Dave May 12th, 2010
So after using An Analysis of Brewing Techniques
to help answer a question that one of my homebrew club members had about fining, I decided to check Amazon to see what kind of reviews the book has received. To my shock I found a pair of low ratings from a decade ago that seem totally out of place. How could such a great book that’s cited numerous times in other homebrew texts and the BJCP study materials have a 2 1/2 star rating?
I’ve posted a review here: An Analysis of Brewing Techniques Review
. If you don’t have this book see if you can track down a copy. If you do have this book I encourage you to post a review on Amazon to balance out the ones from so long ago. I’d love to see Brewer’s Publications revive this book for a new edition if possible.
Oh yeah, and sorry for not posting for a while 
. It’s been a busy year. Though just recently I had my Ordinary Bitter and Kölsch place in the first round of the NHC so they’ll be moving on to the big show. Both were recipes from Brewing Classic Styles: 80 Winning Recipes Anyone Can Brew
with tweaks to match my process and with built water.
Happy brewing!
Dave.
Dave March 31st, 2009
After doing a couple of dozen batches on my new sculpture and fighting with drifting mash temperatures most of the time I finally decided to swap back over to an insulated Gott cooler for my mash tun.
What a difference. I no longer had to pay attention to the mash temp, mess with pumps for my HERMS, run the stir motor on the hot liquor tank, or worry about grainbed compaction. Despite cool evening air temps the mash held within a degree over the course of the hour.
I really haven’t found a downside of this approach other than it means I have a surplus Blichmann Boilermaker mash tun for now. I’m going to run this way for a while and see if I can notice a difference in consistency on my beers and simplification on my brew day.
Dave.