North Texas Homebrewers Association

We are discussing this on a BBO Slack channel. Some ideas from over there are: Change starting time and date either/or to a weekend or a weekday evening after work. Start userid registration a day or two before the entry registration. Judges from last year get a pre-sale code to register their entri...

We talked about this at the Officers Meeting last night. We had a couple of ideas. 1. I am going to start BCOEM on a big virtual server for the first day of registrations. A server that will not get congested. 2. Limit entrants to one entry per medal category. That might be a bit restrictive. 3. Onc...

Let us turn this topic into something positive. What could the "Bluebonnet" have done to make Bill have a positive experience? What can the Bluebonnet do in the future to make Bill happy next year. There was a server load issue. I was able to get an entry in in the middle of the storm and ...

And a couple of more thoughts. We changed the start time to noon from midnight. That made it easier for all the entrants to punish the BBO server. Perhaps it should move back to midnight or maybe 4:37am (some obscure time in the middle of the night). We did not know what the impact to the server wou...

Bill, I am sorry you did not get all your entries in. The good news you may still get your entries in as other entrants change their entries. So you need to keep watching the medal category counts: https://bcoem.bluebonnetbrewoff.org/index.php?section=entry The deleting of unpaid entries is now auto...

In the isomerized paragraphs in this article sounds like the isomerized hop products do not have the antiseptic properties.

https://byo.com/article/hop-extracts-advanced-brewing/

Wow, I lots of comments on this one. You can buy un-isomerized alpha acid as in this example at morebeer: https://www.morebeer.com/products/artisan-hops-hop-shot-cascadewillamette-extract-blend-10-ml.html Does it have to be isomerized? The isomerization is needed to create bitterness. I am guessing ...

I found this link in the past that gives SG to percentage by volume and weight: http://www.ppe.com/pdf/SpecificGravity.pdf I was unaware of Propylene Glycol deterioration until Wayne said his glycol was pink with something growing in it. I now set my chiller to 50F when not in use instead of turning...

Here is a link to the Braukaiser site that discusses mash related efficiencies:

https://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/U ... Efficiency

The braukaiser site is a great site that Kai Troester created. It seems that Kai has stopped updating his site.
http://braukaiser.com/

This topic started with my scaling a recipe with Beersmith. Beersmith has that option to match gravity, color and bitterness. I don't know what Beersmith does with that option. I did figure out that if the "efficiency" is different in the from and to equipment profiles, Beersmith adjusts t...

I did not get my Liquid CaCl article in the newsletter this month. The problem with CaCl is it is so hygroscopic that you will never know what you have. It could start out as anhydrous when you buy it. Every time you open the package it absorbs water from the air.

Smitty, My goal was to bread that was sour. My hope was that the Lactobacillus in the blend was still viable and the the hefe yeast in the blend would make an interesting yeast flavor. But sour was is goal. I think I want to get some SF starter from you and use the recipe you posted as a baseline. T...

An update on my sourdough experiment. I fed the starter a few times then grew up some extra to make some bread. I made a sticky dough with bread flour, about 3 cups of flour. I put the dough in the refrigerator for 3 days. Punched it down once a day. On the third day I form two loaves. I did not kne...

Exactly. You don't know. Also CaCl is so hygroscopic, meaning is absorbs water from air, you will never know what you have.

The water mixture solves that problem. That is why I moved to it.

I'll write something for the newsletter but it will not make the June newsletter. Homework assignment for those using dry CaCl, What form of CaCl are you using? anhydrous monohydrate dihydrate tetrahydrate hexahydrate The form you used affects how you weigh out your salts. Post your homework below.

I use the liquid CaCl method. You then have to take the specific gravity of the CaCl solution you created and plug that into Bru'n Water. I use Beersmith to calculate my salt additions using the auto calculate part of the calculator. I then have to go back to Bru'n Water and input my salt additions ...

I am attempting to make a controlled Sourdough bread starter. I took home a expired Berliner Weisse yeast blend from the club meeting at NTHBS Tuesday. I just mixed 3/4 cup all purpose flour, teaspoon of DME, RO water and the contents of the yeast blend into a bowl and stirred it up, covered with pl...

Why not?

I really enjoy beer off a Beer Engine.

Here are some details on the Bitter Sisters 8th Anniversary:

Bitter Sisters 8th Anniversary

I oxygenate with a wand and a 20CF welding O2 bottle. I do the O2 first then pitch the yeast. My reasoning is to keep the yeast off the O2 stone and want to keep pure O2 away from the yeast. It may not make any difference. The CO2 bubbling is quick and easy and will probably become part of my yeast ...

The picture below is similar to my configuration. The picture shows a 7.9 gallon flat bottom FZ. Mine is the 13.2 gallon with a dump valve so the coil is towards the bottle of the FZ. Now that fermentation is going, I see lots of movement so I think stratification will occur again. fermzilla_temp_tw...

This is the second time I have seen this. The first time I tried swirling the FZ, did not work and finally did the CO2 bubbling. This time I saw the layer and was just waiting to see what would happen. When I saw the krausen on the yeast layer I decided to hit it with CO2. I did read an article some...

My Ph meter is acting strange. I calibrated it at 7 and 4. A couple of hours later when I was checking my mash Ph, the meter was reading 5.4 instead of the Bru'n Water prediction of 5.2. My experience with Bru'n Water has been a very reliable predictor of Mash Ph. So I ignored my meter, added the re...

This happened yesterday with the 10 gallon lager batch I made. I am using a 55 liter (13.2 gallon) Fermzilla which is much taller than a 6 gallon carboy. I had chilled the wort down to 50F with my glycol chiller. I am guessing the yeast was about 60F, still cool from refrigeration. I pitched the yea...