Micro-Stills

The July issue of GQ has an article on small distilleries, mostly in the Pacific Northwest, that have popped up much in the same way as the microbreweries of the early 80s. Paul, you should check some of those things out. I don't have the article in hand, but it named a bunch of very small commercial stills. Very cool.

More on the mashing thing

Found this website this morning. Gives a good picture overview of the all-grain process. BD, this is similar to Bob's setup. Looks like it'd be pretty cheap to set up, minus the big brew kettle thing. It's amazing how light his wort ended up! And with a 1.055 OG! I just don't think that's possible with extract.

Target has a 7 gallon beverage cooler for about $40. I wonder if one could use a square cooler rather than one of the round ones... Seems like those are generally cheaper. This all-grain thing is looking more and more doable...

Mini-mash

BD and I had a conversation today about mini-mashing. I know Papzian talks about it some, and every Clone Brews or Beer Captured recipe lists the ingredients for mini-mash versions of the same beer. Here's a link I found. Pretty straightforward, but a couple good tips on how to keep it simple. A lot of the other discussions I've found, such as those on Northern Brewer, get quite complex. I don't think half the shit they talk about really matters in a 5 gallon batch, especially when we're talking a partial mash.

Anyhow, BD, keep us posted on your progress. I'm interested to hear...and eager to get back brewing myself. One question I failed to ask the admissions office at Vermont was the location of the nearest homebrew store...

Homebrew Competition

Dudes,
Some of you may have seen this advertised on TV, but Sam Adams is having a "LongShot" Competition for homebrewers. You send in 4 bottles of your favorite homebrew recipe between August 1st and 18th and the lucky two homebrew winners get their brew mass produced and sold by Sam Adams. On top of this you get a free trip to the big beer competition in Colorado if you're one of the top five and $5000 if you're one of the top two. I'm thinking of sending in my hoppy husky, maybe the cherry wheat, but I think Sam Adams already makes one of those. I wish I had known about this sooner, but better late than never. Check out the Sam Adams website for details.
Good luck my fellow hose heads!

Nova Scotia

Hey dudes. I'm in Nova Scotia at the moment. I had a great lunch in a brew pub here in Halifax earlier today, and I'm on my way to take a tour of North America's oldest brewery. I'll post more when I have a chance. Right now, I gotta get on this tour so we can batten down the hatches for some tropical storm that's bearing down on us right now. I'm not too good on the metric conversion thing, but I know that 70kmh winds equals about 45mph winds. Hope the tent holds up...

Oh and there's this...

Fine photography courtesy of Shannon Donald. Everything else courtesy of the newlyweds and their good friend Vino.

Left ya hanging

Hey Paul
Sorry about that. Just got back to town and my computer. And my cell phone charger. Gald to hear the wort chiller is up and running. Just in time for summer. As for your water question, I just cool whatever I have in the kettle (usually about 3 gallons or so) with my chiller down to about 80-90F. Then I just used cold, filtered tap water (but only filtered because DC water tastes bad and makes you dumb) to bring the whole thing up to 5 gallons. If that didn't bring me down to pitching temperature, I usually didn't have long to wait.