Recent content by Ironsides

Barls, New barrels impart an oaky, sappy, woody flavour that get used in the reds, chards and a few other things. Old barrels don't impart much of these flavours so we sell off extras every few years. Blind dog, its not only home brewers that read this forum, there are a few small breweries as...

Hi All, The winery I work for is selling off twenty or thirty 500L oak puncheons. They were going to cut them up to sell to garden centers, but i suggested that, since they still work, brewers might be interested. They are mostly American oak, and have had about 10 years of use. 200 bucks...

If you have a decent winery nearby you could arrange to buy a quarter of a barrel or so and follow it from vineyard to bottle. The joint I work for is happy to have people come through and give us a hand during vintage.

Commercial wine yeasts are very tolerant of alcohol. This means that a ferment may begin wild, and as alcohol levels rise they are killed off leaving the commercial strains to take over. Wort is (hopefully) sterile so you would need to introduce a source of wild yeast. I once attempted to...

G'day all, I'm looking for sponsorship soley in the form of delicious beer for an event in November. Basically I'm involved in an exhibition of student works (design and architecture) at the university of canberra, we've got the wine sorted through my work and are looking for some fine beers...

1. Soak in 'cleanskin' (96% sodium per carb from the wine industry) for some time. 2. Rinse with Citric acid and PMS solution. Or peroxide. Or Phosphoric acid. 3. Flush with CO2 4. Fill with beer 20 minutes excluding soaking time.

a crusty old barrel like that probably wont need any help making the beer sour. Which reminds me of something off topic: Earlier in the year I pinched some chardonnay juice from work straight from the crusher, let it ferment with what ever yeasts/bacteria were present. i then washed the...

Spirits were my first thought.

A desktop 3D printer through a CSIRO design/engineering competiton.

People say that applying heat to the yeast cake, as with a pad heater, isnt ideal. The belt can obviously be adjusted higher or lower on the fermenter. Running it in a fridge helps to maintain the temp, so that the belt isnt running flatout. +1 for temp controller and belt/pad/bulb/oil heater/...

I had a dude pour me what was clearly the very bottom of a coopers celebration keg. Its was beyond cloudy, it was basically mud. He then tried to tell me that 'its just sediment and wouldnt affect the taste'. Well it does, even in small amounts.

man it tastes bad though. I am a former resident of the Barossa. We were on tank water, so whenever whenever we drank mains it was notably salty. This was particularly unpleasant in summer from warm jerry cans with the army reserve. I guess the only disadvantage for brewing is that you can add...

I've never left. But i have been very sad

Not connicals, but theres about 6 SS tanks between 400-600L, and insulated milk vat things that look pretty good for mash tuns. So where does one find over the side immersion elements that big, and how many of what power would it require? I did try to figure this out but there wasnt much info...

Gentlemen, I've been doing a bit of brewing for the guys at work since we found 16 corny kegs out the back. Today the boss informed me that 20L batches were too small and that i would need to build (at least) a 100L. system. We've got most of the things we need to bodge it together (including...