JiBiru8

Recipes 

Awesome, thanks. Looking forward to it. I bottled a batch this morning, and even with my wife helping, it's not the most fun thing to do.

12ozrebel

Recipes 

Ah yes, bottling is a pain in the butt, my dog always wants to drop her ball and bowl over a few whenever we would bottle. Any of you guys been to Cafe Hopman in Chigasaki? We are supposed to meet some friends there on Monday but after looking at the prices Im not so sure, I'd much rather go to Yokohama and hit all the Tap rooms around there and not go broke drinking beer.
12oz

WhoZiT

Recipes 

At least the wife helps...

The actual bottling part isn't so bad, it's the prep. The real deciding factor for me was not being able to get bottles warm enough for conditioning in late winter. I had stored some in the greenhouse. Just, here, inside the house can be even colder than out.

I asked at the local liquor shop that tailors to restaurants and such if they rented out servers. He actually let me borrow a whole setup for nothing until I got my own. I did eventually buy 1 keg from him as a thanx...

__________________
--------------------------------------------------

"Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things." --George Carlin

Ogri

Recipes 

Practically all of my bottle conditioning is done in the bottom section of the oshi-ire ( in our wa-****su ). Laid an adjustable, temp-controlled, electric blanket on the floor. Some old wine crates on that with the bottles in the crates and an old duvet over the top. Works a treat and easy to keep at 20 to 22C.



Some of the best people I've ever come across here where when touring by motorbike and camping over in Shikoku. Just outside Kochi city, camped by a river with a big typhoon headed our way, and this guy comes over to us out of the blue, a volunteer fireman whose main job was a greengrocer, hands us a bunch of fresh veg and fruit and his business card and says if the weather gets too wild to just give him a shout and we can camp up at his place

OppamaBrendan

Recipes 

Chrome crashed when I tried posting earlier sorry if this is a duplicate...
Got a couple of things at Daiso today, 105 Yen each;

• Citric acid 200gm
• Sodium Bicarb 200gm

(both were beside the bleach and household chemicals but their ingredients say 99.9% so I'm hoping they are fine) - There is ALSO bicarb in the baking/confectionary section but it is a smaller package perhaps only 50gm for the same price...?

• polypropylene sink strainer bags -this isnt a mesh grid but more like a coffee filter, 32X26 cm, pretty strong stuff too. I think I will try using it as a filter when racking to primary to catch any break material that gets sucked up the racking hose. Wikipedia says it is pretty chemical resistant and the melting point ranges between 130 - 171 C so could be fine for a grain or hop bag if you keep it off the bottom of the boil vessel

• Lastly, one of those red-squeeze-bulb racking canes used for kerosene (and water they advertise). I might try to use the bulb to start a siphon instead of back-filling my transfer cane with sanitizer and using gravity to do it (which is a PITA in my opinion) - anyone using these?

WhoZiT

Recipes 

I suck.

Yeah, I have a small piece of copper tube that fits in the hose. Sanitize it, attach it to the end, and suck. When the liquid gets near the end, I pinch it off, remove the copper tube, and the siphon is started. Never comes into contact with my mouth. I've read several ways to get this going, but this works and it's simple. I usually let the first bit drain into a container before going into the target vessel because it'll often have trub or yeast in the first bit.

+1 on the finds for citric acid and others...

__________________
--------------------------------------------------

"Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things." --George Carlin

WhoZiT

Recipes 

I've used those bags for hops additions, too, without any foreseeable problems. They're much better than actual hop bags cuz you can just toss 'em when you are done.

__________________
--------------------------------------------------

"Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things." --George Carlin

WhoZiT

Recipes 

Well, let's say that the cold weather was my JUSTIFICATION for kegging with the SWMBO.

I used to live in Kochi, too. The ppl are great there. It's usually prone to lots of flooding with the bigger typhoons. There are even "hemp" festivals if you are into that...

__________________
--------------------------------------------------

"Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things." --George Carlin

tektonjp

Recipes 

Is polyprop food safe? For a grain bag, use one of those laundry net bags.

Also, I don't recommend using that siphon set up. I think the bulb would oxygenate the sh*t out of your beer when you transfer. Plus the tubing isn't smooth from the ones I've seen.

__________________
Tempest Bebende!

OppamaBrendan

Recipes 

I have used the short tube "suck start" and the gravity method, but still miss my auto siphon that I left back in Canada; that was a cheap luxury! I think the main trouble with the 100 yen siphon is the risk of not fully sanitizing it, so I doubt if I will use that on the upstream side. Instead I was thinking there might be an alternative - sanitize a fitting on the downstream end and use the bulb as the "suck start" vacuum if it creates enough force. I can still use my smooth tubing siphon that way.

PP should be food safe, it is used for a ton of food packaging. It has a high enough melting point that you can boil it, but low enough you should keep it off the bottom or sides of the pot during flame. I thought my hop bags were biodegradable cellulose fibre, so I tossed them into the compost. Just spread mature compost in the garden and little hop bags are popping up all over!

I use the laundry bags as well for grain-bags. I found that using 2 or 3 smaller "intimates" bags (finer mesh size) to split the grain up really helped compared to dumping everything in one big bag. I am able to pull the bags up and drain them a lot easier with less mess that way.