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+1 on the midwest groupon. 2 friends have gotten that and been happy with it. For under $70 you get two 5 gallon batches and all the equipment except for a stock pot.

As long as it is pushing out there is not much chance for anything to get in. If it is still going, get that blow off tube on there. If it is calmed down, clean up your airlock, put some fresh vodka or water in it. Relax and wait. I would say have a homebrew, but you said it's you first...

I bought a 25' 1/4 chiller and it was able to cool 3 gallons from boiling to 75 in about 15 minutes. Cost $34 from NYbrewing and came with tubing and hose adapters.

Everybody has their own way, or at least seems like. What works for me is using the priming sugar,purge with CO2 to seal it and letting the keg sit for 2-3 weeks. Then hooking it up at about 35 psi. But then I keep my kegs at room temp and serve through a refrigerated cooling tap system. With...

I, like you have a five gallon cooler laying around. For about $13 I turned it into a tun. From what most say it'll be fine for five gal batches of normal gravity beers which is all I plan for the near future. However when I do jump up to a larger cooler it will make a decent HLT or at least...

For a few, steel wool or scraping with a single edged razor would work. For tons of them I'd go with the wire wheel, just don't let them get too hot while your doing it.

From everything I've read it is up to the yeast how long it should take. The only way to tell is by the hydrometer readings, when it settles out (hopefully near your expected FG) and is stable for a few days, then it is ready to bottle. If you want you can let it go longer to let the yeast do...

I think also there is that "George Carlin quote" effect in writing the instructions. You figure out how little the average person knows about making beer. Then assuming you want to sell the kits "most" people - you have to aim the instructions at people that are only half as smart as the...

If you wanted to carb with sugar, you can put about 1/2 of the sugar you would use if you're bottling. Then just enough pressure to seal it. Leave it at room temp for a couple of weeks to condition and carb up. The hook up the CO2 to serve it. You'll want to pour out the first half pint or...

Yes, plastic ones. Ive used an old A&w bottle I cleaned real good and it works fine.

have read on here that if you are batch sparging and going right to boil, it is not as critical to have the sparge water in the 168-170 range. Going straight to boil gets you up to temp to stop the conversion process. It will have some effect on the solubility of the sugars though, hot water...

I like to bottle at least one PET bottle in each batch. That way you can just squeeze it to check the carb level. Once it gets nice and firm, you can throw it and some glass bottles in the fridge for a day or two and start drinking.

Tell her you want to keep a keg of carbonated water on-line from which you can have seltzer on tap and with syrups have anything from tonic to any soda by the glass. If you have kids it won't take long to save enough to pay for the keg.

One reason I use priming sugar when I keg and fill a dozen or so bottles from the keg then, using the keg as a bottling bucket. You need to plan ahead a bit to give the keg time to condition, but save some CO2 since you only need it to serve. And you have a stash of bottles for...

Have been wondering the same things (coming from the same engineer mindset). Am pretty sure I will be batch sparging for my first AG batch and have been worrying about whether I need to do a mash out, what sparge temp to use, etc. Thanks for those explanations on the process and what is going...

Ok thanks. I was thinking with a 5 gallon mash tun I would have to do 2 batch sparges. I should be able to tell how much more I need to add after the first sparge. Like you said the grains will already be soaked and whatever dead space there is filled, so I should get out what ever I put in...

OK was looking at the price/grain list for one of my LHBS. Does this look OK? 6 lbs weyerman light wheat 5 lbs weyerman pils 1 lb rice hulls 1 oz Hallertau @ 60, .5 oz @15 Safbrew WB-06 From the mash/sparge calculators I get about 4 gal for the mash, 6.5 gal for sparge for 8 gal of preboil...

I will probably try to get all those number down for the first batch. The losses should be fairly consistent so once I know how much water is lost it should be easier to figure the mash and sparge volumes for future batches. And it would be interesting, for me at least, to see how the gravity...

Thanks, I was figuring I would probably want to do a little extra sparging and come up with a little more preboil volume to account for my expected low efficiency on my first batch. looking at some of the on-line calculators and best guessing the losses I figure it'll probably take about 3.5...

Thanks. Will figure on getting about 70% and go from there. So looking on hopville's recipe calculator 6 lbs wheat 5 lbs pils .5 Rice hulls .75 hallertau @ 60 and .25 @ 15 with WLP300 should put me around 4.8% with about 12 IBU Does that sound like a reasonable Hefe? Wanted to try out a...