Howdy…I live in Houston and brew outside year round with Natural gas. I carbon filter, boil and add distilled and water additions for hoppy beers mostly. My job is moving to Denver in 1 to 2 years. Is there anything I should look for in a house in Denver? I’d like to brew year round and brew with natural gas. (hate the propane trips).
I would look for a basement so that you can control your fermentation temps easier. Even if using temp control its nice if the ambient room temp is 60-70f year round. I live in a bilevel so the “basement” is really garden level which seems to stick around 75f in the summer. A lot of people have ac but I don’t think it is worth it for 2-3 months out of the year. Living in Houston, the dry heat will feel refreshing to you…
For natural gas you can probably just tap off the feed to the house? I don’t know much about that but my buddy put in a gas fire pit that way…
I have Denver water and treat it for brewing. I can post my report if you are interested.
I brew in my garage year round.
Will you be able to afford a house anywhere in Denver? It’s a pricey house market. I’m looking at a move myself in three years.
Yeah, I can afford a house but I’m not happy about paying 3 times what I would in Houston. It’s definitely a pay cut. I’m hoping for a correction or bubble burst prior to my move, but now they are talking about increasing interest rates…arghhhh…Thanks for the replies guys…
Water reports can vary widely across the front range, both city to city and season to season. Something to keep in mind.
we just moved to Castle Rock Co. a month ago from Seattle and were lucky to find a house (according to the locals),market is berserk here and they are building everywhere around us like crazy ,with projections of crazy prices just going higher due to lack of supply, seems to be a popular place to be moving to right now.
anyway we brought all our homebrew supplies down and have brewed our second batch already and have taken a class at the local homebrew supply here in town which as always is very helpfully . they do mention the moderately hard water and having to deal with it (filters and adding gypsum) and how it can fluctuate due to using various wells to supply the systems, its easily dealt with . our house was plumbed for natural gas and when we went to purchase a new BBQ we mentioned using NG instead of propane and were warned that due to altitude (6250ft) the NG wouldnt work as well (less BTU’s) ,we converted anyway and find the BBQ works just fine . so will try to convert my brew kettle burner to NG for an upcoming brew session and see how well it works (just another thing to think about ,i know we didnt), i like the idea of not having to keep purchasing propane bottles…
the basement (with floating floor?) seems to be working well to keep carboys in the 63-68 deg range during fermentation (though we are having a mild summer so far according to the locals, only a few days above 90) ,i do open windows in early AM to bring room temp down to 65-68ish and it doesnt rise much during the day (nice thing about here is it does cool off overnite). house has a nice covered patio to BBQ/brew under though its often quite windy (usually about the time i fire up to brew) and almost every day around 4pm a thunderstorm rolls thru ,so you definately want a covered/sheltered area if your brewing outside
It is a very mild summer here in CR and keeping my basement above 62 is a problem. In the winter it is impossible but upstairs is constant with the heat on at least. Hope you have stopped by Castle rock Homebrew supply. Helpful folks there. Lots of good beer here in Colorado. enjoy!
+1 for Castle Rock Homebrew. That’s where I learned to brew and they are great guys in there. I live in Highlands Ranch and the water is better here. A little hard but not too bad. They post water reports every quarter I believe which is nice.