Recent content by Lefe21

I had great success doing all-grain brews in my old apartment. I had two 4-gallon pots and would do a split boil on my stove. Just account for the extra boil-off rate and remember to split your hop additions evenly and you are good to go. It's also good practice to try and make sure the gravity...

Awesome! 210 is my guess.

Maybe the water minerals (Ca+, Mg+ specifically) aren't in the optimum range, especially if your water has a high pH. My efficiency went up 15% when I started adding gypsum to bring my Ca+ in the 100-150 ppm range.

Does anyone know a simple way to get a pre-boil gravity reading when doing a split boil? I'm in an apartment and can only manage to used two 4-gallon pots for my all grain boils. Assuming that its next to impossible to have both pots at the same gravity, is there a simple way to get an accurate...

Brewing this up tomorrow. Unfortunately I only have dry yeast at my disposal, and no means of lagering. I'll be pitching two packs of Notty and keep temps at 60F.

I brew all grain in London and I find Brewhaven to carry just about everything I need, besides liquid yeast varieties. Sometimes I brew with my father near Ottawa and buy my stuff from http://www.cachettedubootlegger.ca located near Montreal. I believe they ship, and have great prices, worth...

Hey guys, I'm helping my dad set up his kegerator when I visit home in a week's time and am not sure on how much liquid hose I should be using. I told him to pick up 20' for his 2 kegs, but the guy at the homebrew shop ended up selling him this stuff that is 2.2 lb resistance per foot. I don't...

Looked like water also? That's just weird. Maybe its a thermometer issue? I just dont understand how you would get no reading (was it actually 1.000?). I'm not sure the water profile could be responsible for such a lack of conversion, unless the water is extremely basic with little to no Calcium...

Just to make sure, what temperature was the wort when you took the gravity reading? Higher temperatures will give a lower reading, some people overlook/ forget about this.

Just test the hydrometer in pure water, should read 1.000.

Even with problems controlling your mash temperature you should have gotten some extract from the grain. Twice in a row on top of that is really odd.... Are you sure your hydrometer isn't broken? Also, next time you might want to consider the iodine-starch test for conversion.

No it specifically said for kegs. I know you need less for kegs, but you need more DME than dextrose because its less fermentable.

You will need more with DME. Use 5/8 of a cup for a 5 gallon batch (just referred to Papazian's Homebrew Companion).

I was in the same situation a few weeks back. I ended up priming with 1/3 cup of dextrose. Put the corny it in the kegerator 24 hours before it was to be served and it was great. Your first couple pints will be yeasty/cloudy, but after that its smooth sailing.

Thanks a lot for all that great info. I'll be using it as reference once I get things going!