Recent content by backhousebrewer

The flashlight was just so I could see where the surface of the water was on the outside of my opaque bucket.

Many of you are right, my mistake. I got misled by the difference between the Imperial and US units. So, it appears that my markings are slightly high, so my sharpie'd 5 gallon marking is actually about 5.2 US gallons. This would explain why the difference between my measured line and the...

I didn't have a gallon jug in my house, so I would have had to go 2 cups at a time with my measuring cup. Doing it by weight was faster for me. The only thing that took longer was explaining mass and weight of water at different temperatures... Lol. Btw, metric has the same issue with needing...

By the way... Notice that the first gallon marking was off by almost 0.5 gallon, then the rest of the markings were only slightly different. The major issue was that the markings were shifted down by about 0.5 gallons. The delta for each gallon marking was pretty minor compared to the offset.

I just measured the specific gravity and temperature of my tap water. It is 1.001 at 48 degrees F, and with the correction factor of my hydrometer to correct to 60 degrees F (subtract 0.0005 at 50 degrees F) it is extremely close to 1.0005 (neglecting the difference between 48 degrees F and 50...

It is, in fact, a Northern Brewer Bucket. I recently bought a scale, since I started doing partial mash recipes that weren't from kits. I put a large plastic bowl on my scale (accurate to 0.05 oz) and zeroed it. Then I filled the bowl with cold tap water while it was on the scale with 32 oz of...

After my first 4 batches, I started to wonder why all of my beers were coming in at a higher OG than I expected by around 5-7 points. I started out brewing by doing 3.5 gallon boils and topping off to 5 gallons, using the 5 gallon mark that was on the bucket I bought. One day, I measured the...

I searched through it for a PM recipe and the only thing listed was an extract recipe with steeping specialty grains. That's not a partial mash in my book because you aren't actually mashing anything or getting any base fermentables out of actual grain. I'm going to end up using the whole...

Thanks for the input guys. After looking into it I think I'll give that centennial blonde a shot. I'll just have to adjust the all grain amounts and boil volume to something I can manage with my equipment doing a partial mash. I'm going to try to keep the BG the same and add the extract at the...

Hi All, I've now done 3 extract kits with specialty grains, and one partial mash kit. I think I am ready to do my first Partial Mash brew starting from a recipe, where I go to my LHBS and buy all the ingredients, rather than going from a kit. This is where all of you come in. With the...

To everyone who posts here, I would like to thank everyone who posts on this website. I, like many, got a homebrew kit for christmas this year, and have just finished my primary fermentation of my first brew (Northern Brewer Irish Red Ale). I was excited, freaked out, calm, excited again...