Recent content by teach

How did you attach the PVC to the refrigerator? I love the look of this one, and I think I have literally the same fridge (the new Danby 4.4 cu ft all-fridge).

Mashed at 156-157F when I made it and I ended up at 1.018. It's a very tasty beer!

Brewed this beer for the first time back in early September and bottled a couple of weeks ago. Tasted my first one yesterday and.... damn, that's a good beer. I brewed AG as specified except that I added 4 ounces of Special B malt. "Special B will impart a heavy caramel taste and is often...

I do it all the time. Good call on making sure the water is sterile; I hadn't thought of that. I just add tap water. Figure the yeast is about to outcompete anything that could possibly be in the municipal water supply...

Any tweaks to the recipe?

That makes sense. I think I had confused HSA with oxidation. I must have a decent process because I don't think I've ever noticed that in my own beers, but maybe I just don't know what I'm looking for. Maybe I'll try a few brews without a secondary and see if I can detect any differences...

My bottles sit upstairs in the closet of my man cave. It's 78F up here almost all the time. I'm usually fully carbed by two weeks, but I let it condition at least another week before drinking.

Ah, the old oxidation bogeyman. Is fear of "oxidation" really still a thing?

27,391 + 5 gallons of AHS' AG clone of Real Ale Fireman's #4, brewed on 7/21 = 27,396

Yeah, but the gravity of my first runnings was 1.059 (and I'm certain of that). It doesn't matter whether that's 2-1/2 gallons or four gallons; there's a problem with conversion. And I know my brewhouse efficiency is basically correct; I measure my final volume of collected wort (post-boil)...

I used liquid yeasts without starters for a while and didn't have any problems. But if you believe Mr. Malty, neither vials of liquid yeast nor smack packs have enough viable cells in them for a 5-gallon batch of normal strength. For a 5.25-gallon batch of 1.048 wort, you'd need 177 billion...

Extremely poorly. I've got an electric HLT made from a 10-gallon Rubbermaid cooler that has graduations inside, so I use that to figure, roughly, how much water I'm putting into the mash tun initially. Then, after the mash time is over, I vorlauf and then drain into an unmarked 7-gallon...

I had my friend in a chemistry lab test the pH of the filtered water I was using to brew with: it's got a pH of ~8.2. So I already add CaCl (1 tsp per 5 gallons) to the brew water. I don't know the mash pH, though.

Eek. That's a fair bit more involved than I want to mess with. Guess I'll just live with the low conversion for now. Thanks for all the help, though.

And then if the pH is off, do what?