Brewcommune

Yea, that's in Brewing Classic Styles. There are lots of good recipes with a little information on each style in the book. It's basically a recipe book with at least one award winning recipe per BJCP style. I think going with 15+% sugar in any non-Belgian would put you way out of style, regardless o...

I was curious so I checked Jamil's book for it's Tripel recipe. It's extract based, but it uses 19% cane sugar. If you convert it to the all grain version, it's 15% cane sugar by weight. 14 lbs Pilsner malt, 0.25 lbs Aromatic and 2.5 lbs cane sugar. The golden strong recipe uses 26% cane sugar, agai...

Have you read Brew Like a Monk? I highly recommend it if you're going to brew any Belgian style beers. It's a pretty quick read and well worth the time. I'd be happy to lend you my copy in exchange for a pint of the results. :) The book says that the biggest problem that homebrewers have with making...

Why not use a water bath in the garage? I assume the daytime temps in there are higher than the low to mid 40's and the water bath would give you a nice buffer to prevent the big temperature swings. If it's still too cold you could use an aquarium heater to raise the temp.

I've noticed that US-05 ferments to a really low fg as well and have been playing around with mash temps to see how it reacts.

I've used the yeast cake from US-05 a few times for really big beers, but for the most part it's so cheap that I don't really worry about it.

I'm like Brian, I very rarely use liquid yeast these days. The only one in recent memory was a batch of saison where I used a liquid strain. The dry is just so much easier. I just sprinkle it over the top of the wort and seal up the bucket. Unless I screw up and chill the wort down to 39F I've usual...

That must have really weighed down his sleigh!

I got a beer gun, 2 tap tower, and 3 bottles of Firestone 11th.

This summer I brewed and bottled an 11.5% barleywine that I'm pretty happy with. The only problem is that the bottles are all flat. I added a packet of yeast at bottling and more sugar than I used on the same volume of my RIS. It's been about 4 months since I bottled it so I've pretty much given up ...

I'm sipping on a bottle of this right now that my brother brought back with him from the olive oil tasting he went to up in Paso. (He and his wife each got a bottle of the 11th Anniversary too but they didn't offer those to me :P) This is a really nice IPA, I'm glad to hear that they're going to sta...

Brian also mentioned that he buys a pallet of grain on a fairly regular basis. If you asked him, you might be able to add a couple of sacks to his next order.

Damn Derrin...when are we having a brew day at your place? I want to see this setup, it sounds really impressive.

I will note that the paint stirrer has never actually touched paint.

The lees stirrer is the same idea, only a little more expensive.

Woohoo!! I cut my wort chilling time by more than half in my batch yesterday and it was definitely cheaper and easier than the whirlpool chiller. I was doing my standard chilling procedure using my immersion chiller with tap water and then switched over to recirculating ice water when I got down to ...