Recent content by Darren Birkett

Monkey!

Yes indeed, it was already mentioned that my £1 ebay fridge is probably on its last legs! I'll see how long I can get out of it before replacing :D As it goes, after the conversation in this thread, and doing more reading on the forum around oxidation and oxygen ingress when cold crashing, I'm...

I definitely agree with that principle! But sadly, at least last time I checked, I couldn't find one near me. I also asked on (what I think is) the UK sister forum to this forum, and nothing.

yeah, I guess the decision is whether the extra faff outweighs the problems that [may] come with oxidation. I've certainly been getting off flavours in my beer that I want to eliminate, and I wonder if oxidation is one of the reasons (I'm not very good at identifying the 450 million billion or...

I know it's slightly OT, but I've been thinking about this a bit more. Would I be better just skipping the bottling bucket step and bottling straight from the tap on my fermenter (it sits just above the trub line usually) - using a line and bottling wand. The main reasons I use the bottling...

Point taken. I'll definitely look into using a balloon, thanks! Thanks yes, I have it hooked up to an STC-1000, so am able to ferment consistently. It's just the slightly higher temp for the cold crash I wasn't sure about. I'd have expected a fridge to get below 8ºC without having to...

Wow, never thought of collecting CO2 to feed back later on - I could attach a balloon to the rubber gasket where the airlock would normally sit. Having said that, I bottle using a bottling bucket. On transfer to that bucket, and then into my bottles, my beer is entirely exposed to the air which...

No, it's a basic bucket fermenter. I'm not even using an airlock because it wouldn't fit in the fridge if I did - just a bit of aluminium foil over the hole to allow fermentation gases to escape. I agree, but it cost me £1 on ebay so I can't really complain!

I acquired an old refrigerator that I've converted to a fermentation fridge. It's old and slow to get to temp, but it's fine with fermentation temps (around 18ºC, or 64.4ºF). If I try and use it to cold crash (testing with water in a ferm bucket), it takes 2-3 days and struggles to get below...

Awesome info, exactly what I was looking for I double checked. Magnum is £2.40 for 100g (and is the cheapest hops they do), and they don't even supply Admiral These are actually quite similar in approach, though as an extract brewer for now I'd be using just LME or DME for the malt. Thank...

Thanks everyone. It seems that Magnum is a popular 'base hop' to add bitterness without too much specific flavour/character, allowing later added hops to shine. This works for me :) ... in my local brew shop Magnum is £2/100g versus £6/100g for something like Simcoe. Some of what inspired...

I understand the concept of base malts and speciality malts, especially in the conversion of a recipe from AG to extract. Reading about hops, and the way in which bitterness/aroma/flavour are imparted at different temperatures...it seems that any hops added at FWH or start of boil will...

@Gnomebrewer just wanted to return here and say thanks again. I finally bottled this beer last night. I didn't bother adding any extra sugar even with the lower SG. According to the calculations, I got 86% apparent attenuation as it went from 1.056 to 1.008 (15 days + 6 days dry hop), giving me...

I did wonder about the possibility of just dumping some dextrose in there. I'm away now and unable to get to the fermenter until Wednesday. Given that the bulk of simple sugar fermentation will be done by then, and as I understand it the yeast will be into the stationary growth phase, I assume...

Ok great, yes I think I was below 80c fairly quickly, just slower as the temp got lower. Yeah, that seems to be a popular thing to do. I may just have to give it a go...though I was also reading about the no chill method invented on your side of the world to conserve water. Seems pretty...