Recent content by CarboyBoy

I'll try to address some of your questions in this post and your previous one. When I input someone else's recipe, I include not only all the ingredients but also as much of their process and equipment setup as they specify. For example, I brew a lot of the recipes from Brewing Classic Styles...

I wouldn't say you were well under the 1.33-1.5 qt/lb that a lot of people use. Your last two batches were at 1.28 and 1.21 qts/lb, which is very close to what most folks do. I myself tend to do 1.5 because I find that thickness easier to work with. My advice is to try different rates between...

I have 3 kettles in my brewhouse, depending on the size of the batch I'm making. I've boiled water in each of them for an hour and measured how much got boiled off, but when it came to boiling wort, the boil off rate for each of them was different from the water test, though they were certainly...

kcbeersnob, I see from a previous post of yours that you may be one of the club organizers! Plan to see me next month.

I'm pretty sure the recipe file actually sits in the cloud, and the computer and iPad each connect to it. So, your iPad and computer don't sync with each other - they sync with the recipe on the BS server. There should be Refresh buttons on each device if you want/need to do so manually. I did...

They will sync if you have the recipes in your cloud folder.

The opened pouch the hops came in goes into a vacuum sealed bag, then back into the freezer. I use the vacuum bags that come on a roll, so I size the bag big enough to last 3 or 4 uses. I've used hops stored in this manner up to a year, and the hops are just as aromatic and the bittering I get...

I like the spaghetti sauce analogy. What about this scenario: Yooper makes a world renowned spaghetti sauce using only tomato sauce, oregano, basil, and bay leaves. I know that my herbs are roughly the same as hers, but my tomato sauce is much more acidic - that is, I get more acidity from my...

Thanks for taking the time to explain that way of thinking, Yooper. It does make sense. Seems like it comes down to trying to keep the specialty malts in proportion with the other grains versus keeping them in proportion to the batch size. Keeping the specialty grains in proportion to the batch...

I'm with the OP - I've been trying to get a handle on this for quite a while now, and I still don't know what's best. My confusion is not so much with the base malt as with the crystal and roast malts. In Yooper's example, at 75% efficiency for 1.048 OG you'd have 7.7 lbs. base malt and 6.8 oz...

+1 to the aluminum foil. I did a 3-gallon batch last night, and my total mash volume in my 5-gal drink cooler was just under 2.5 gallons. With the foil, I lost maybe a degree or two.

What did they check the mill for? Did they just check to see if the gap is where it normally is? Also, are you getting inconsistent OG's (assuming consistent volumes), or you're just consistently below your target gravity?

Out of curiosity, why has the crush been ruled out? Mash pH and mash thickness (among other factors) will affect mash efficiency, but not anywhere near as much as the quality and size of the crush.

+1 on the goal of consistent efficiency rather than higher efficiency. I was getting widely varying efficiency results from the crush at my LHBS. The most extreme example is that in two consecutive purchases, I got 83% on the first batch and 63% on the second. I bought my own mill not so I...

Proportionally, water makes up the same amount of the final product as in larger batch brewing, so if you have need to adjust your water to hit proper mash pH or for flavor ions in a 5-gallon batch, you'd need to do the same for 1-gallon batches.