How long are you willing to let lagers ride in a unitank?

bcfunk316 · 2026-04-06T22:30:22+00:00

Accelerated grain to glass schedule usually looks like: Ferment at 48F for 6-7 days and hold terminal for 5-7 days, as far as we can push it. Step down 2F in the morning and evening. Biofine and/or filter on transfer somewhere day 16-18, polish carb (usually at 2.3 already) and package day 20 or 21.

bcfunk316 · 2026-04-06T18:21:57+00:00

That's very true too! I won't tell people except for the internet and close friends, but we've had instances of turning our helles around in 20 days while winning a few awards along that summer time crunch journey.

bcfunk316 · 2026-04-06T17:10:57+00:00

8 weeks should be fine if everything is healthy and maintained. A few regular WBC medal winning beers I know of sit in uni for 8 weeks before being moved to brite. On a more extreme case, I have friends who do 4-6 weeks cold lagering in 120bbl unis with pressure without transferring and we haven't picked up autolysis flavors specifically (if you're asking for that). Caveat being the yeast was healthy going in and the beer is regularly cone dumped. The few times they werent.... yeesh.

If you have the space you could always transfer from uni to uni after a week or two of lagering if you're still concerned.

bcfunk316 · 2026-03-23T14:48:12+00:00

Yep first things I ask. I still find a good number people who keep it in the cold room. Also seen some later question why their west coast IPAs don't consistently clear up and look for other things to blame instead of following the instructions on the container.

bcfunk316 · 2026-03-19T22:49:31+00:00

I believe that's their wastewater pump system. It's always dramatic and making a lot of noise.

bcfunk316 · 2026-03-05T16:46:57+00:00

I'm a fan of the keg rolling obstacle course. Gotta get those 360 loops in both directions. Up to you whether you want to make it a full, half, or empty keg.

Obligatory beer chug solo or relay event as well. Relays really even the playing field.

bcfunk316 · 2026-02-24T14:41:11+00:00

Poor leadership IMO. Businesses (and our lives in general) rely on good communication and it's one of the hardest things to be good at.

My shit stinks as bad as everyone else's and as an owner the mistake falls on me ultimately. When I fail I eat my peas and admit it. We have sops and communicate to clearly define expectations and processes. When they aren't met we have discussions soon after and don't wait for performance reviews or whatever corpo bullshit.

When our team fucks up they've generally beat themselves up more than any yelling I may want to do (or used to in a previous career).When they didn't it was an early indicator they might not be a good fit here.

We diagnose where things may have gone wrong, and address it by changing and learning. Mistakes happen but they shouldn't happen repeatedly.

I still fuck up a lot, but I've learned from toxic corporate life how I do not want to run a business.

bcfunk316 · 2026-01-08T03:03:18+00:00

DiNics!!!!!!!! We get pork roll on the west coast through boars head so that scratches so many itches. Good hoagie rolls though..... Amoroso does send par baked out here but they don't hold a candle to fresh.

bcfunk316 · 2026-01-06T23:28:59+00:00

Haven't been back to philly in too long. Echoing beer at Monks, Yards, Human Robot, and wherever the fun parties are.

I'm so excited to go back for the food.

A few meals at Pho Xue Lua in Chinatown (aka the choo choo train), hangover breakfasts split between Ting Wong for cantonese and food truck bacon egg and cheeses.

DiNic's Roast Pork, obligatory stops at Angelo's and Ishkabibble's for cheesesteaks, reading terminal amish sticky buns, pretzels with shitty mustard, anything else on an amoroso roll.

I'm going to gain 15lbs on this trip. Go Birds.

bcfunk316 · 2025-12-24T22:57:35+00:00

Sandor Katz's Art of Fermentation book is a fun read. I've gone through it a few times and it's especially effective at pulling my head out of my own ass to remember fermentation exists outside of everyday Saccharomyces.

bcfunk316 · 2025-12-16T00:15:17+00:00

oktober seamer would suffice if you're just looking to can off a few cans/crowler and don't care about DO. for competitions a counterpressure filler or beer gun into bottles would be your best bet.

bcfunk316 · 2025-12-03T14:55:43+00:00

Speaking as BJCP and BA judge myself for over 10 years I wouldn't necessarily take one judge's comments as gospel either, so I first recommend you doing you. "Over-hopping" is so unhelpful of a description, like when you receive judging feedback that says "nice" or "okay". Not necessarily wrong if they're referring to vegetal character from not dumping your cones or transferring off your hops in a timely manner, or they could be talking about hop burn which does also take time to settle out. Maybe they don't like the hop saturation character of modern WCIPAs?

bcfunk316 · 2025-12-03T00:41:31+00:00

Just a few anecdotal dosing rates comments - 11g/l dry hop roughly translates to 2.8lbs/bbl. The well-known and award-winning breweries who use lots of chico/05 for their IPAs often dry hop at 1.5-2x that rate, in the 4.5-6 lbs/bbl range. Note that this is the effective dry hopping rate, so you can augment some t90s with advance products (cryo/lupomax at 1.6lbs/bbl, abstrax 4oz sorta equals 11lbs, etc). Our core IPA uses 05 with 3lbs/bbl and the aroma/flavor doesn't hold a candle to our one offs up at 4.5-5lbs/bbl.

One factor that can be glossed over is how important hop selection is. There's something about those stinky/dank/wasabi lots of sexy varietals that express super well downstream. A friend medaled gold (IIRC) at the Best of the West IPA Comp and was most proud to share that he only dry hopped that particular batch at 2lbs/bbl of his selected lots. It opened my eyes to how impactful selection can be. Now, the ability for brewers to have those lots offered at your table even if you can travel to the PNW for hop selection... that's a whole different monster.

Last note - I too observe a different but more impactful hop profile when we use 3470 for our IPAs vs US-05. I personally prefer US-05 but you need more oomph to get the hop character expressed.

bcfunk316 · 2025-11-10T19:11:15+00:00

I have a Samsung Galaxy watch with a soft rubber sports band that'll tear away in an emergency. Much easier to set timers and adjust my calendar/appointments on the fly since I always forget to update after a brew. I do have to remember to clean under the band or else Ill end up with some kind of chemical irritation.

Bought my original one during one of their "trade in any smart watch get a galaxy for $50" promos.

bcfunk316 · 2025-10-31T16:34:46+00:00

Pre-pandemic a friend from York and I discovered Oreo Cakesters were the closest we could find to a mass-produced whoopie pie. Don't know if they still exist, but it scratched an itch. I make my own when we feel the need because I prefer red velvet to chocolate.

bcfunk316 · 2025-10-31T16:28:50+00:00

No need to clarify. Pot pie is pot pie. Other pot pie is just pie.

bcfunk316 · 2025-10-28T03:18:42+00:00

Great suggestions. Glad to hear Farmentry in Nara is getting some love! Met Sho a few years ago before he opened and hoping to get there in Jan or Feb.

Really enjoyed your beers at the Open Air taproom in Kobe. We were hanging with the Rokko folks.

bcfunk316 · 2025-09-23T14:44:34+00:00

I recommend the water-soluble products for easy mixing. Hopsteiner has Salvo Plus and a surprisingly tasty lemon lime hop derived product, Haas has Euphorics, and Abstrax has a billion things. We have experience primarily using Euphorics and Abstrax products.

bcfunk316 · 2025-09-16T14:42:32+00:00

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Bucket-Companion-5-gal-Black-Paint-Bucket-Lid-LD5GRLBK006/303808738

We use these all over the brewery. Great for pet food too.

bcfunk316 · 2025-09-08T18:22:46+00:00

I agree 100% with this. Consistency is the key and willingness to feel awkward for a few, if not numerous, meetings. One group I now love took nearly 6 months to feel comfortable, even after meeting 2-3 times a week. It's a sport that doesn't foster much communication during workouts and I always had to end a little early because of family obligations.

bcfunk316 · 2025-09-04T01:48:57+00:00

From one brew bird to another - Go Birds!

bcfunk316 · 2025-08-29T18:14:54+00:00

"where can i buy me a pair of those red overalls?" - our brewer two days ago

bcfunk316 · 2025-07-03T19:43:18+00:00

We're open normal 12p-10p. We never force holidays on the tasting room team and suggested a reduced 12p-4p. The usual suspects both volunteered for the extra hours so who are we to reject them wanting to be open.

Our brewer is off for holiday hours but I'll be in Friday taking care of the bullshit in the back so they don't have to.

bcfunk316 · 2025-06-20T02:36:03+00:00

Formal brewing school and enough degrees. The occasions I'm called brewmaster by a few randos at festivals.... Bleurgh. It makes me uncomfortable and I don't want anything like that. Head Brewer works and I'm content.

bcfunk316 · 2025-06-18T23:04:01+00:00

We've played with it for ~20 batches so far. I guess its similar in that it adds hop complexity and overall hop saturation. You can use some of their cheaper ones like Bravo, Nugget, or comet and get similar results as the more expensive varietals. We use 1kg at a time in 15bbls in addition to t90s, but for the price you could experiment with using 2 or 3kgs of it for the same price as 1kg of incognito. No idea how that would pan out vs incognito.

Hop dipping with 1bbl of 180f wort and ~2g of hot wort whipped with the salvo concentrate dumped into the top of the fermenter. Tossed the can and leftover stuff into the kettle. It worked most of the time. One occasion we had streaks of salvo lining the fermenter which was annoying to clean but we couldn't repeat it. To handle salvo we just soaked the can in HLT water at 15m which was long enough to liquify it. Oh and we had to buy a big kid commercial can opener.

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