Recent content by theonecynic

I'm 25 and been brewing for 9 years including 4 year and 1 year hiatuses (hiatii?)

Aye, UV is more energetic than visible light and can bum out DNA, hence skin cancer.

EKG is great for dry hopping, lovely aroma.

I've only ever pitched it dry, and it's only ever worked. Can't tell you anything more in depth than that if you want it though!

They rely on the carbon dioxide in the ullage ("empty" bit) to push the beer out. As more beer comes out, the volume of that space increases and so the pressure of the gas decreases, until it reaches atmospheric pressure, at which point the beer stops flowing, and air will bubble up through the...

Yes, personally I would keg it now, I tend to follow the 1-2-3 rule for anything not too strong (1 week in primary, 2 in secondary, 3 conditioning) as it's pretty simple and keeps the old brewing calendar pretty transparent. If it's a 3kg kit, and you're dry hopping, it should taste more than...

I've got three of those barrels, one is still fine, but two sprung a leak after being overprimed, so I'm careful with the last one! Fine for starting off with though. I recently got a king keg and a rotokeg off ebay for around £30 each, still not cheap, but reasonable value. If by creaminess...

Hi from a fellow brit! I've used both sugar and dry malt extract to prime these plastic barrels, both are good. Is yours moulded like a fake wooden barrel, or does it have smooth sides? If it looks like this: then be careful not to use too much sugar as they have been known to crack under too...

Theoretical Physics student - it's like Physics without getting your hands dirty in the lab! So I make up for it with brewing. I love to cook too.

Erm, does skunk mean the same thing over there as it does over here? I know there are a couple of books on that sort of thing, but of course I wouldn't know anything about it...

Oh well, at least we get to screw up on organising the Olympics first! +1 on teh end of teh worlde beer!

I wouldn't want to leave it for too long on top of hops, but there again, you don't want exploding bottles... How long was it in primary for? EDIT: 1.014 sounds quite reasonable for something that started off that high, but I'd imagine it'd have quite a bit of secondary fermentation to do

When I first shared it! My dad, cousin and I did a kit from Boots (high street chemist) quite a while ago whilst we were doing up his house. It was lager from a tin, we used sugar (1.5x the recommended amount for some kick) and it was foul! We were too impatient to let it finish so after a...

Basically, you find out what it reads for two temperatures you're sure about (such as boiling water and ice water - water on transition between states). Water doesn't like to exist at temperatures above its boiling point unless under pressure. So if you have a thermometer at 215 F at sea level...

That implies a calibration issue with your thermometer, as any impurities tend to lower the boiling temperature.