Well, I’ve got a few weeks where I know I can’t focus on the electronics portion of my pump skid develoment… The drill press holder for my Dremel is backordererd until sometime in late July, and I just ordered 4 6″x9″ pre-sensitized single-sided PCBs from Allied Electronics that should be arriving on Monday… while I [...]

Crazy weekend. We went down to my parents’ retirement home on Lake Gaston in NC this past weekend. I brought down my 2-tap draft box along with a keg of brown porter and a keg of american wheat - both were nearly gone after 3 days. My entire family was there - all 3 sisters [...]

So today I brewed 20 gallons of american pale ale with my friends Heidi and Dave. It was a new pale ale recipe that used Amarillo, Centennial, and Summit hops along with a few different specialty grains for character (Vienna, Carapils and Crystal 40). Things went relatively well - stuck mash, but as soon as [...]

Donna took her welder out for a test drive today. No electrical problems - she arc welded a few test pieces of metal, and is planning on spending more time tonight doing more beads as practice. First order of business after her test run was to get a floor fan or something to blow the [...]

So tonight I finally managed to kick my American Brown keg. Its not that the AB was bad - in fact, its one of my favorite beers. I just knew it was coming close to kicking, and with my upcoming all-grain brewing demonstration at How Do You Brew? on May 4th, I really wanted to [...]

Nothing inspires me to new heights of profanity and violence like the task of delabeling bottles. I loathe it - and were it not a necessary (albiet evil) part of the homebrewing process… *sigh*. So that was today - I cleaned and delabeled 6+ cases of bottles, primarily belgian-style 750mL ones. Most of them came [...]

OK. Here’s the truth. To date, I have brewed 3 really awful tripels. I sit here right now drinking the 4th glass of my latest (and first all-grain tripel), brewed 18 months ago in July 2006… and not drinking it like “oh, this is good stuff”… I am serious when I say that I drink [...]

Over the past week (and actually starting during the Xmas vacation), I have done alot of thinking about how my homebrewing obsession has progressed for the past few years and where I want it to go during this year. I find it useful to pen a couple broad goals to help direct my brewing activities, [...]

Hop prices are insane, and many varieties are getting very scarce. We’ve heard it time and time again over the past few months. Luckily our local homebrew shop, HDYB, has secured a good cache of hops and through their smart rationing policies, they should be able to give you the variety you seek in some [...]

I’ve got a drinking problem, I know - namely the lack thereof!!! For the first time in a long time, I’ve got a surplus of beer in my basement. In fact, I’m almost at 100% utilization of my available kegs, despite having alot of beer in bottles too. Brewing big batches (10 and 20 gallons) [...]