Recent content by surista

Well - here's a good lesson in keeping 'all things equal'! I went back to my notebooks from previous brews of this recipe - two brews, one in 2015 and one in 2016. First year, FG was 1.010, next year was 1.011. So I wasn't below 1.010. Both used WLP002. I did indeed mash (well, steep) at 158F...

Sorry, should have clarified: - I wasn't using WLP002, which wasn't available, I used WLP007 (Dry English Ale), which is supposed to be good for higher-gravity beers. - I took a normal hydrometer reading (both at the start of fermentation and after about eight days) and the Tilt was spot on...

Brewed a Christmas seasonal a couple of weeks ago. It's a recipe I've done once or twice, so I'm familiar with it and know how it generally comes out (for those interested, it's based largely on Gordon Strong's Holiday Prowler). I was pretty close to spot-on for original gravity (1.060...

I own a Brewjacket. I love it. So far, it's been working great (going on almost two years now). However - I would be very very very cautious on buying anything from them anymore. For starters, Support has steadily deteriorated. Response time used to be a couple of days, that stretched out to...

Yep, same here. From 1.60 to 1.018 in less than three days... (Those last couple of squiggly bits are where I lightly shook the fermenter)

Quick question - how do you guys bottle from a one-gallon glass carboy?? I can't figure out a quick, clean and easy way to do it - especially since the auto-siphon I have doesn't fit inside... I have four or five one-gallon glass carboys that I'd love to use (including for hop experiments and...

Both calibrated. Well, technically the Tilt was calibrated, the BrewJacket was tested/confirmed.

While we're on the discussion of the Tilt - the Brewjacket uses a sensor taped to the side of the fermentation vessel to monitor temperature. The Tilt, of course, measures the temperature of the wort actually in the fermenter. The Tilt is consistently measuring about one degree (C) lower than...

Because a) I'm doing no-sparge BIAB and b) more importantly, can't easily cool my wort down to pitching temperature if I do a full-volume boil. I can get reasonably close fairly quickly with my immersion chiller, but the temperature of the tap water only gets me to about 28C or so. Adding 6l of...

First batch currently fermenting with the Tilt, so awesome seeing it in action - particularly since I use the BrewJacket, which is fantastic, but means you can't really see what's going on... I've been using Beersmith for a while, and am reasonably used to it - not necessarily looking...

Yeah, doing a less-than-full boil and topping up with near-freezing water is probably the simplest way to go. Or frozen water - I like the idea of freezing the bottles of water (and no need to measure since they're 2-liter bottles) and cutting away the plastic with a sanitized knife. I've read...

Unfortunately my kettle is too big for my sink. It doesn't really fit :-(

I have a great immersion chiller that does a pretty solid job of getting my wort down to 26-27C (80-81F) degrees fairly quickly (15 minutes or so). However, my tap water isn't that cold, so getting the wort temperature any lower takes an inordinate amount of time. I've been adding chilled...

A Brewjacket would probably be a good solution, probably a smaller footprint than a refrigerator and it looks a bit more 'tidy' than a bunch of t-shirts etc. wrapped around a carboy (maybe not an issue if it's mostly out of sight). One possible downside, the Brewjacket isn't necessarily 'quiet'...

I'm a certified data geek, love looking at charts 'n' tables and stuff. Did that go from 1.044 or so to 1.018 in two days?? And the temperature is cycling up and down like clockwork, what is that?