a refractometer reads pre fermented wort accurately. The refraction of light on the fermented wort is distorted once there is alcohol involved. northern brewers refractometer calculator works awesome for converting it.
So after playing with all available supplies I crafted an easy way to chill your wort with Floridas hot ground water. i hooked a wort chiller to an aqarium pump and stuck the hot wort in a larger bucket with water. i start with pumping the regular water through the wort chiller and out onto...
Well if you want to use glass you can stuff the bag into the carboy and keep the top of the bag out of the carboy and fill it.. you would just have to break the bag to get it out after racking from secondary. You do want to minimize headspace but Ive mostly just used buckets since I brew once a...
The other alternative would be to just put the coffee and oak chips directly in the carboy without the bag and just use the racking cane to transfer to the bottling bucket or prekeg bucket. Its messier but easier. Or do what i do and use thr bags and a plastic bucket for secondary. Way easier...
Hey I am moving to Naples from Tampa :( in July and was thinking the same thing. I brew once or twice a week and for one am scared I won't find a place to buy my grains down there. I would love to start a club though. Maybe bulk order grains hah.
I recently used oak chips and soaked them with just enough scotch to absorb it all. It turned out awesome after throwing in a hop bag in secondary for a week.
all you can do is try it in a week when transfering to secondary and if its sour or smells like socks then its probably no good :$. Im crazy about sanitizing and still had one sour batch before so if yours works out it will be amazing hah good luck!!
Chilling the beer quickly mostly is for preventing chill haze from proteins and also to prevent bacteria infection. Have you noticed your beers being more hazy from not chilling?
I would use a full pound of carapils and use a ounce of citra at the end of the boil, plus maybe a bag of whole leaf citra as well. I would use cascade at 60 and 30
beersmith has been pretty good for me as far as reaching my target gravity. Sometimes not. I mostly fixed the problem by creating my own equipment profile based on everything I use.