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Really? I've found that a soak in bleach water really rejuvinates my buckets and removes any odors that were in there. I've still got my original 1992/3 vintage white plastic bucket in circulation, and even as elderly a bucket as that (which has undoubtedly played host to some bug-based Roselare fermetations) produces fine beers without any infections. My longstanding position against carboys is based in entirely rational comparative fear- I'm much more afraid of shattering glass and bodily injury than I am of potentially miniscule off flavors. Both are long shots, but the downside of glass is much more dire. Apply some Pascal's Wager type logic here, and avoid glass.

Regardless of the merits of the underlying argument, it seems that advocating it from a smug, superior, know-it-all point of view makes it instantly objectionable. I also think that some radical oversimplification has occurred as well, insofar as "industrial" production of foods does not imply one uniform worst practice that is universal. And the legalistic definition of some of the marketing buzzwords that have been invoked hasn't been addressed either... look into what is required to label a chicken "free range"...

Hi and welcome, MJP! For most beers, there is no reason whatsoever to do a secondary fermentation. Unless it's destined for dry hopping, infection with bugs, or is barleywine strength, you don't need to worry about it. Beers should spend at least 10 days in primary, and can spend more than a month there without problems (if you're keeping it around 70F or below). After two weeks in primary, most beers are done, and have dropped clear. Siphon it to your bottling bucket (your kit came with one of them, right?) and bottle. Put the carboy away and forget about it.

Yes, a vinegar mother (colony of acetobacter) needs oxygen to form. Pediococcus hates oxygen and forms "ropey" slime and generates some lactic acid in anaerobic environments. I don't know what else it could be in there... I just did a bit of googling, and have found that pedio can withstand as boozy an environment as that beer is... so that is probably what it is. If there's no lactic, then I'm stumped.

Hmmm... If the ABV weren't so high, I'd guess it was pediococcus "ropes", and the beer would be lactic rather than acetic. But 9.4% seems high for pedio to survive, making acetobacter a good suspect... but it is usually not so ropey looking, and more jellyfish looking.

Real espresso doesn't use steam... It requires water at around 190F and pressure. This thing could do real espresso.

I find TJ's prepared foods tend toward the sweet and insipid side of the flavor spectrum... That is what I recall about the Shepherd's Pie (which is a misnomer... shepherd's pie contains ground lamb, Cottage Pie contains ground beef, though the TJ's I recall could just as well have contained TVP for all of the meaty character it brought) is that is was a bit more sweet that I'd like in a savory dish, and over-thymed.

The Chocolove only gets sharp at the 77% and above bars. Their 70 and below are all wonderfully mellow. I've not found a Callebaut bar that is too sharp and fruity for my tastes, but I've never tasted through their whole selection either. Something I would like to figure out is which manufacturers supplement the cocoa butter in their blends. From its taste and texture, I'm betting that Cote d'Or does. Who else out there makes bars with that fabulous texture?

Hmmm... I have found the Cluizel bars I've tried quite sharp in the same way that Valrhona is. I've never tried the Pralus bars, so they may break the French mold. Name the Belgian producers who underroast their beans. I need a list of sources to stay away from.

Bingo, nakji! You sound like somebody with my tastes in chocolate. Look into bars made in Belgium, or in the belgian style.

There are definitely very pronounced differences between different chocolate bars. I consume most of my chocolate in bar form, and have noticed all kinds of variation between different brands. As to the price/performance ratio of chocolate bars, I find that a lot of the insanely expensive bars are made in the French style, meaning that they have a sharp, tart, fruity quality... I just don't like that aspect of chocolate, so the Valrhona- Scharffen-Berger - Cluizel type chocolates aren't worth their cost to me. I prefer the richer, more rounded Belgian style, where the fruity acidity is toned way down and the roasty toasty favors come to the fore. I'd say the difference is paralleled by the differences in style of Blanc de Blanc champagnes and Blanc de Noirs champagnes... the former is sharper, brighter, more acid, while the latter is richer, rounder, toastier. (FWIW, I much prefer the Blanc de Noirs too.) Anyway, for good, not insanely priced chocolate I've become a fan of shopping at Target recently... they carry the Hershey's Cacao Reserve bars with nibs in them, which are a real treat (and utterly unlike ordinary Hershey's products), as well as a bunch of Swiss chocolate from Frey which come with a variety of very interesting flavor infusions... I'm also a fan of the Belgian sourced chocolates sold under the Chocolove brand, and of Trader Joe's Callebaut bars they sell at the registers in three packs in lilac foil wrappers. Nothing I've recommended should cost you more than $2.50/bar, most less.

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. None of those things have killed me yet, and those levels of acceptable contamination have been around for a while. Immune systems need stimulation. I'm not scared of my spice cabinet. Absolute purity is overrated.

Really? Website says you're out. Just like every other homebrew shop on the web... Just checked hopsdirect.com, and they at least had US Goldings for $2/oz shipped... which I just decided to order, as some Goldings are better than no goldings.

Very cool! B3 is a great shop, and hosts a great message board itself. So you've landed some of the 2007 American harvest, it seems. How is availability of English now? My Kent Goldings supplies are dwindling, and replacing them seems unlikely at best right now. Is it harvest timing, or is it just unavailability this year?

Hey theisenm-- welcome to the thread. You work for a LHBS? You've still got good hop inventory?

When you crush, you don't want to end up with flour... you want the hulls broken, and beyond that, it is not terribly vital how much further you crush the grain, so long as what you make can be strained out of your wort by the grain containment technique you use. As to cost, things have gone nuts lately. Back when I designed the course, dry malt extract was going at about $3/lb, and hops were $1/oz or so for most. Today dry malt is closer to $5/lb and hops are scarce and more like $3/oz when available. Worldwide commodity shortages are taking their toll right now.

Well, Mallet, you're certainly going to get the idea behind the second brew... which was that adding lots of crystal malt to a recipe will pump up the body and sweetness of the beer. Even if you're not using the ones I called for, you should certainly get the effect. Do try to keep a bottle or two of batch 1 around, as part of the learning experience is blending batch 1 (with no crystal malts in it) with batch 2 in different proportions to get an idea of what adding various amounts of crystal malt does to beer. Batch 2 was designed to max out the reasonable amount of cara-type grains that go into a beer.

Terapin, mallet: How are things progressing? I'm interested to hear how things turned out. I'm in the middle of a comparative brew project, trying to assess the contributions of various Belgian brewing sugars on different recipes. Following this link to the Burgundian Babble Belt will take you to the discussion of the recipe so far, which might prove valuable to folks interested in the considerations that go into recipe formulation.

Having a huge veal producer in your back yard does not necessarily improve local availability of veal. I live a few miles from where Marcho Farms is headquartered, yet the local grocery stores stock little veal beyond pre-cut scallopini... which was quite a pain when I went looking for a bigger thicker cut to stuff. Ended up using chicken breasts instead.

Toss some bourbon in there and they're drunken dogs... old skool if a snack ever was... Pigs in blankets also work, and don't swim in sticky goop.

Think a moment about the circumstances of the old original speakeasies. They were illegal operations flying under the radar. They'd likely have been quite paranoid about making sure that drunken rowdiness didn't attract unwanted attention... I'd not be surprised if there was a code of conduct (whether it had been formalized into a list of rules or not) that was enforced. (Anybody know any sociologies of speakeasy culture to check into this hypothesis?) Most of the rules listed in the article aren't things I'd generally fall afoul of whether I knew they were rules or not, so they're not an onerous obligation on me... hence my attitude that they're no big deal.

Great article! I agree that having a few rules does make a bar a much nicer place to hang out. It was a bit of a tour of my preferred NYC drinking establishments as well... Haven't been to Angel's Share in years... must remedy that.

I've tasted them both... they're not identical, but the Ikea syrup does bring that pleasant elderflower tartness quite well. I'd use a bit less of the Ikea syrup than I would of the St Germain, for fear of oversweetening.

I just plugged your recipe into the calculator, and it is going to come out about 80% as strong and 56% as bitter as the recipe I gave. It will be a different beer. It might be a nice beer, but it won't be the same. The coriander is likely to step forward and make it very citrus-y, particularly in combination with the Cascade hops. You'll have to let us know how it turned out. There does appear to be a instability in the Canadian market for homebrew stuff lately... Glad you managed to find come Cascade hops, actually... given the industry-wide shortage, they're very tough to get, and are now priced accordingly.

The hops problem is worldwide. The malt problem is even worse in Europe than here, as the weather wrecked a lot of the crop there this year. Fortunately grain is annual and may get better next year. Hops have a 3-year lead time before new plantings produce commercial quantities. Here's a link to what the WSJ had to say recently. It is really pretty bleak out there for breweries without advance contracts for essentials. The spot market for hops has been dry for weeks. And here's some interesting hop industry info.