Hey fellow BrewGeeks,

We wanted to take a moment to update you on a few things that have changed on our site and also mention some of the articles that we are currently working on.

The first thing you may have noticed is the simplified navigation menu to the left (highlighted in green). This is where you will find most of our content which falls into six main categories including grain, hops, yeast, water, process, and equipment. Most have a DIY section of projects that is growing every week along with guides, comparison charts, and videos from around the web. Another small change is the addition of a footer at the bottom of every page (highlighted in blue). There is a "contact us" link for feedback and suggestions, popular articles, and a link for adding us to your favorite RSS reader. If you need our pages translated into your native language, we've added a way to do that as well.

Regarding upcoming articles, scoundrel is writing up a great post on sour beers that should be ready soon. There is also one in the works on cleaning kegs where I'll go over the different parts, how to break them down for cleaning, and which replacement o-rings to buy so you don't need to crank down the posts which eventually ruins them. I'll also cover keg lube and what pieces get it, general cleaning tips, and tricks to make cleaning kegs as easy as possible.

As I mentioned before, we are always adding new DIY projects to our pages. If you have one to submit that is written up with pictures, please email your project to us at "[email protected]". 
We would love to see it!

bigljd shares his hop blocker design with us and also mentions that whole leaf hops work best.  This is what he did:

Here's my stainless steel DIY hop stopper that I made for $10. It started it's life as a  jumbo tea ball from Amazon.com.

I took a phillips screwdriver and forced a hole in the side of the SS screen and stretched it out until it was large enough to fit over my SS pickup tube. I also cut about 1.5" length off the side pickup tube, and cut some grooves into the end of the tube so that if the screen got pushed up against the end of the tube and some hops got sucked into the screen, the wort can still drain out thru the grooves. 

I brewed an 11 gal batch of porter today that had 5oz of whole hops in it, and it filtered out everything with no trouble. I could drain with the valve fully open and there was no blockage or hops getting into the fermenter. [Read More]

I had been trying to figure out an easy way to add volume marks to my new mash paddle without using a sharpie (wears out over time) or having to buy a soldering iron/woodburning tool.

Well, it was easier than I thought. All I did was use aluminum foil as a template and an everyday lighter torch that we all use for lighting BBQ's and our fireplaces. 

Full marks for gallons, half marks for half gallons!  [Read More]

C'mon legislators, it's 2012, not 1920. What's next, axing casks in the street!?  Well, in fairness, I think we need to see a graph of hillbillies with Jim Beam bottles to be sure, but let a brother have some craft beer m'kay?  Does anyone live in these counties to confirm this?

Thanks to Geekologie for the link.

I can probably count the movies made about beer on both hands. You have newer submissions like Beerfest or Roadtrip and of course classics like Strange Brew. What's up Eh?

My wife and her girlfriend recently talked me into watching a 2011 movie called The Big Year which stars Owen Wilson, Jack Black, and Steve Martin along with many other famous actors you would recognize. This was not a beer movie.

Instead, it was a comedy about competitive birdwatching where a young, cocky, previous winner played by Owen Wilson attempts "The Big Year" to see how many different species of bird he can spot in a single year. Competitors travel all over the world to "put up numbers" and Steve and Jack are hot on his trail trying to beat the previous record of 732. The combination of humor and incredible locations where this movie was filmed make it surprisingly good.  Okay, there I admitted it!

What then, does this have to do with beer?  Well, I couldn't help but imagine a similar competition where the "birders" were replaced with "beerers" and instead of spotting rare birds, competitors would travel around the world putting up beer numbers.  Just like the movie, you would need to plan the finances carefully to even attempt such a trip. How many different beers are there?  What kind of number could you put up?

I'd love to find out.

Cheers,

TK  

I bought a grain mill a couple batches ago and right out of the box knew I was not going to use the handle. So I started to use my drill to crush grain, but found a problem with that.

I needed three hands ! ! ! ! !

Trying to hold the drill, the top of the mill so it would not come off the bucket, and poor my grains was almost impossible.

I started to research making a stand. Not finding a motor with the torque I liked I started to do some freestyle thinking and decided a slow speed drill would do what I wanted. After placing my order I saw a thread with the same drill powering a mill, oh well guess my thought was not so original.

Anyway here is my mill stand made from stuff I had on hand with my mill and motor mounted on top. [Read More] 

We love the way Euphist solved the problem of squeezing the bag! Here is what he had to say about it:

I know a lot of BIAB brewers hang their bag over the kettle to drain, however since I am brewing inside, this isn't very practical. After one time of burning my hands trying to squeeze the rest of the wort out of the grain in a colander, I decided there had to be a better way.

The better way presented itself to me at my local grocery store...we asked for frosting buckets and walked away with six buckets of assorted sizes. The one that caught my attention was around 4 gallons (I can't exactly measure it to be sure now). I attacked the bottom of said bucket with my drill. So now I have a 4 gallon with a perforated bottom and a normal 5 gallon bucket. [Read More]