buying supplies locally

coondini · Post by **coondini** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 10:24 pm

Greetings

I'm a new member as of yesterday. I'd like to purchase the beer making ingredients locally. I mainly need the 3.3 pound cans of malt extract, appropriate sugar and yeast. I'd like to bypass the shipping costs of mail ordering. Any businesses in the Cedar Rapids area that sell these items?

Mr T · Post by **Mr T** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 12:16 am

Welcome aboard,

I’m not sure if your new to the area or just to home brewing but there is only two places in town that I know of that carry any sort of home brew supplies, that is Benz bev. Depot downtown, and the hy-vee drug store on the corner of blairsferry and center point road. Benz is very pricey and Hy-vee is very limited. You might end up finding that if you buy more ingredients to make two brews and pay shipping might be just the same as what you pay locally or less. And you will have lots more choices and fresher ingredients.

I wish I could point you somewhere that had a great selection, I would much rather give the biz locally but its fairly dry.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

From: coondini [mailto:brew-tech@crbeernuts.org]
Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 11:25 PM
To: brew-tech@crbeernuts.org
Subject: buying supplies locally

Greetings

I'm a new member as of yesterday. I'd like to purchase the beer making ingredients locally. I mainly need the 3.3 pound cans of malt extract, appropriate sugar and yeast. I'd like to bypass the shipping costs of mail ordering. Any businesses in the Cedar Rapids area that sell these items?

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TappedOut · Post by **TappedOut** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 8:39 am

yep, gotta concur w/ BigT. I'm rather dubious of the freshness of the canned extract. If you're buying local, I think your beer will be much, much better if you go w/ the dried extract. And replace the sugar by more extract.

You can get pretty good prices and shipping time from northern brewer and midwest supplies, both in MN. A little longer to get here, but morebeer is good too. If you're just getting started, you might want to try some of the kits available from the big online stores.

Oh, and welcome. Glad to have you here.

-Tom T

jjbuck · Post by **jjbuck** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 1:57 pm

Northern Brewer has the $7.99 shipping for just about everything but glass bottles. For quality extract its not a bad deal. NB usually gets the shipment to you within 3 days of confirmation.
Nice to have aboard.
JB

Post by **JimPotts** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 6:39 pm

Whenever I've ordered from NB, I've gotten it the next day. Mind you, I usually place my order first thing in the morning. Regardless, UPS ground is just one day from Mpls to here.

-Jim

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 2:57 PM, jjbuck <brew-tech@crbeernuts.org (brew-tech@crbeernuts.org)> wrote:

Northern Brewer has the $7.99 shipping for just about everything but glass bottles. For quality extract its not a bad deal. NB usually gets the shipment to you within 3 days of confirmation.
Nice to have aboard.
JB

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BrewHound · Post by **BrewHound** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 7:20 pm

Not sure, but I think NB just changed shippers just ordered on Thurs at about 1AM. Didn't get here Friday, I was right about to get real pissed as I planned on brewing this Sunday. The went to check and it was being delivered on Sat.

So now it is 2 days shipping not one.

However, it was a small order and regular ground was only a dollar more so I took that. So I did not opt for the brew saver shipping which my very well still be UPS.

Brewing a dark belgian strong ale and imperal IPA if anyone is interested in droping by. I know it conflicts with Matts brewing, so it won't hurt my feelings if no one stops by.

JimPotts wrote:Whenever I've ordered from NB, I've gotten it the next day. Mind you, I usually place my order first thing in the morning. Regardless, UPS ground is just one day from Mpls to here.

-Jim

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 2:57 PM, jjbuck <brew-tech@crbeernuts.org (brew-tech@crbeernuts.org)> wrote:
Northern Brewer has the $7.99 shipping for just about everything but glass bottles. For quality extract its not a bad deal. NB usually gets the shipment to you within 3 days of confirmation.
Nice to have aboard.
JB

Post generated using Mail2Forum (http://www.mail2forum.com)

tony b · Post by **tony b** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 7:22 pm

Hey Hound,

Are these beers for the Millstream February cheese/beer fest? Believe it or not, both of these beers were on my short list for what I was contemplating making for it, but at the last minute changed my mind and am going with an Old English Ale. Hope to brew it next weekend. It will be my first time brewing with a yeast starter. So, I have some questions -

How many days before brew day do you start the yeast?

Also, what is the amount of DME & water needed for the wort in a 1000 ml batch?

BrewHound · Post by **BrewHound** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 10:29 pm

tony b wrote:Hey Hound,

Are these beers for the Millstream February cheese/beer fest? Believe it or not, both of these beers were on my short list for what I was contemplating making for it, but at the last minute changed my mind and am going with an Old English Ale. Hope to brew it next weekend. It will be my first time brewing with a yeast starter. So, I have some questions -

How many days before brew day do you start the yeast?

Also, what is the amount of DME & water needed for the wort in a 1000 ml batch?

Depends, if they don't taste like armpit they may make it out to millstream, will have to wait and see.

For a starter, I usually start mine 48 hours before brewing. enough time for them to build up well and still be active when pitching. Though it really depends on how big you need. Sometimes I do a double starter, if the beer is big enough. For those I do the 48 hour let settle out pour off liquid and add new chilled liquid to it.

The amounts here is what I use for a 1000ml starter.
4 oz of DME
800ML of water
Mulitiply this size out for the size of the starter you are doing, for the old english and 1 snap pack you should do at least 2000ML.

DrPaulsen · Post by **DrPaulsen** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 10:49 am

tony b wrote: How many days before brew day do you start the yeast?

Also, what is the amount of DME & water needed for the wort in a 1000 ml batch?

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

This is a great calculator to help you determine the appropriate size of a starter, based on yeast viability/age, type of starter, and size/type of beer you're making.

Regarding how much DME to use -- just remember that you'll want a starter in the range of 1.030 - 1.055. If you use Quarts instead of Liters (or just pretend that they're equal), it's incredibly simple, since DME provides about 10 gravity points per pound per quart of starter. A 1 Quart starter will require about 1/4 lb of DME.

Matt F · Post by **Matt F** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 2:02 pm

I do starters in a 5000 Ml flask and just make it however big Jamil's calculator tells me to make it. I do it the night before and pitch it the next day when I brew. It is usually just 18 hours from start to pitch. When I pitch I have a very active culture and pitch the entire volume, no decant. I do this because the most active yeast are those in suspension. When doing this I have my first bubbles in less than a few hours. My process follows the instructions from Jamil's article about yeast starters in a Zymurgy a few years ago.

The NB shipping is simply, you can choose traditional UPS ground but pay the rate that use to be charged before the flat rate program. The flat rate program may use UPS but the processing is different thus lowering the cost. I usually have my stuff in 3 days or less with the flat rate. I just try to order several brews at once to take advantage of the shipping costs savings.

tony b · Post by **tony b** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 6:25 pm

Thanks for all the tips.

I had started with the Mr. Malty, but it didn't give me these 2 details - how soon, how much DME, only how much total volume of starter.

I had tried wading through all the chatter on the NB forum, but didn't want to read hundreds of posts to find what I was looking for.

See folks, this is what this club is all about. Helping you get answers to your questions PDQ.

Matt F · Post by **Matt F** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 12:04 pm

The basics are you can get what volume you need from the Mr. Malty calculator. The original gravity you want is 1.020. To acheive this gravity you need about 6 ounces (by weight) of DME to 2 quarts of water. I work in Metric for this one and the ratio is 10 to 1. 1 gram of DME for every 10 milliliters of final starter volume. So if you need a 2000 ml starter you put 200 grams of DME in your flask, top off with water (filtered, treated, etc...) to 2000 ml, boil for 15 minutes, cool in an ice water bath, pitch yeast. Pitch entire volume in to batch 12 to 24 hours later. I also throw in some yeast nutrient. I attached a pdf of the article I reference from the March/April 2007 Zymurgy.

brownbeard · Post by **brownbeard** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 2:09 pm

When I make my starters, I use half the volume of water for the boil. Then weigh the second half in ice. After the boil is complete, I pitch the ice into the wort. Usually, you can pitch yeast immediately. I generally use store bought ice for this.

Cedar Rapids Brewing Society