My brother gave me a gift last year of 4 glass carboys that I should be using for all kinds of stuff.  I was thinking that I could get into mead making this summer as a way to get those carboy a-workin’.

So, I bought a book.  Sound familar?  Well, I bought a cider making book too…but that’s a whole separate post.

Anyway, mead is something I have wanted to make and with some instruction I feel that I could produce some fine honey wines.

I bought The Compleat Meadmaker and it appears to be the book on mead making.

So I have some reading to do in my near future.  I look forward to some new brewing adventures.

You know, Brew on.

Last Fall, these Brew Dudes made an apple cider using an old press.   The results were mixed but for a first try, it could have been worse. 

The cider came out drinkable which was the goal of the whole experiment.

To make 2010 the year we make contact with cider success, I bought a book about making cider. 

The book Cider: Making, Using & Enjoying Sweet & Hard Cider should be arriving at my doorstep in a few days.

With this book, I am pretty sure the cider will come out much better than the first time.

Maybe it will have a malted cider recipe.

If you’re a regular reader you know that I recently added a second brew assistant to my brewhouse.  With two sons now at home it becomes more difficult to find time to brew.   I have been thinking of ways to get in brewing sessions that are short and quick to slake my thirst for brewing whenever I have time.

I have been pondering the occasional dabble in extract brewing again.  I don’t plan to abandon my all-grain brewing setup as I love the process and the control.  But extract brewing would be a quick way to bang out some easier beers, experiment with ingredients and just stay active in the hobby when a 6-7 hour brew session with all-grain won’t cut it.

So this post is a call to all our extract brewing readers. What styles of beers really lend themselves to extract brewing?  I was thinking of putting together a simple Amber recipe to get myself started in the 2010 brewing season. I figure maybe a good dry Irish Stout and maybe a couple good English Brown ales, milds or other session style brews.

What is on your extract agenda these days?

BREW ON!

The stage is set for my first all grain brewing session.

It’s happening this Friday night.

We’ll have live coverage via Twitter and I will post videos as I make them to the site as soon as I can.

You can follow along or check back this week.

We’re brewing up this Pale Ale.  Calling it the Chelmsforder.

Stay tuned.

Brew On.

Another piece of equipment to convert my cooler into an efficient mash tun is a ball valve spigot.  I need to replace the spigot that the cooler came with, which isn’t made for long pours.  My thumb knows too well.

There are many spigots that are made specifically for cooler conversions on NorthernBrewer.com.  They are all under the heading of weldless so I should be able just to remove the factory-installed spigot and install the ball valve spigot.

The one I have my eye on has a half inch barb at the end of it so that I can attach tubing to the end of it.   When transferring wort to my kettle, I would like to avoid as much hot side aeration as possible.

I think with the screen and the spigot (the screen attaches nicely to the spigot), I think my mash tun would be ready to go.

If  you have been following the false bottom conversation, you will find this post is a logical follow up.

As I am looking at all of my options to enhance my brewing setup to be all-grain ready, the second option in helping me separate grain from wort in my mash tun is a Bazooka Screen (This appears to be a trademarked term of the Zymico company-you may be able to find alternatives under the term ‘mash screen’).

There is some debate on our site and elsewhere that the screen works better than the false bottom.  There is definitely a price difference.  False bottoms (most prices I saw are >$30 as of 1/9/2009) are more expensive than the screen (most prices are <$20 as of 1/9/2009).

The other factor that I am using to base my decision is the compatibility with another component I have to buy, which is a ball valve spigot that I want to fit onto my cooler.  I will write a post on the spigot later.

The screen may be the winner….although it would be interesting to get the false bottom for educational purposes and compare it to a screen.  Hmmm.

With all the encouragement from the readers, I started to think seriously about what I need to buy to upgrade my mash tun to brew all grain batches. 

I mean, I guess I could brew all grain right now but it is not ideal.

I would rather get some components that would make the process easier and set me up for brewing success rather than brewing struggles.

The first component I am investigating is a false bottom.  I need a way to separate the grains from the wort effectively after mashing. 

Since my mash tun is a 5 gallon cooler (along with many other homebrewers), there are false bottoms available that fit perfectly.

Here’s a picture from Northern Brewer:

This is one possibility since I could buy a screen as well.  What do you use?  

Here’s my post about the bazooka screen.