science

A friend of mine at work, who knows of my great interest in homebrewing has procured some fantastic corning glass ported chemical reactors for use as fermentation vessels.

The reactors have reached retirement by way of chipped glass (minimal) ports and insufficiently repaired broken ports (seam is too weak to hold heavy apparatus). The smaller of the two is ~25L (6.4 gal), the larger is was a 50L (12.8 gal). In their prior life, they were used to create various peptides for use in the (human) medical device industry...so no worries about biocompatibility (or use for homebrewing.)

As you can see, there are several features of these reactors:

• volume gradations on the sides
• indentations/grooves on the sides that make handling that much easier
• flat bottoms (some reactors are round bottomed)
• heat resistant laboratory-grade glass...though I'd be VERY hesitant to put these babies over a direct flame. or even an indirect flame, for that matter.
• two small side ports, which accomodate my universal stoppers (these also have an indication on the tops, heat resistant to 140C (284F)...which makes them OK for boil sanitizing)
• one large central port, would make dry hopping that much easier
• included are two side port screw caps and one central port screw cap
• ***they are still made of glass, and if or when you drop 50L pyrex, they break.

Farmer JC

wellsir, I just put in the order for some two row barley, spring wheat and oat seed from Johnny's Seeds.

I will plant these at my garden plot. Alongside my hop rhizomes. So, beer has infiltrated yet another aspect of my life.

I do wonder if I'm paying through the nose for these seeds, but they are organic (rolling eyes). I have no idea what kind of yield I'll get, if any. But if nothing else, this small scale effort will give me some useful experience for the future (or lack of) larger scale growing of some of my own for true 'homebrews'. If I do get some viable yield from this, all I'll have to do is learn how to properly home-malt and home-kiln, which I'm sure is completely impractical and will yield a vastly inferior product vs. commercially available stuff.

Barley (Conlon) (OG)Item No. 989G
5 Pounds
Kame Oats (OG)Item No. 293G
1 Pound
Glenn Spring Wheat (OG)Item No. 292G
1 Pound