Recent content by beerjournl

Rather than retype from many available sources, I'd suggest doing some reading on the "chemistry of beer aging" for the big answers and lost of $5 words. Here is a brief read... https://beerandbrewing.com/dictionary/wyphNb2YK8/

This always seems to be an endless debate especially when we start mixing in natural vs forced carb and other variables. What is probably happening is that the bottles opened earlier are carbonated, but not "fully" carbonated. If you could measure it with a "Zahm" or similar device to gauge...

Got my latest 5lb aluminum tank from Beverage Factory for something like $59. Factor in shipping of course and it might not make it a great deal.

I lose about a gallon per hour, rolling boil, using a keggle and a ~210k BTU banjo burner.

Many ingredients and such in recipes are listed down to X.01 such as water additives. I had an issue last week when I needed .07 water salts and my digital scale moves by .05 each time. Maybe you don't need this, but it is realistic if you plan to use a single scale for everything. My scale...

I used it for bottle labels and it actually etched the glass and left it dull, except where the labels were. Anyone have this happen? I made it quite strong andleft them in overnight, and then for a few days.

Here in St Pete Florida we have them adding chloramine in the system, so I get the "spring water" from Wal-Mart which is actually water from our own famous Silver Springs just up the road a few hours. Spring water is supposed to be better because it retains minerals, and distilled the worst...

Palmer suggests 2 cups water to 1/2 cup DME. Anyone using 4 cups water instead? Seems like a light wort.

When I'm building up a starter over a few days I find that sometimes the action takes place overnight, and when I look at it in the morning there is only the slightest bit of foam and virtually no action in the airlock. After 2 days I'll dump in more wort and the action gets going for a bit and...

The kewler-valve kit I bought did not have a long enough stainless pipe length to make it through the side of my 50qt Igloo square cooler, so I had to use a galvanized pipe nipple, and used plumber's epoxy putty to secure the short length of pipe. (The hole diameter from removing the cooler's...

Not wanting to risk contamination from fooling with ice packs and such, I just went to Home Depot and got a few coils of copper tube and made a chiller and a pre-chiller. The tap water is fairly warm here in Florida, so this setup has the first coil immersed in a bucket of ice and water, and the...