Equipment

In my spare time I love to homebrew!  I use the Grainfather Connect, an all-in-one electric all-grain brewing system.  I typically brew more malty beers – brown ales, red ales and Scottish ales.  I will occasionally brew other styles, most recently a clone of New Holland Brewing’s Dragon’s Milk Bourbon Barrel-Aged Stout.

My main fermenter is a conical 7.9 Gallon plastic wall-mount unit from FastFerment.  It is a one-stage system which eliminates racking and transferring between buckets and carboys and minimizes exposure of the beer to oxygen.

I use an Immersion Pro by Brew Jacket to control the temperature of the fermentation. The Immersion Pro uses a solid-state heat exchange system to achieve up to 35º above or below ambient and holds that temp to 0.3º F.  It works well, but sadly they are no longer made.

I use a Tilt wireless hydrometer to continuously record the temperature and specific gravity of the beer while in the fermenter.  The tilt sends the data via Bluetooth to a raspberry pi, which then forwards the data to the cloud via wi-fi. The data is then displayed in the bar area on an old Microsoft Surface tablet.

This is my keezer that I made in 2011 that is still going strong! Plenty of room for 2 corny kegs and a 20 oz paintball CO2 tank.

I grow hops every year. Not enough to use all the time, but enough to make a couple of beers using fresh hops every fall.

On Tap

Tap #1 – A clone of New Holland’s Dragon’s Milk Bourbon Barrel Stout. Roasted malt delivers notes of coffee and chocolate, married with sweet undertones of vanilla and oak.

Tap #2 – A ‘Belgian Ale’ that was made using the wort from the 2026 Official Big Brew Day recipe (Monk’s Ration Trappist-Style Single) at Columbus Brewing Company and fermented using a standard amber ale yeast. I’m not a fan of Belgian’s in general so I thought I’d give this a try. Turned out very nice; a little sweeter than a standard amber ale but very drinkable.

Fermenting – An Irish Red ale using a recipe by Richard F Shoff Jr. of Baldwinsville, NY, which won a gold medal in Category 10: Scottish & Irish Ale in the 2023 National Homebrew Competition Final Round in San Diego. Shoff’s Irish Red Ale earned gold out of 106 entries.

Conditioning – I had 3 gallons of the Big Brew Day wort left and decide to make it as an actual Belgian. Letting it sit in the keg for awhile.