My favorite equipment upgrades under $100

Nothing here breaks the bank but they all helped immensely, getting a more consistent product and process

False bottom perforated mash manifold:

 I tried bazooka screens and a custom handbuilt PEX manifold before springing for one of these.  Not a single stuck sparge since.  A crystal clear lauter only takes 2-3 qts.

Refractometer:

I use this to mainly to cut the boil when I've reached target gravity regardless of volume.  This isn't ideal for every beer where hop addition timing is more important, but it can help you understand boil off rate better, and make those additions as well.

High quality cooling coil:

Most brewers start with ice baths, and soon buy a budget coil when they realize how poorly ice baths work. I recommend a better coil from the start- welded hose fittings, more surface area. This is a Jaded Brewing Mantis, I use an older discontinued Jaded Wasp model, but this looks comparable or improved

Waterproof probe thermometer

I burned through several non-waterproof $15 probes before realizing how wasteful, and often inaccurate they are. I use this Thermoworks ChefAlarm model.

Kamas Lake 8/20/2016

Kamas Lake is about a 2 mile hike from the Pass lake trialhead, which is just north of baldy pass and mirror lake, but south of highline trailhead.  The trail is well traveled, and clearly marked.  It's flat if not slightly downhill for the first mile, then gets a little steep the last mile on the approach to the lake. The Cuberants lake trail splits off at about the 1-1.5 mile mark, and is a great hike, probably would have done that one if we had more time

Backpacking Island Lake 7/16/2016

In 2011, there was so much snow in the uintas that we couldn't get in until mid July, so by coincidence, this trip was 5 years to the day of the last time I spent the night here

There was still considerable snow on the ground that tip, and we lost the trail a couple times becasue of it
This was 2011, you can still see snow on the far bank:

No boil-hops IPA

Brewed 6/11/2016

This is a take on the classic Bells 2 Hearted clone recipe, but the brew shop was out of crystal 40 so I grabbed something different:


11# 2 row
.75# patagonia crystal 55

No hops were added during the boil, only before and after:

FWH - 21g Apollo(18.5% AA)
Flame out- 28g apollo, 28g Mosaic(12% AA)
15min post flame out- 28g apollo, 28g Mosaic

US-05 yeast

OG 1.060

Backpacking Mohawk Lake 6/25/2016

I had gone to this lake about 5 years ago with my bother and have been wanting to return. It was a huge lake, and we had it all to ourselves.

Here's a pic from that trip:

Backpacking East Shingle Creek Lake 6/4/2016

The plan was to hit South Erickson lake, we closed out the season with a trip there last year and thought it would be neat to return.

Well, we went too early. The road was closed about a mile from the trailhead.
I can't tell if this guy was stuck or was just smart enough to know when to call it quits. Probably the latter, he was gone by morning:

Ultimate DIPA Tasting

Tasting my Ultimate DIPA 

This turned out pretty well, but not quite as well as I'd hoped

Appearance: slightly hazy, I didn't use finings because of the stainless dry hopper. I didn't want to gunk it up.

Aroma: Good, but one hop seems off.  my guess is the Amarillo, possibly the Mosaic. I've use much more Mosaic than Amarillo so that's where my money is.

Flavor: this is where this shines, the hop stand really comes through and presents a full, mouth coating immediate hop flavor. Fruity, piney, bitter.

Mouthfeel: A bit thin, I expected that based on the grain bill and mash schedule.  I was going for a classic 18th century IPA, which mush have had a very low FG

Overall Impression: Pretty good, not as good as I'd hoped.  I'm my own harshest critic, everyone else who's tried it has loved it.


What I'm changing next time:  Mashing a tiny bit higher, less bittering hops, swapping out to some more traditional american hops, maybe the 4 C's