half a cat

I posted in the Homebrewtalk.com all-grain and thebrewingnetwork.com all-grain forums for ideas on practice tests that’d help refine my brewing process. Stop at one and offer any advice you might have.

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So my first yeast starter… a few notes:

• Palmer rocks and has a nice calculator for pitching rates for various starter types (with O2, with stir plate, etc)

• Working with the stainless diffuser stone is a PITA – just time consuming with the 15min boils to clean/sanitize it.

• I am too cheap to buy a stir plate yet – I’m saving for my very keezer. From Palmer’s calc it just seemed to increase the amount of starter I needed by ~.5L. The starter seemed to turn out just fine.

• @#$@# is boiling in an Erlenmeyer flask touchy – friggin boilovers are a constant problem. I’m not sure if this is due to our asstastic smooth top electric stove or if it is just the nature of the beast. I think some foam control might be in order. Other folks seem to love the stuff.

• It did seem to start to fade (bubble activity) after 18hrs, next time need to get it into the fermenter before that.

• Lag time: 2hrs. That’s right bitches.

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I just returned from the not so local HBS Midwest Supplies, with a bag of goodies for tomorrow’s brew. I’m a fan of their store – more than Northernbrewer – larger and they ship their mail-order catalog supplies from the same location. It seems they have quite a high turnover – for instance, the yeast I got was dated July 14th.

Anyhoo – picked up a 2L Erlenmeyer and oxygenation kit. This will be the first starter and I’m going off of Palmer’s Pitching Calculator. It should be interesting.

BTW – Is this how women feel after hitting a shoe store sale ? If so, I think I get it now…

Below is the recipe I’m brewing tomorrow:
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Wow, nearly two years… The desire to share my return to beer brewing (2yrs for that too!) got me back here. As usual, the pain is all yours

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