelatin, no seal on the lid (it fell off apparently), was in the bottom of the keg... so it went to a new keg and screw the...