Recent content by dysco

I use a Dudadiesel 15-plate chiller with 1/2" wort hose on both sides. It chills 5 gallons of wort to 75F in 5 minutes. Works like a champ. Edit- I've also started dropping the whole chiller in a bowl of water while I chill- otherwise the bottom gets too hot to hold.

I'm bottling a stout for my mom on Christmas eve. She keeps her house so warm it'll be drinkable in no time. :D I think your best plan is to wait a lot longer, use a heater like an oil-radiator type with a blanket over it to insulate the whole stack, or find a creative place upstairs to put it...

Nobody has asked how long you've had them in bottles. Eventually, at 50F they should carbonate, it'll just take longer than at 65F.

I'm working on some Afflingem yeast and it took 5 days to start doing anything after taking a couple glasses off the top of the bottle. It doesn't look infected after 2 weeks so I'm going to run it through a gallon of wort this weekend to see what happens.

for ~1.040 I use 1 oz of DME for every cup of water (1:1 ratio of pounds to gallons). A liter is just over a quart, but it'd be roughly 4 oz DME for a liter of water, or 115ish grams. Make a liter (or quart) of wort, cool it, whip the everlovin crap out of it with a sanitized wisk, toss it in...

I think it's because the yeast need oxygen to reproduce. An airlock guarantees that CO2 levels will continually rise while foil allows for some kind of air flow and less pressure in your vessel. A sanitized pece of foil and an extract bucket is all you really need for a starter from a packet or...

I've been fooling around with starters. My first was a starter I pulled off a yeast cake from a primary. I foolishly bottled some yeast (mostly foolish if you don't crack the cap right after you pull it out of the fridge) in a 12oz bottle and tossed it in the fridge for a few days. Later I added...

Got my first two batches going this weekend. An IPA and a mild. Can't go fast enough...

Update: for my second batch I went to a 1/2" fitting on the cold wort outlet. At full bore from a boiling pot, I got 80F wort. I slowed the flow by kinking the hose and was able to hit 75F in 7 minutes from a boiling pot.

I'm bumping this thread because I was recently stressing out about this very topic. I ended up buying everything I'd need to set up a 25' counterflow hose chiller. A simple design, re-using the hose ends came to $103 dollars. If I made two, the price would have been just over $150 for both. I...