GuingesRock wrote:Send your beer in to competitions and get back to me Dave. It's not a perfect system but it's the best we have. It's not good enough to say "I make good beer and I'm happy with it" without endorsement from BJCP judges. As a supplier thank you for listening. Your objective is to sell, but start the struggles of competing and you'll learn how difficult it is and what's required. AND! it's very difficult. Don't eyewash people. Please learn. Please listen to what people need. It's tricky though. You need to find a market niche. What I need is stuff in stock when I need it, I need other than domestic malt, and I need hop union 1 oz N2 pillow packed hops. But that's just me and my needs. Someone else might need something different.EverwoodAveBrewShop wrote:I would debate this. First, reductones are a broad class of chemicals that have a number of properties, one of which is the ability to absorb oxygen. Reductones occur naturally in beer as they are produced during the kilning process of the malt. Roasting malts is, after all, carmelization of some of the sugars in the grain (the same type of carmelization that occurs with scorched wort). The issue is when fermented beer is exposed to oxygen, the oxygen can be absorbed by the reductones (and other chemical compounds) which in time can produce off flavours. (J. S. Hough, D. E. Briggs, R. Stevens, T. W., Malting and Brewing Science: Volume II Hopped Wort and Beer, Ch 23.3, page 872). So if you don't add excess oxygen to your beer reductones will not, by themselves, cause off flavours.GuingesRock wrote:19 is close enough to 20, but if you want to make good quality beer must have tri-clad base. Do they have that? I know Dave has some like that. I read something on gas flames with plain SS bases making hot spots (because poor conductivity of stainless) that produce reductones (plain English scorching wort) and it's screwing home brewers.
Second, it is just as easy to scorch wort in a kettle with a tri-clad base as it is a kettle with a single layer base. I have been using a 15 gallon kettle for a few years and after I figured out my burner, have not scorched a single batch. Your assertion that a tri-clad bottom will prevent scorching is misleading at best. What you should focus on is properly managing the heat source so scorching is prevented.
I sell kettles with single layer and tri-clad bottoms and I would rather send someone home with a kettle that works for them. Batch size, process and budget are always the main considerations. Yes, sometimes I think it would be nice to have dropped the $4000 I've spent over the years on a complete system. But I actually still use all of my gear depending on my batch size, time and mood. It wouldn't have mattered what equipment I started out with, it took time to understand proper brewing technique and I'm very happy I started small and worked my way into larger systems.
And, I never have used a boil kettle without a tri-clad bottom so I can't compare, but have read convincing evidence against that.
Mark, Tom wants to upgrade his kettle, period. He doesn't want to win the world over to his brewing skills. He want to go to bigger volume so that he can make bigger batches. Yes, we all agree that there are differences in products, manufacturing, procedures, profiles, the list goes on....... All Tom wants is a bigger pot!!
I'm off to bed. 
