Recent content by rjs3273

I am doing for a new fermenter at the moment, so the timing is perfect.

Everyone needs another thermometer. One for every room.

Thanks, Keg King.

This morning I started on a moderately odd experiment; a dark-ish, ordinary bitter with a lot of oats in it. Just after dough-in I was looking at it, thinking it looked pretty strange, when I realised I had forgotten to crush the grain. I guess it is going to be even more experimental than I had...

Hook Norton: I thought it looked rather familiar. I have driven by but never been in. And thanks for your numbers.

Is that Hook Norton in your avatar picture? It's a long way from Bergen County. Just running the wort off, no protracted draining/dripping and no squeezing, I pretty consistently measure 0.1gal/lb. I have been idly curious for a while what other folk get so it was good to hear your number. Is...

This sounds a lot like what I am seeing in primary at the moment. The fermentation has long ago finished and the beer tastes good but there is a solid crust of 1469 on the surface. It is like the krausen flocculated in situ at the top and formed quite a thick, solid cake there. Most of the yeast...

I agree (without any formal micro-biology training!) that with proper cleaning, persistence from one batch to the next ought not be an issue. As others say, the enzyme would not be replicating. However, something else you said definitely rings a bell with me. I have in the past done two...

I'll second that. Since I bought my own mill, my numbers have all been consistent. 95% conversion and 70% into the fermentor. Efficiency was much more variable when I bought crushed grain. Looking through my logs, when I noted a coarse or poor crush, it has correlated to lower efficiency.

I only did a full volume mash once and ended up with a lower overall efficiency. As I say, I only tried it once so I do not have any very convincing numbers to prove anything. For a 5gal batch, generally I mash with something in the range of 3-4 USgal and then do a couple of 1.5gal batch sparges...

Oh my. A 34 gal fermentor. I'm guessing that's not an HDPE bucket. Just this weekend I did my first ever super pale, rice adjunct, lager. I used a much simpler recipe than you are talking about though. It was roughly 60:40 malt and cooked rice, based on the recipe from the Briess website. It is...

My first shoots have just appeared above ground level today. The 2019 hop crop has begun! This is SF Bay Area though so very mild compared with much of the country. Last year was my first year and as others say, I did not receive and plant the rhizomes until well into April. They grew, but...

What a nice idea. I having a feeling I am going to completely fail on any useful suggestions, but I like the idea. It is tricky because you get used to what you know and see every day and often never realise it is unusual or unique. Just about everything these days seems to arrive at retail in...

Same here. With the mill over the bucket I never see dust escaping during the milling. However there is always dust stuck all over the mill and wherever I store it between brew days gets unbelievably dusty no matter how much I try to clean the mill off after use.

The general consensus has been to go easy on the hops and aim for much lower bitterness than traditional IPAs. That makes sense in theory, but never one to take anything for granted, I decided to ignore all advice and simply brew a couple of my normal recipes as split batches, half with the...