Maybe someone else will have this problem someday so I'll just post in the thread. I have no idea how most fridges work but mine seems to get cold from a vent in the upper part which keeps freezing over. It then doesn't get cold and hovers around 68-75. I can turn it off for a few days and let the ice melt and it will work fine for a few days, weeks, or even months, but it frosts back over eventually.

You're having some kind of defrosting issue with the unit. Depending on the fridge (would need model #) that is controlled by either a circuit board or a defrost timer, heater, and thermostat. Make sure the coils under the unit are clean for proper airflow. If you get me the mod# that will help a lot

Awesome, I'll grab the number next time I'm at home. Thanks.

Finally got the notes in. As I noted before, we weren't able to get to everything as I didn't really account for us eating a lot of food. Here is what we did get to though:

Vicardin Tripel-Gueuze

poured from bottle into a tulip. Pours a medium gold color with a nice foamy head.

Very good aromas that lead more towards the funky with aromas of green and red apples, spice tones, bits of funk and some tart citrus.

Full bodied, but lacking some depth. Smooth with a dry finish and notes of red and green apples, spices and some creams.

Would be interesting to see how this is with some more time in the bottle. The sourness didn't really stick out on the taste, but the finish was on the dry side. Wasn't fully sure what to make of the hybrid, but it was a good beer.

3.63/5

Arbor Brewing Sodibo

Poured from 750 into a tulip. Pours a medium gold color with a foamy head.

Very good depth and complex aromas of funk, sour cherries, sour citrus notes, and some tart green apples.

Really good medium body feel with good depth and notes of green apples, sour cherries and sour citrus'

This was a great beer. Got this from a friend and am very glad I got it. Really good depth across the board with a real nice tartness to it.

4.13/5

2011 Allagash Interlude

Poured from bottle into a tulip. Pours a real good solid gold color with a foamy head.

Very very funky aromas. Brett dominated along with aromas of sour apples and tart citrus with some spices. Good depth as well.

Medium/full bodied with a really good feel. Very funk driven flavors along with sour apples and some spices.

This was the 2011 version. This isn't a beer for everyone due to the amount of funk, but it was perfectly fine by me. Great depth on both the aromas and feel. There is a real good dry finish to this as well.

4.15/5

Central Waters Exodus

Poured from bottle into a tulip. Pours a good dark red color with a small head.

Very good flemish red aromas of sour cherries, some funk and tart citrus notes as well.

Good depth with a very good medium feel and flavors of sour cherries and a good amount of tart tones as well. Finishes off nice and dry.

This is a real good flemish red. Nice and tart with good flavors and aromas.

4/5

Lips of Faith-Tart Lychee

Poured from bomber into a tulip. Pours a clear yellow color with a small head. Almost champagne-like in appearance.

Nice and balanced aromas of sour apples, candied fruits, florals and some lychees.

Nice and tart flavors with a good medium feel. There is a bit of thinness to it with with notes of sour apples, florals and some candied fruits. There didn't seem to be any lychees on the feel.

There was also a fizziness on the feel too. The feel did let things down a slight bit, but this was a nice a real nice wild ale.

4.05/5

Unita Birthday Suit

Poured from bottle into a tulip. Pours a lighter red color with a small head.

Not much depth, but nice aromas of tart cherries and berries with a touch of florals.

Medium bodied, but somewhat watery and lacking a mid+finish. It does have some decent flavors of tart cherries and berries, but it is lacking.

Pretty disappointing. It was on the thinner side but did have some decent flavors.

2.85/5

Flemish Primitive Wild Ale

poured from bottle into a tulip. Pours a clear gold color with a very foamy head.

Extremely funky aromas. It's dominated by funk and yeast with aromas of tart oranges, sour apples, and bruised citrus tones.

Good depth with real good notes of tart oranges, sour apples and a lot of funk. The finish is slightly clipped though.

A great wild ale. One has to like funk aromas and flavors in their beer though.

4.33/5

Update: Went by there tonight, and had a good time looking around. I didn't stray too far off the beaten path. Got Rogue Dead Guy Ale, some Founders Dirty Bastard, Two Hearted, Stones Smoke Porter and Arrogant Bastard.

Thanks for the heads up on this place.

I'm making the switch to all-grain. I'm pretty freaking pumped too.

What equipment are you going to have to add/change?

Not much, I'm starting fairly simple. I'll need a bigger brewpot, and I'm just going with an igloo cooler, adding a spout and a bazooka screen (I'll batch sparge). I'll probably think of some other stuff I'll need once I go over the brew day process a little more thoroughly. We will see how well the stove works too; if it struggles with the boil I might have to get a propane cooker.

Hi guys. I was wondering if any of you had heard anything about Lagunitas brewery having very limited supply coming up in the next few months? I can't find anything on the internet, but two liquor store clerks have seen me buying Lagunitas and both said something along the lines of "you better stock up, all the distributors are saying there isn't going to be much around bc the brewery had a problem with their shipment from Italy and (other country I cant remember)."

Last time I was at the brewery they told me they were going through another major renovation because they could not keep up with demand. A couple years ago they bought an 80 barrel brewhouse that they figured they'd be able to fill all orders with for another 6 or so years. When I was there in March they were about to receive and install a new $10mil 250 barrel brewhouse and a new Italian bottling machine.

Anyway, I was just seeing if any of you beer gurus had heard anything about this as I cant find any validity on the internet. I apoligize if this has been mentioned already.

lagunitas is opening new production facilities across the states. So, they have been much more limited recently. I know here in chicago, their facility will be fully opened in november. It's made things skint a bit, but I know that by next year there will be rivers of lagunitas in chicago at least

If you've got an electric stove, yeah, it's going to suck.

I actually got a propane cooker today, figured I might as well. I'm probably going to get an immersion chiller as well...ice bath has been serviceable for like 2.5 gallon extract boils but cooling down 5 or 6 gallons or more is going to be a different story

Drank PlinyTheElder's SMaSH beer last night. It was delicious. Had some friends over so we ended up splitting it four ways.



My notes on it were that it was extremely American hops smelly with a burst of tropical scent added to it. Thought I could make out some melon in it which was great. The taste was not a let down from the smell. Very hop forward with tons of citrus and tropical. The Golden Promise lended a slightly sweet malt profile which I think worked quite well with the Citra. PtE had mentioned that he thought it might be a bit thin but I thought it was actually well done with the body. About medium bodied, no dryness, and the bitterness was really smooth and worked perfectly for the style. Extremely good beer, would drink more.

I also picked up a brewing buddy yesterday. We were going to get a boy of the litter and name him Barley, but all the boys were claimed so we got this sweet girl who we named Marlo. She's almost 9 weeks old and half German Shepherd, half Black Labrador.

As Wraths said, we met up at a local brewery Swamp Head while he was driving through and swapped beers. I had his DIPA the other night which I believe he said was brewed with Ahtanum hops. I've never had these before, so it was a new experience.

Nice looking beer. Two finger head which dissipates slowly leaving a creamy lacing behind. Aroma has a nice damp, dank hops. Balanced with some sweet malt backbone. Taste is similar to aroma. Hops his hard and have a sticky dankness to them but a nice malt backbone comes through and balances the beer. Slight alcohol taste and another flavor I can't quite place, maybe the yeast? Nice brew overall.

And nice looking pup there, brewing buddies are the best.

haven't put the full notes in, but some quick impressions of some brews I had this past weekend.

I finally started digging into my pipeworks stash. To give a slight bit of background, pipeworks is an insanely small brewery that just started up production here in chicago back in march. They brewed test batches for 2 years before doing a full release (i'm guessing family helped them out financially as they didn't have any other jobs at the time).

Right now there is no flagship brew for them. They do things in small batches but do rotate their beers and bring out updates releases on them. They really listen to the customers on how to better the beers, so on each subsequent release there has been tweaking to the recipies.

Sadly my dumbass didn't pony up the $100 back in march to become a "friend with benefits." I'm already grossly regretting that as FWB get first dibs on their releases and they are now brewing beers solely for FWB members. C'est la vie.

They did most of their financing through kickstarter and other means. They are on a complete shoestring, but I've been very impressed with what they have put out so far.

I had the Glaucus (Belgian IPA) and the Quintessential (American Wheat Ale). The Glaucus ****ing ruled. Around 8% abv and full bodied, but absolutely zero booziness to it. Smooth with good spice flavors to it. I also really enjoyed the Quintessential. There was an herbal element to it that I really liked and worked for me.

They are only available at like 5 or 6 stores in Chicago. They self distribute, so they only send their brews to places that they have relationships with. I'd normally scream about Pipeworks, but there is just way too little to go around, so it will be a quiet shout on my end. They're probably the most exciting brewery in Chicago right now (and I say this with all of the love I've given revolution here) as they will probably stay very small. I have little doubt that they will turn into *the* cult brewery of Chicago as it's already starting to happen.

If anyone is interested I'm more than willing to ship when the weather cools a slight bit

Interesting.

There is a brewery near me that is less than a year old that has a similar founding fathers type program. The price was around $400 though so I said maybe some other life.

Drinking some zombie dust right now. 3 floyds is definitely one of my favorite breweries. Went to dark lord day a couple years back, not a fan of the actual beer but the whole "festival" was a great experience. Tons of micro brewers and home brewers setting up stalls to sell their wares. Bonus: Bus ride from one of the best CB bars in Chicago, there and back!

So I'm getting into rinsing my yeast to help cut down on costs. So I rinsed my yeast last night and I think I did it a little wrong. I took my yeast cake, added some boiled (then cooled) water then swished it up good and dumped it into sanitized jars. So now I have 5 jars of 80% clear liquid (beer?) with 20% settled yeast, no trub because there wasn't much hops. I think I should have let it settle before moving to the jars right to get a purer sample of yeast? So my question now is when I want to do a batch, do I just add the yeast from one of these jars? Two? How do I know?

The Mr Malty pitching calculator has a "yeast slurry" selection.

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

Im startting to get away from yeast washing actually. On my last 4 batches Ive been doing something other than washing to lower costs and reuse yeast.

I make a starter for every batch no matter what, so I have been letting my starter finish out completely on the stirplate then refilling (sanitized of course) the yeast vial that my yeast just came in sealing it and sticking it in the fridge. I'll date it and by the next morning I have a WL vial that is half full of thick viable yeast. I will post back results as I get to the 4th-5th generations of these strands but on the second generations Ive not noticed any difference in the yeast as far as flavors, flocculation, attenuation goes.

Haha that's actually a really easy, awesome idea.

if anyone from Dallas wants to go to lakewood brewry's first ever tour and get 4 beers for $12 along the way here's the link to tickets. 50% chance i go!

I kind of just went of a huge spree in the last week.

I got:
Stuff to convert my cooler into a mash tun
50 foot immersion chiller
larger brew kettle
propane cooker
full-size refrigerator for lagering and lower temp fermenting (terrific shape, $75 on craigslist!)
another fermenter bucket

I figured that if I was going all-grain, I might as well go all-out.

Welcome to the addiction

I always liked fresh dark lord, big, well hopped stouts were always my thing though.

I recently had an 08 darklord (I have about 5 of them left, from the only time I went to DL day) and I didn't love it.

It's been "aged" in 50-65 degrees since I got it, so it should be relatively well kept, but it was quite thick and sweet, not what I like in my stouts.

(tbh, I shouldn't be aging imperial stouts given my taste preferences, I just happened to have these still sitting around, going to ebay and/or trade the rest for stuff I might actually enjoy more)