Viewing 40 posts - 601 through 640 (of 714 total)
  • Brewers of STW
  • peterfile
    Free Member

    Flippin’ ek! That’s a lot of building and a serious set up. A friend runs a brewery and said once you buy stainless FVs then you’re in trouble!

    It’s odd, it worked out cheaper than you’d expect (i’d decided from the outset that if it was likely to cost much more than a grainfather than i’d just buy one of those). I imported the pots directly from the manufacturer in Germany for £140 including delivery, then bought everything else I needed as I was building it. Most of it is just plumbing stuff!

    How long can you keep one yeast strain going? Do you put them on agar and freeze? How useful is the centrifuge and how do you use it?

    I just use centrifuge tubes for storage rather than an actual centrifuge.

    Storing in the fridge you lose around half the viable cells after 3 months, but because you can calculate the decay you can just adjust your starter to account for it, so you could keep the strain going indefinitely. I don’t harvest from the FV, simply overbuild a starter and decant the overbuilt cells. Brulosophy has a good guide, although I use a slightly different technique.

    I haven’t bothered with glycerin and freezing since I’ve not really got the freezer space at the moment, although it would be nice!

    My next process improvement will probably be sorting out fermentation temperatures by building a fermentation fridge. Will take your earlier advice on water analysis too.

    Getting your fermentation temps under control will make a huge difference. If you can, build/buy a thermowell (I got a bit of stainless tube and a local engineering company sealed off one end for the price of a beer) and I’m picking up beer temp rather than sticking the probe to the side of the fermenter.

    Playing around with temp profiles is really fun too. Raising temps gradually after initial ferm has settled down has helped my beers clear up. I’d recommend picking up a copy of Jamil’s “Yeast”.

    Same as you – my actual consumption is quite low. I won the local home brew competition which has nice.

    Mega congrats! That’s brilliant work! What beer was it? fancy sharing the recipe?

    Friday’s Belgian Dubbel went really well and is fermenting just now.
    Upcoming brews: Winter ale, oak infused Wee Heavy, Milk or Oatmeal stout.

    I’m not sure whether you’ve read it, but you’d probably enjoy “Radical Brewing” by the sounds of your upcoming brews. Not only is it a really well written and entertaining book, but it has some utterly fantastic sounding beers in it, all of which are a bit old/different/crazy. Definitely my favourite brewing book.

    Babies are up between 6 and 7am so my brewing needs to be at night but it would be nice to do morning brews. Set a new record of 3 hours from mashing in to closing the FV – biggest bottleneck now is waiting for the wort to start boiling on the kitchen stove!

    Yeah, since moving to the new kit it has been a revelation in terms of getting things up to temp compared to my old stove, but I’m sure I’ll miss being in my warm kitchen in my slippers by the time winter comes round 🙂

    teacake
    Free Member

    I don’t have the recipe to hand but it was basically one third Munich malt, 2 thirds Pale malt. A sack load of Cascade added 15 mins from the end to get 40 ish IBUs then dry hop for a week with Cascade. West Coast IPA I guess you’d call it?

    I’ll do the same again soon but using Simcoe for the dry hop (passionfruit – yum).

    I presume you are using stainless FVs then? I’m on 15 litre plastic buckets for 10 litre batches. What FVs are you using?

    I’m using a 15 litre pot, BIAB and doing two fly sparges with 75C then 80C water. I get good efficiency and a level of faff I am happy with.

    Thanks for the book recommendations and the yeast link. I’ll get reading. Two books I’m interested in: Mastering Homebrew by Randy Mosher (apparently he has lots of focus on how to design for taste/aroma as opposed to style) and The Art of Fermentation which looks at bread, chorizo, beer and other places fermentation is used and how.

    peterfile
    Free Member

    I love using munich in IPAs. I try to avoid crystal since i’m not too keen on anything sweet detracting from the hops.

    Simcoe is indeed lovely 🙂

    I use plastic “Better Bottle” style carboys for full batches or buckets for small batches, or 5 litre bottles for batches that I split up to experiment on.

    Stainless FVs aren’t really on the radar at the moment, so expensive for not a huge amount of benefit. I don’t mind binning plastic fermenters every now and then. I do quite fancy a conical though…but would settle for plastic.

    I never bother with a sparge when doing BIAB, efficiency was around 69% without one which I was fine with, just bumped up the grain bill a bit.

    Randy Mosher’s stuff is great!

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    singletrackmind
    Full Member

    We are using a 50mbar Propane reg at work on our shop casks.
    Provides a near perfect .7psi blanket of 70 / 30 and allows serving over several weeks.
    Just need a very accurate PRV set and forget at approx 1.5psi to vent any excess secondary feremntation CO2.
    Still need a primary reg off the gas bottle, but the propane jobby is fixed , and was £9 from the ‘bay.

    Currently brewing 5000gals of a very , very hoppy 3.8% . At the moment ( in CTs @ 8 days ) I am worried I might have overdone it and it will be undrinkable . Thing is it could be drunk in 6 weeks time, and will hopefully have massively softened by then

    Clobber
    Free Member

    Good work peter file, I’m genuinely impressed with your progress

    peterfile
    Free Member

    Thanks Clobber, but it’s not that impressive…the wonders of the internet meant I was never truly in new territory since some other poor bugger had always hit the same problems before I did and a solution was only ever a google away.

    I did realise a few things along the way…

    Q Max Cutters are a gift from the gods,
    no drip can get past 10 turns of PTFE tape,
    never assume that a cheap chinese relay will be put together correctly by the factory (I wasted 2 evenings thinking my brewpi wiring or coding was wrong before realising the relay was manufactured incorrectly),
    neighbours will think you’re building a meth lab and will become very curious and uneasy,
    a decent cable stripper is worth its weight in gold,
    drill slowly with lots of torque and pressure,
    John Guest fittings look like they won’t work but they do,
    a 10″ in line extractor is enough to pull the hops back out of your wort 🙂

    teacake
    Free Member

    Peterfile – what temperature sensor do you use for your Arduino and how is your thermowell situated/constructed? I presume it’s for your plastic bucket fermenters? Does it go in though the lid?

    Keeping my eye out for an old chest freezer as I’d love to be able to hit -1C for cold crashing.

    Cheers!

    peterfile
    Free Member

    teakcake, you’ll want two of these for probes.

    I bought about 40cm of 7mm inner diameter stainless tubing and had a local engineering company weld one of the ends. It then sits perfectly in the centre hole in a carboy cap like the one below.

    I’m using a 23 litre “better bottle”, which is basically a PET carboy.

    Let me know if you need a hand building/coding the brewpi, since it’s still very fresh in my mind. It’s easy enough.

    teacake
    Free Member

    Thanks for the info. I’m going to have a go at building a basic Arduino temperature logger first to get a feel for working with it. Then I’ll start building the brew pi part and source a freezer!

    The better bottle looks good from a hygiene point of view (small neck opening) but how easy are they to clean?

    peterfile
    Free Member

    I clean all plastics with a long oxi soak, since I’m always worried about scratching them. I’ve also got a spray head on my cleaning hose in the outhouse, which delivers a heap of pressure, so it’s useful for loosening things up first. You can get a soft brush that is designed for cleaning the inside of plastic carboys, but I’ve yet to find the need for it.

    I followed this DIY guide for the brewpi.

    peterfile
    Free Member

    I’ve put together the recipe I used for a beer that did well in a recent comp.

    EIP

    76% Maris Otter
    7% each of Brown, Pale Chocolate, Dark Crystal malt
    3% black malt

    I really like Chinook and Cascade combo with this, seems to work well.

    You’re shooting for around 60 IBUs, aim for your favourite IPA hop schedule. I used about 2:1 Cascade/Chinook, with 15 IBUs coming from first wort hopping with chinook and the rest are late additions. I also did a great big hop stand.

    Dry hopping was at 6g/litre.

    Yeast… US 05 is a slightly bizarre choice for this sort of beer, but it seems to work. It doesn’t help the malt much, but lets the hops stay a bit more defined. I’ve tried with with 04 and it just wasn’t the same…tasted confused and muddled. Follow whatever temp profile gives you good results with whatever yeast you use. Dry hop for 5-7 days and then cold crash.

    I shoot for a 67-68 mash, at around 5.3 pH.

    I can give you the water profile I used if you want to dip into balancing your own profile.

    This needs a bit of time in the bottle to settle down and come together, I’d say around two months. The hops have dulled a bit, but it’s needed to let the malts come together IMO. If you drink much before this it can be a bit harsh.

    ransos
    Free Member

    I currently have some rhubarb wine fermenting away, apple wine this week and a Woodforde’s Nelson’s Revenge kit next week, should be ready for Christmas.

    teacake
    Free Member

    Just wondering if anyone here aerates their wort and if so how?

    As I am syphoning out of the kettle, the wort falls out of the syphon and into the fermenter. Will this be sufficient or should I do more?

    Currently have an Oatmeal Stout and a California Common fermenting away. Belgian Dubbel bottled 3 weeks ago tasting good. Too good. It’ll be gone by Christmas – or given away to guests.

    Thats the curse of homebrewing – you give all the best stuff away and have to drink whats you’ve messed up!

    Garry_Lager
    Full Member

    I splash the wort out of the kettle tap into the FV which is fine IME – Siphoning might be sufficient if there’s a bit of turbulence and disruption to the flow – I wouldn’t gently siphon the wort into the bottom of the FV, think it needs a bit more motion.

    Have one in the secondary atm using hops from my garden – bit of an experimental one as the IBUs were a total guess, and I’m not even 100% on which variety I was adding, so time will tell. Should get another one on this weekend for some Christmas bevvying.

    peterfile
    Free Member

    You can pick up a little spray attachment that goes on the end of your siphon tube for a few pounds.

    Wyeast have some basic info on their website giving stats for the main methods of oxygenation.

    You’re aiming for 10ppm. A siphon sprayer will give you 4ppm and shaking the carboy for 40s will give you 8ppm. I shake.

    You can’t get above 8ppm using any method other than pure o2 injection.

    teacake
    Free Member

    I’m going to get a brew on this Friday night – Belgian Witbier with Christmas spices. Aiming to be subtle with the flavours – not in yer face spicey.

    Was going to use malt and torrified wheat but a brewer friend recommended not using 100% torrified as it smells like cat pee.

    Any experience/advice for using spices and/or torrified wheat?

    Also need to bottle a star anise stout – hoping for some subtle licourice but it’s been in secondary far longer than I planned.

    Cheers!

    ransos
    Free Member

    You can pick up a little spray attachment that goes on the end of your siphon tube for a few pounds.

    That could be useful for winemaking. I had a problem with hydrogen sulfide in my grape wine – it seems to have been solved by racking it twice and giving it a really good splash into the demijohn.

    peterfile
    Free Member

    Any experience/advice for using spices and/or torrified wheat?

    Not sure on torrified wheat…but in terms of spices, grab a bottom of not too hoppy pale (either your own or bought), ideally with little flavour!

    Add spices to the bottle and drink. Simple but gives you an idea of what to expect in the finished product and can highlight what works together and what does not.

    Also, have a read at Radical Brewing (my favourite brewing book by far, brilliant read!), since he talks a lot about spice additions.

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    Was going to use malt and torrified wheat but a brewer friend recommended not using 100% torrified as it smells like cat pee.

    I’ve always use flaked wheat in a wit. Have used torrified in beers but only a small amount for head retention, probably not enough to make a difference to the taste. Never heard of any grain having a “cat wee” smell/taste although some hops apparently have this characteristic (not really the description I’d use though!)

    teacake
    Free Member

    He recommended pouring boiling water over a handful of the grain and see how it smells. Will report back . . .

    duckman
    Full Member

    Morning;
    I have an Amazon voucher to use and was going to invest it in a homebrew kit.

    Has to be amazon,so any improvement on this for an American IPA starter kit?

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00O48ASRO?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_1&smid=A5O4Z8HIP2FM4

    Thanks,Stuart

    Garry_Lager
    Full Member

    Morning;
    I have an Amazon voucher to use and was going to invest it in a homebrew kit.

    Has to be amazon,so any improvement on this for an American IPA starter kit?

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00O48ASRO?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_1&smid=A5O4Z8HIP2FM4

    I think you could do a bit better than that tbh, doesn’t seem to be offering more than you’d get if you just walked into a brew shop and bought stuff. I mean bottles in a starter kit isn’t much of a feature – any serious drinker has a load of empties piled up in the recycling every week.

    Garry_Lager
    Full Member

    I have a brew that’s been sitting in the secondary for one month – well longer than planned (it had 1 wk in the primary). Does that sound excessive to folk? [it’s just a normal pale ale]. Should really bottle it tonight, but it’s a lot of effort if it’s starting to deteriorate.

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    Try some. I’m sure it’ll be fine. If it’s not, you’ll know. 🙂

    It does sound excessive, but I’ve left beers for that long (or longer) due to business/laziness, and they’ve turned out alright!

    peterfile
    Free Member

    I have a brew that’s been sitting in the secondary for one month – well longer than planned (it had 1 wk in the primary). Does that sound excessive to folk? [it’s just a normal pale ale]. Should really bottle it tonight, but it’s a lot of effort if it’s starting to deteriorate.

    Assuming everything is sanitary, the only thing you might notice is diminished hop character, but at only 4 weeks in secondary it won’t have changed much at all.

    IMO though there’s very, very little benefit to secondary for a pale (other than maybe additional clarity, but still not as good as cold crash or fining), and you introduce a number of potential problems by transferring. It’s one of those techniques that the pros do and so it’s made its way into the homebrewing world but it’s actually not needed for us in most situations.

    For a sub 5% pale with a chico strain yeast, I’d hold it cool until just after it hits FG and then slowly ramp up the temp over a couple of days to let it finish up. I leave those types of beers for about 2-3 weeks in primary, cold crash and then straight to bottle/keg.

    Garry_Lager
    Full Member

    Thanks – I’ll get it done and see how it turns out.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    Just bought some Corny Kegs 😀 £100 for three on ebay, then as usual with these things found a shop selling them for £90/3 whilst searching for disconnects etc!

    To those of you who keg, am I right in thinking that all I need initially is

    CO2
    Regulator
    Reinforced hose
    Gas Disconnects
    Combined tap/disconect

    And (after initially pressurizing the keg to 10psi to seal the lid) I can leave it to secondary ferment and carbonate naturally in the corner of the kitchen, put it in the garage to cool and only hook upto the CO2 to serve? The full on Keezer setup with secondary regulators will have to come later, as paychecks allow.

    ——————————————————————————–

    Entirely separate 2nd question.

    The kegs are the result of now having enough space to play around in, so I’ve also now got space to build a cheap all grain setup, apart from following the £100 Brewery guide on instructables with a few tweeks. Does anyone have any pitfalls they’ve experienced to share? I’m skipping the BIAB stage and going straight from dry hopped kits because SWMBO didn’t want it in the kitchen! Most looking forward to brewing some Imperial/double/west coast style IPA’s, so big grain bills and a lot of hops, hence bigger buckets*.

    Probably left this all a bit late to brew for Christmas (might squeeze a kit in), but at least I can ask for a lot of stuff from Santa!

    *I did find some cheap 60l polypropylene buckets, but that might be a bit excessive!

    allthepies
    Free Member

    Keep the cornie fill level to below the gas-in dip tube 🙂 Stops beer being forced into your regulator if you connect up a pressurised keg to a non-pressurised regulator (I know this from experience 😆 ). Or fit a check-valve on the gas-in line for belt and braces.

    ransos
    Free Member

    I have a brew that’s been sitting in the secondary for one month – well longer than planned (it had 1 wk in the primary). Does that sound excessive to folk? [it’s just a normal pale ale]. Should really bottle it tonight, but it’s a lot of effort if it’s starting to deteriorate.

    I left my last brew in primary for 3 weeks (Woodforde’s kit recommends 6 days!)due to life getting in the way, and it was absolutely fine. I transferred to a pressure barrel to batch prime it, then bottled. It has cleared far quicker than previous brews, and tastes pretty damn good. Don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but I’m going to brew this way in the future.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    Presumably as long as it’s sterile then it should be fine.

    I’ve got 3 demijohns of wine on the go, they’ve been in secondary for 2 months now, primary for wine is a bit different, the grapes stay in the barrel for ~5 days to release the sugar/flavours and begin fermenting, then you syphon and strain it into demijohns to finish fermenting. There was still more un-fermented sugar in there when it went into secondary than in most wort’s (and the yeast was in suspension). Leave it in primary too long and the grapes begin to impart off flavors (apparently they rot, but given the amount of Campden tablets that go into wine I’m not so sure that’s possible!).

    Time to bottle it and try it next week, need to judge if it’s drinking wine or mulled wine to be given away as Christmas presents!

    peterfile
    Free Member

    To those of you who keg, am I right in thinking that all I need initially is

    CO2
    Regulator
    Reinforced hose
    Gas Disconnects
    Combined tap/disconect

    Regulator – keep an eye out for an old Coca Cola gas management board, they are just perfect for kegging. Multiple regs and tons of connections. They come up regularly on ebay.

    Buy all new seals for your kegs (lid, post and dip tubes). They are cheap and depending on what has been stored in them, essential. For the sake of a couple of quid, replace them and start from a clean slate.

    Get some PBW or bar keepers friend and a toilet brush (new) and give them a really good clean or three. I dumped my first kegged batch because even though I’d scrubbed and soaked for days, it still had residue from the syrup that was previously stored in it. Get a dip tube brush for the same reason.

    And (after initially pressurizing the keg to 10psi to seal the lid) I can leave it to secondary ferment and carbonate naturally in the corner of the kitchen, put it in the garage to cool and only hook upto the CO2 to serve? The full on Keezer setup with secondary regulators will have to come later, as paychecks allow.

    You could do that, but you’ll need to have a think about your temperatures. co2 is more readily absorbed at lower temps so your carbonation will vary depending on where you put it.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    You could do that, but you’ll need to have a think about your temperatures. co2 is more readily absorbed at lower temps so your carbonation will vary depending on where you put it.

    I was thinking for fermentation rather than carbonation, if the beer’s in the keg with just enough to seal the lid, then most/all the CO2 from fermenting will stay in the liquid (like bottling)?

    Might give forced carbonation a go for a very hopy IPA, but I’d rather do things ‘right’ rather than copy commercial methods to speed things up for brews that don’t need to be so fresh.

    Kegs are coming from a homebrewer, so should be clean.

    ransos
    Free Member

    I’ve got 3 demijohns of wine on the go, they’ve been in secondary for 2 months now, primary for wine is a bit different, the grapes stay in the barrel for ~5 days to release the sugar/flavours and begin fermenting, then you syphon and strain it into demijohns to finish fermenting. There was still more un-fermented sugar in there when it went into secondary than in most wort’s (and the yeast was in suspension). Leave it in primary too long and the grapes begin to impart off flavors (apparently they rot, but given the amount of Campden tablets that go into wine I’m not so sure that’s possible!).

    Me too: one grape, one apple and one rhubarb, all from the garden. The rhubarb was a bit different – left to macerate dry in sugar for a few days, then the leached juice was transferred to a demijohn with the yeast added to start fermentation. The grapes were pressed to release the juice, then transferred to a demijohn with sugar, yeast & nutrient. Apple was fermented on the chopped fruit in a clean bucket before transferring: it’s the least successful of the three, as I don’t think I left it in primary long enough to get the flavour out of the fruit.

    All three had grape concentrate and pectolase added, though the rhubarb has still thrown a haze and will need finings. I’ll be bottling in the next week or so – I sampled them last night and the grape and rhubarb taste pretty good, with the apple probably heading for cooking wine.

    peterfile
    Free Member

    I was thinking for fermentation rather than carbonation, if the beer’s in the keg with just enough to seal the lid, then most/all the CO2 from fermenting will stay in the liquid (like bottling)?

    Might give forced carbonation a go for a very hopy IPA, but I’d rather do things ‘right’ rather than copy commercial methods to speed things up for brews that don’t need to be so fresh.

    Triggering that second fermentation in the bottle (by priming with additional sugar) is carbonating the beer, so I just mean that you’ll need to adjust for temperatures when priming (e.g. the priming sugar addition is very different depending on whether you cold crashed or not).

    Force carbing is a breeze though and you’ll end up with a much clearer beer (particularly if you fine). I just hook mine up at serving pressure and leave for two weeks.

    Now that you’ve got co2 and kegs, you can do closed co2 transfers from the carboy to the keg, meaning that your beer won’t come in to contact with oxygen from when you start fermenting to the moment you pour yourself a glass. This has a HUGE impact on lighter styles…they all just taste so fresh and incredible! Basically all you are doing is using your co2 to push the beer from the carboy into the keg. I can post some pics of my set up. It’s super easy and there’s no faffing around with siphons etc.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    Pics would be good, I presume that means you ferment in pressure barrels rather than buckets?

    Do you oxygenate the wort before it goes in the fermenter then, or do you have to go mad with the yeast starter?

    Just put a cheeky offer in on a Britvic gas management board on ebay and a post on freecycle for a chest freezer………….

    I’ve worked my way through cheap kits + sugar, through brewing sugar, DME and various extracts and dry hopping to the point where my brew tastes good enough that if I give a few bottles away or serve it in a glass no one can guess which is home brewed and which is bought. But it still has a distinct (but not as strong as it was with Geordie/John bull style kits) homebrew ‘tang’, trying to figure out if it’s the yeast being stressed or oxygen getting in during bottling.

    ransos
    Free Member

    But it still has a distinct (but not as strong as it was with Geordie/John bull style kits) homebrew ‘tang’, trying to figure out if it’s the yeast being stressed or oxygen getting in during bottling.

    What water are you using? I’ve seen suggestions that the tang is due to chlorine in mains water… half a crushed campden tablet being the solution. I tried that with my last brew and I can’t detect a tang, but not exactly a scientific trial.

    peterfile
    Free Member

    I’ve worked my way through cheap kits + sugar, through brewing sugar, DME and various extracts and dry hopping to the point where my brew tastes good enough that if I give a few bottles away or serve it in a glass no one can guess which is home brewed and which is bought. But it still has a distinct (but not as strong as it was with Geordie/John bull style kits) homebrew ‘tang’, trying to figure out if it’s the yeast being stressed or oxygen getting in during bottling.

    I’ll post a few pics of my set up tonight.

    If I’m using liquid yeast then yes, I oxygenate/aerate the wort before pitching. Nothing fancy, so I’m getting no more than 8ppm (the target is closer to 10ppm, but I’m not yet convinced by blasting with pure o2 since too much can be just as harmful as not enough).

    Those gas management boards are great, I managed to pick one up for £50 and it has been faultless.

    Re the homebrew tang, there are a few things that could be causing it, but most likely it’s all of them together. I’ve heard that DME can produce a distinctive taste and depending on the yeast you use (and how you use it!), that could exacerbate it.

    Everyone knows about temp control being important, and it is, but equally important is pitch rate and yeast health.

    If you’re using dry yeast it’s not so difficult, since it’s far less reliant on good aeration. But unless you’re properly hydrating the yeast before pitching you are losing up to half of the viable cells…meaning that even in a 1.050 beer you’d be underpitching, leading to stressed yeast. The companies who make the kits and the yeast don’t like to make too big of a deal about the efforts you need to go to to ensure good yeast health because part of their marketing strategy is ease of use.

    For liquid yeast you almost always need a starter and you definitely need good aeration. It’s much more fickle than dry yeast, but you get an incredible amount of choice.

    But above all, IME, it’s absolutely everything together that makes a “flawless” beer. I’ve brewed beers with simple ingredients, simple process and a single pack of rehydrated US05 that have been judged in the high 30’s and low 40’s by BJCP…so it’s nothing fancy that makes the difference.

    For me, the key things to focus on are:

    Proper pitch rate (using an online calculator) of healthy yeast

    Solid temp control during fermentation, with the ability to ramp up the temp after the end of active fermentation to allow the yeast to finish up

    Limited exposure to oxygen after fermentation

    Fresh ingredients (ie try to avoid using grain that was crushed a month ago)

    Basic attention water chemistry really helps, particularly with light/hoppy beers (this was the thing that took my IPAs from good to great IMO)

    Fast chilling times

    Cleanliness obviously

    allthepies
    Free Member

    +1 to rehydrating dried yeast prior to use. This also has the advantage of allowing you to verify that the yeast is “good” prior to pitching i.e. it’s showing some signs of life. Otherwise you won’t know until 24 hours or so later.

    I brewed an attempt at a Tring “Sidepocket for a Toad” clone on Saturday, fermenting away like a good un in my temp controller brew fridge* currently.

    * in heating mode with a 45w tubular heater controlled by an ebay temperature controller unit.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    Basic attention water chemistry really helps, particularly with light/hoppy beers (this was the thing that took my IPAs from good to great IMO)

    Might have to give this a go. In the SE, so seriously hard water, although we’ve just moved house and supplier from Southern to Thames which seems to be much softer (Southern would completely block a showerhead in a matter of weeks).

    peterfile
    Free Member

    Might have to give this a go. In the SE, so seriously hard water, although we’ve just moved house and supplier from Southern to Thames which seems to be much softer (Southern would completely block a showerhead in a matter of weeks).

    If you want to make it easy for yourself (balancing water yourself isn’t that easy), pay Murphy and Sons £20 and have them analyse your water.

    You’ll get a proper report back (so no guessing from out of date water company reports) and they provide suggested adjustments for different styles.

    On top of that, the lab manager is a home brewer and wonderfully helpful if you have queries.

    Water makes up the main ingredient in your beer, so it’s a good place to start!

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