Recent content by Trouble_Brewing

Every brewing system has slightly different hop utilization. The small difference in boil temperature has little to do with it. So like any other brew system, you will likely need to tweak your recipes and timing a bit to get the results you are after compared to whatever you are using now.

No, it's not a problem. Even 207F is well above the evaporation rate for DMS compounds.

I would imagine that boiling a small pot of water on your stove makes a lot more steam. The Z was designed for indoor use after all. If you are able to cook in your house without having to open windows etc. I'm sure you'll be OK.

No need to vent unless other(s) in your household don't like the smells of brewing. Almost no steam is released. The keg has a rubber cover and a foam trap that keeps most steam from escaping during the brew. There is also next to no boil off with this setup.

With the effect that this is going to have on my checking account, pulling the plug seemed more appropriate. :(

I too just pulled the plug on a refurb unit (I think I got the last one from the current batch). I was going to wait until after the new year to figure out what I'm getting back from the IRS, but saving $600 (after shipping) was too good to pass on. Can't wait to try it. Like many here, I've not...

Enter me, Thanks!

Count me in!

Two more comments...First, if you are not using the 2.0 version of the EZ water calc do yourself a favor and download the newer version. It's much improved. Second, if you really want to learn more and get more accurate results, download Martin's (mabrungard) spreadsheet at Bru'n Water...

Also remember that if your sulfate on the water report is listed as SO4-S, as the Ward Labs reports are, you need to multiply that number by 3 to get the number you need for the water calculators. Further, I would not worry over much about the chloride/sulfate ratio. I think it's more...

This only reason I don't use the recipes on this site more is that there's really no way to know which are good. If you accomplish that with a book or ebook it would be worth something to me. I agree it would take up a lot of thread space but it would be cool if there were a way for people to...

Cost is a consideration of every option we have in our brewery process. I too have very hard water. However, for me I decided to switch over to all RO water and add minerals. I'm saving for a pH meter, but am using this spreadsheet for now. Around here, I can buy 5 gallons of RO water for...

My dad used to actually be a programmer back in the 60's and used those punch cards. He got out of computers in the early 70's and did touch them again for many years. When I was in HS I bought my first computer, a C-64. I can remember vividly how blown away he was that this "little box" held a...

Our high school had one of those punch-card things for it's programing class. Probably why I never became a programmer as it was too labor intensive. I was hanging out on BBS's a lot in those days. Only one peson could log in at a time so you had to set your modem to redial for hours to get...

Using a credit card, not a debit card is good advice. Another option is to use a service such as ShopShield.net. PayPal used to offer a great one-time card number service which I used a lot, but they discontinued it because it never caught on.