Recent content by jceg316

Thanks for the link, that's pretty useful. I guess to get the desired flavours from my hops I need to put them in at the right time, which looks like waiting until the beer is cooling and steep them for the rest of the cool in some cases. Or save most the hops for the dry hop.

I was wondering how to get certain characteristics out of hops. For example, let's say I wanted to get the pine flavours from Chinook but not so much the spice, how could I get that flavour profile? Or similarly with Williamette, it's described as fruity, herbal, spicy, floral, but how would I...

Definitely agree with you too on learning the necessary equations. The more I get into brewing the more I realise it's the small detail which makes the biggest differences. I use Excel a lot at work so it's pretty easy for me to put these numbers into excel so in the future I can input my...

Thanks for your help on this. If we ever meet I'm buying you a beer! So 75% efficiency isn't too bad, that's about average and better than I thought I was getting. But some of those numbers aren't quite correct. I would have measured pre-boil volume at about 60C, which is 140F. Also I did...

The tap is so far down I can't fit a 90* elbow. I poured 30litres into the kettle but had some wort left over. As it was not needed I threw it out. These were the very last runnings from the mash tun so should have been more water than wort. Pre extract and post are the same because I realised...

In the UK homebrewers don't seem too bothered by crushing their own malts, it's far more common just to buy ready crushed grain. In terms of freshness I vacuum pack the grains into smaller bags, plus I'm not sure I could do a better job. My mash tun is very wide which helps prevents stuck...

I'm not sure grain crush would improve efficiency to an extent I'm looking to improve efficiency. This is the crush I usually have and my efficiency was fine. At this stage crushing my own grain would be more hassle than it's worth, especially as it needs to be just right for maximum efficiency...

I put the recipe & ingredients in and Brewtoad spat out the numbers. Just checking the original recipe this is based on and yeah I guess 1.082 is the target, however I don't know what efficiency they are brewing at. Sparging was slow, it took about 1 hour or so to get 30 litres out. Mash...

Just want to revive this again as I've brewed today and it seemed to go well. I set up a bleeder valve on my pump and it ran really well. Thank you douglasbarbin for pointing me in the right direction. Got my old sparge arm working as well. Sparged really slowly but want to know whether my...

Good article! There were a few cultures where brewing was "women's work"; men were really missing out! It is interesting that there is so much documentation on it. I've seen some gruit recipes online and even one claiming to be hundreds of years old but I wonder how many recipes exist today.

Thank you all for reading it and for your lovely comments, it was really good fun writing and researching the topic. @DU99, this could be a very large textbook on its own, however I do have to condense it down to web format. As there are almost 200 countries in the world it would be difficult to...

Hey, thanks for your comments (this is Josh btw). @andrewf1989, what books would you recommend?

That bleed valve looks interesting, I wish he'd go into more detail but I will look it up elsewhere. I will take photos and if possible a video when I'm next with my kit. I brew at my parents' house in the suburbs as they have the space and not at my place.

I did a brew today and sparged much slower than I usually do and my efficiency increased quite a bit. I still had some trouble with the pump, even when restricting flow on the MT inlet but I just need to play around. My recipe was 4.5 kg maris otter 550g wheat Mashed in with ~16 litres water...

Thanks for your help so far, it's been really useful. Especially what you say about cavitation: This would make sense as the mash water is ~75c, wort would be ~65 but sparge water is ~80-85 so it's more likely to cavitate. It would have nothing to do with the sparge though as the water is being...