Re: Brew-day Smoke

"Bart Goddard" <goddardbe@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Xns96ED5B8329E1Agoddardb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Papazian is more like "Chicken Soup for the Soul". It's
> good for getting started, but there is a lot of bad advice
> and technique in that book.

Yeah...in truth, I don't think I've ever stuck strictly to Papazian's methods,
even with my early brews. I think there is some good reference material in his
books, as well as some good, basic guidelines. The true joy of homebrewing is
that once you get some basics down, you can pretty much do whatever the hell
you want. The one thing I wish Charlie would put in his book is a list of "one
step up" techniques, things that will improve your brewing, both in quality
and convenience. For me, these things were (in order of discovery):

1. Hopped malt extract is crap.
2. Specialty grains and real hops make for better extract brews.
3. So does liquid yeast.
4. But you better make a starter!
5. Immersion chillers hooked up to an aquarium pump in a sink full of ice
water speeds up yeast pitching
6. Dry-hopping is the most sacred gift God has ever given to man.
7. Partial mashing is worlds above extract brewing.
8. The more you mash and less extract you use, the better the beer.
9. 6.5 gallon carboys eliminate the whole need for that blow-off bull***.
10. Counterflow chiller makes pitching even quicker.
11. But you'd better have a big-ass pot with a valve, because pumps complicate
matters!
12. Now that you have that counterflow chiller and big-ass pot, full-volume
boils are fuckin' cool!
13. But you'd better have a King Kooker if you're ever going to get the boil
going!

That pretty much sums up my 11 years of homebrewing. As you can see, the
acquisition of "stuff" greatly parallels cigar-smoking.


> Charlie is dated; homebrewing
> has advanced a lot in the 30 years it's been legal.

Sounds just like the Bible to me! ;-)

--
__o Jonathan Acey Albert, M.D.
_ \<,_ "The art of medicine is in amusing the patient while
(_)/ (_) nature affects the cure." - Voltaire


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