Suburban Brewing

On Thursday during my lunch break I drove to  the newly opened Aristan Homebrew shop in Downingtown, PA.  As many of you may know it was pouring most of yesterday and I expected my ride from Malvern to Downingtown to be a slow one. Fortunately that was not the case and I made it in about 20 minutes. Upon walking into the shop I was impressed how well it was organized and stocked. I had a short list of items to pick up and found most of them rather quickly. Mike has the largest yeast selection I’ve ever seen. He has two refrigerators with one of them dedicated to White Labs strains while the other one housed smack packs and other varieties.  Since I exclusively use White Labs yeast seeing such a large selection made me very happy. I picked up Cry Havoc and Burton Ale yeast both of which were very competitively priced, actually they were the cheapest yeast as compared to 2 other local brew shops. I also purchased 4 bags of PBW as I can never keep enough of it on hand, I think I’ll need to get an 8 pound bucket of it soon and I purchased two carboy handles. In terms of malts  Mike has a very nice selection of specialty grains and extracts. I was surprised that for a brand new shop he even had MO on hand. For those who don’t have their own grain crusher there is one at the shop, and yes it is powered by a drill so you can crush your malt right on the spot or ask Mike to do it for you ahead of time.

As stated earlier the store is very well stocked, even though Mike mentioned there is more stuff on the way. I really like that everything is organized so nicely and without clutter. I do like the fact that he is open until 7pm during the week so those of us who work late can still make it in time to pick some last minute items before brewing. I am an equal opportunity type of guy so I will surely frequent this shop along with two other ones that are in my area. Overall I’m very happy to see another LHBS opening and would highly recommend Arisan Homebrew to anyone living in its vicinity.

Artisinal Homebrew
128 E Lancaster Avenue,
Downingtown, PA 19355

610-873-HOPS (4677)

Store Hours:
Tuesday – Friday:   11:00 am to 7:00 pm
Saturday:           10:00 am to 5:00 pm
Sunday:             12:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Monday:             Closed

I’ve decided to get a 10 gallon Polar Ware pot (with false bottom, 1/2 ball valve and thermometer port) as my mash tun. I know size is always an issue but since I will be brewing alot of batches I don’t want to waste too many ingredients if a batch turns out undesirable. Utilizing a 10 gallon pot will be perfect for 5 gallon batches and should give me enough room to prevent boil-overs. I’d hate to sound negative but I’ve become disappointed a bit with my local Home Brewing Stores. I called 4 stores today and none stock the type of pot I described above. Now I would really like to support my LHBS but if they don’t stock merchandise what else can I do? With some online retailers offering $7.99 flat shipping and no tax plus stock  availability how can you go wrong? It looks like my 10 gallon mash tun will be coming from Texas.

4 x 6.5 gallon Carboys

We left Drexel Hill at 6:30pm today and drove to Columbus, NJ to buy these jugs at Rubino’s. They advertised Italian carboys for $35 per bottle on their website, which is a heck of a deal. Knowing how expensive shipping would be I figured it would be cheaper to take a ride to Columbus and pick them up. I remember seeing carboys for $60+ when the only manufacturer of them in North America shut down few months ago. Since then a new supplier was found in Italy and prices have been dropping steadily.

Rubino’s was the only place relatively close to me that had 6.5 gallon glass carboys in stock and they were willing to stay open past their 7:30pm closing time while I was en route to their shop.

So why did I buy 4 of them? I’d like to brew and ferment 3-4 batches at a time. Doing this will also allow me to make slight variations or alterations in the recipe and see which one produced the best results. Depending on how things progress I may buy 2 more carboys in the near future and brew 5-6 batches at a time.