I saw this at B3 and thought it might be fun to see what our first post was and how we’ve grown (or how far we’ve come). What’s your first post?
My First Post
February 10, 2005[quote=“MullerBrau”]I use a rubbermaid 19 gal tub with spigot and gravity fill glass carboys with idophor solution after brewing. Three times now I forgot to switch to the next carboy and flooded the tile floor behind my bar and the carpet on the other side of the bar. WOW, those extra few gallons go a long way when they’re not contained! No more multi-tasking. From now on I will sit in a chair and watch it fill. :shock: [/quote]
Ha! Here’s mine… dishing out decent advice and experience since day one. Granted, I had already been brewing for 7 years at the time…
Glad to see my first post wasn’t an entirely stupid one. :o
And guess who the first person to respond was. Greg Muller, starter of this thread.
[quote=“kcbeersnob”]I’m finally taking the plunge into home brewing and just ordered an extract kit. I’ve heard that the best practice is to do a full wort boil, rather than topping off with additional water after creating a concentrated wort. My question is, is there a general rule for how much water you should start with to arrive at 5 gallons following a full boil, accounting for evaporation during the boil?
Thanks,
Tim[/quote]
I’m not seeing all my previous posts. I’m pretty sure mine had something to do with environmental “smell” affecting the final flavor of a beer. I was living in a house that had a heavy old cigarette smell to it and wanted to know if the ambient room smell would affect the flavor of my beer if I left the fermenter in there.
Here’s mine, six years, to the date after Greg!
[quote=“Loopie Beer”]Hello everyone! Glad I finally joined!
I’ve been extract brewing for 2+ years now and have now made the leap to All Grain (God help me 
)
I’ve been trying to work on an Oktoberfest recipe for a 10.5 gallon (into fermenter) batch and wonder what you guys think as this is my 1st recipe (brewed kits before). Here is my recipe (again for 10 Gallons)
Amount Item Type
11.00 lb Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain
10.50 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain
3.00 lb Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM) Grain
1.00 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain
3 oz Hallertauer (usually around 5.5% AA, will adjust to suite BJCP guidlines)
White Labs wlp830 German Lager
I have worked it out on Beersmith and I do know that the OG is higher than BJCP guidlines but want something around 6.2-6.5% ABV.
What do you think? Will this be a good recipe? If not, what should I change?
Thanks in advance for all your help. And, once again glad to be on board! :cheers: [/quote]
Sun Feb 04, 2007
I did end up using those for a few batches. I now have some 187ml champagne bottles for big beers.
Like Dave, I had already been brewing (and reading this forum) for a few years before my first post:
[quote=“CliffordBrewing”]I also use the aquarium heater method without a pump. My rubbermaid incubator (incuMaider!) container is large enough for two buckets, and works great. I even put my bottles in there after bottling; this has given me nice even temps for carbonation. The bottles seem to carbonate evenly regardless of position in the incuMaider without a pump.
The only problem I’ve had with this method is that the bottles get a sediment line at the water level that I have to scrub off before I label.[/quote]
Funny, because this was only about a year and a half ago, but I’ve totally changed my process. Although I suppose if I went back in time another 1.5 years it would also be different from that post. Makes me wonder how I’ll be brewing in 2015…
Here’s mine. We’d been brewing for about 6 months at the time.
It seems so silly now!
April 26th, 2012
[quote]We have attempted this particular oatmeal stout twice…both times we missed our target gravity by quite a bit. I’m wondering why?
We are still pretty new to homebrewing, so still trying to get all the proportions right. However we modeled this particular recipe after a kit we purchased.
I’m curious what causes a beer to miss the gravity target? In this case, our target was 1.050 - 1.058
Our actual gravity turned out to be 1.038…which means our ABV will be less than 3%
Thanks.
[/quote]
Oct 1, 2007:
“I just bought a pond pump at Harbor Freight - capacity of 268 gph, on sale for $15.99. It has a valve for pinching back the flow which worked quite well when I tested it yesterday - my 3/8” IC doesn’t like more than about a half-gallon a minute."
Don’t know how many times I’ve posted about Harbor Freight pumps in the almost six years since. 
I had been brewing for 6 months. In May 2011 I posted a picture of a glass of beer from my first 5 gallon batch, that having been a big deal and step up from 6 month of Mr Beer!
[quote=“Shadetree”]Oct 1, 2007:
“I just bought a pond pump at Harbor Freight - capacity of 268 gph, on sale for $15.99. It has a valve for pinching back the flow which worked quite well when I tested it yesterday - my 3/8” IC doesn’t like more than about a half-gallon a minute."
Don’t know how many times I’ve posted about Harbor Freight pumps in the almost six years since. [/quote]
Harbor Freight is AWESOME! I built my gas manifold for a couple bucks worth of parts from their air tools aisle. Last weekend I painted the outside of my house with their airless paint sprayer, $160 with coupon. Worked as well as a $500 Wagner. My paycheck is probably pretty evenly distributed between Harbor Freight and my LHBS!
Mine’s pretty lame - joining in on a cream ale thread back in 2007. This was right about the point where I really started expanding my brewing range to include a lot more styles.
[quote=“El Capitan”]Looks good to me! The only possible suggestion I would make is to increase the amount of flaked corn.
When you do your boil, do you go for half an hour to force the hot break before you add your bittering hops?
I’m planning to brew a cream ale very soon as well. After drinking reds, browns, porters and stouts for the last couple months, I’m really craving some lighter brews.[/quote]
Ha, here’s my first post from June 4th, 2009. I had been brewing for about 8 months probably, the first 4 of which were extract. I haven’t made much mead. Dwojniak Miliniak is still my favorite mead. It’s now something like $35 a bottle, maybe more, haven’t looked in a year. Planning to buy a bottle of it again soon.
[quote=“on August 14, 2005 blatz”]want to regulate my fermentation temperature and I live in godawfulhot Florida. Trying to decide which refrigerator will work best for me.
Would like to get a traditional upright refrigerator so that we could have an extra freezer for the wife (major bargaining chip in getting a fridge specifically for beer), but I have heard that the only way to regulate the temp is with one of those probe and plug thermostat overrides, thus controlling the electricity to the WHOLE fridge and therefore killing any freezing potential in the freezer compartment.
Next choice of course is the freezer chest or one of those compact fridge only units.
Any suggestions, hints, experiences with this decision would be most helpful.
And to anyone who is wondering, no I don’t like blatz beer, but it is my name – I am trying to brew good tasting Blatz beer![/quote]
[quote=“blatz”][quote=“on August 14, 2005 blatz”]want to regulate my fermentation temperature and I live in godawfulhot Florida. Trying to decide which refrigerator will work best for me.
Would like to get a traditional upright refrigerator so that we could have an extra freezer for the wife (major bargaining chip in getting a fridge specifically for beer), but I have heard that the only way to regulate the temp is with one of those probe and plug thermostat overrides, thus controlling the electricity to the WHOLE fridge and therefore killing any freezing potential in the freezer compartment.
Next choice of course is the freezer chest or one of those compact fridge only units.
Any suggestions, hints, experiences with this decision would be most helpful.
And to anyone who is wondering, no I don’t like blatz beer, but it is my name – I am trying to brew good tasting Blatz beer![/quote][/quote]
Too bad I didn’t read this from 2005 cus I thought that Blatz= Blatz Beer. Sorry, But I did… :oops:
May 28, 2008. I’d been lurking for a few weeks, and had been brewing for about 5 years already, but a question that touched on my professional expertise (temperature control) got me to sign up and post a reply:
[quote=“rebuiltcellars”]Attaching fins would help a lot, but you really would need intimate thermal contact between the fermentor and the fins. So even if you found something with the right curvature or flexibility, you’d still want to use thermal grease or a thermally conductive pad (like what is used to attach electrical components to heat sinks) to make it work with any efficiency. You could also weld on SS fins, but that would potentially ruin the fermentor.
A different approach that might be easier to implement would be to do the swap cooler thing. Place the fermentor over a shallow pan and wrap it in a wet towel. Set a hose to deliver a slow trickle of water to keep the towel damp. Evaporative cooling will pull off a lot of heat, especially if you live in a dry climate. Using the fans would speed the process even more.
Still not sure how any of this would be easier than using a counterflow wort chiller though. With a 20 gal batch size, you’ve got to move the wort through a hose from the kettle to the fermentor anyway.[/quote]
This is my first posting.
I had been a member of a homebrew forum for years but activity dropped off to nearly nothing and then the format was changed so I went looking for something new.
Last year I followed and posted on a forum in the UK. Homebrewing is much more prevalent there than I had thought. However, due to misunderstanding in terms of terminology I was often confused. For example, there was a discussion that went on and on as to the best way to sanitize a spoon. I simply asked why it really mattered since the wort would be boiled anyways. It was at that point that I discovered that no boil homebrew kits are very popular in the UK.
I find the whole concept of not boiling the wort very…disconcerting and would never suggest such a practice to anybody.
At any rate, I thought I’d be happier with a forum in the U.S. where I can be more sure of my facts.
At any rate, I am from Fairbanks, Alaska and have been homebrewing since 1991.
I look forward to following this Forum as the days grow shorter. :cheers:
They’re predicting a frost tonight. I am not quite ready to let go of summer yet.
Oh well…
Cheers,
Scott
Welcome to the forum Scott.
1st post in March 2007 was about someone using Iodine from a vet supply office.
The vet iodine was 18% v the 12.5% of the homebew stuff. One just needs to figure the dilution rate.
2nd was about temp control using a cooler. Go figure. Still dishing out temp control advice!
My first post, May 26, 2005 was about how to best condition a California Common. (Back when I could not refrigerate anything larger than a bottle.)
“How long should this style be kept in the secondary? I read it benefits from aging, but I don’t want to keep it at 60 degrees for 2 months. Should I bottle it and then refrigerate it for 2 months?”
8 years later and I am still post about dealing with a lack of enough temperature control. I now have 2 fridges dedicated for home brew, but fill them up for aging cold and serving. I still need fermentation temp control :shock: "
