Recent content by acidrain

My $.02... If you cold crash, no need to use gelatin. Consider using a tall 1/4 keg for fermenting using the spunding valve/cap hardware. If you do that, and use one of Bobby's no-weld bungs with a SS racking cane, the cane will slide up and down on the o-ring for manual adjustment of the dip...

You will get different opinions on this, but I will say that trub is not a problem, and is actually beneficial to the yeast. Pour all the wort, trub and all into the Carboy and pitch the yeast. It will do it's thing, then you can cold crash and much more effectively draw the clear beer off the...

My question too...

Can you link the motor you got from ebay? Be sure to follow up with a review and pics of your work!

A common stumbling block when thinking about water profiles and PH is that the water starting PH is important. It is not. The minerals in the water, mixed with the malted grains at a given temperature all create a specific PH. That's why PH calculators need to know exactly what the recipe is...

After striking in at 160F, what was the actual mash temp? It sounds like maybe (since your recirculating during strike) that the mash did not drop to the target mash temp, and that maybe some of the the enzymes were denatured or created sugars that are less fermentable. Just checking... did the...

If you don't own a hydrometer, how do you figure your efficiency is low? I would (in this order) Get a hydrometer Forget LME or DME.. buy milled grain, and then mill it again. If you are doing BIAB, then you have the best, simplest system there is, and efficiency should be in the 80%+ range...

I made my own spider from some 300 micron ss mesh I got from McMaster-Carr (buy ss pop rivets too). I had a little left over so I rolled it up and tied it with a zip tie. Looking at my water filter housing, I noticed my rolled up piece of mesh looked like it would fit in the filter housing. It...

Yeah, what others have said, plus... My RO system cost about $250. It's a basic system off Ebay, plus an auto fill float valve installed in a 55 gal. food grade plastic barrel sitting on top of my beer fridge. Then gravity fed it to my LT with 1" PVC. Barrel stays full, delivery to the LT is...

Bottom drain through the bung (keg is flipped upside down), then you can get the FB down as low as you can.

What Wilserbrewer said. Are you guessing at your boil-off rate? That is an exact volume you need to know.

Great choice! :cask:

I think (never done it) that if you put an oxygen stone anywhere in the siphon, it will probably break the siphon. Why not just transfer and then oxygenate the wort in the fermentor for the prescribed time (I do about two minutes)?

Do you recirculate to chill? You can get some of your points back by draining through the chiller into the fermenter, then sparging through the chiller until you achieve your pre-boil volume. This will rinse the hi-points wort with low-points wort out of the chiller, plus I find it makes a...

Here's what I get from the OP's posts... He is measuring the water's PH when identifying needed adjustments. He is using the acidic wort to "clean" his copper coil. The reality is that water PH has nothing to do with mash PH. You need to know your water mineral profile in order to make accurate...