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I thought I'd share the DIY gizmo I came up with for priming a purged keg with sugar solution before racking finished beer to it. I suppose you could use it for any liquid. Note - the keg (lower right) was sanitized, sanitizer dumped, then CO2 was piped from the fermenter for the duration of...

Hi cider makers, All of my posts are from the beer side of HBT, but I've made cider about once annually for a while now. So far, I've only done it with plain orchard cider or with an addition of honey. I had an idea to retain some residual sweetness in this year's cider by blending it in a...

I have searched high and low and can't seem to find a clear answer to this question, because all the articles focus on how to handle the cask itself. After primary fermentation is done at standard ale temps, and beer is racked into the serving cask along with priming solution and optional...

This is mostly just a vent, but encouraging thoughts are welcome. I tried something new on my current Pilsner - I reserved unfermented wort from the boil (speise) to prime with. Here's how I prepared the speise. I drained wort just off the boil to a couple of Mason jars at flame-out. Sealed...

I've fermented under pressure before, but decided to give traditional spunding a try on an Altbier. Yeast is K-97, OG was 1.050. I anticipated that I'd have between 75-80% attenuation, or 1.012-1.010 FG. Once the blow-off bubbles began in earnest (~20 hrs), I took a small sample from which to...

Hi all, For those in the know, please validate my understanding of this proposed setup... (It's staged for review and not yet in action): The 3 gallon keg on the left is the fermenter, and the 2.5 gallon keg on the right is the beer's future serving vessel. A jumper is connected from the...

I've been playing with BrewFather and it's quite a nice app in all respects! Easily the best UI and feature set I've seen so far (compared to the usual suspects). However the efficiency math seems to be off, and I wonder if anyone else has noticed. Basically, if I plug in a given mash...

Turnkey RIMS setup with camlock fittings, 1650W ULWD TC heater, Inkbird PID controller. Fully assembled and pristine, used for just one brew. Available new for $300; this one is yours for $250 including shipping within continental US. Price is firm. PayPal “friends & family” please to spare me...

I ran across this on YouTube yesterday and even though it’s entirely in German, I was sucked in for the entire one hour seven minutes. It’s a fascinating and somewhat shocking film of some dudes at a farmhouse in a German village brewing Märzen for their clan, at a scale most of us cannot...

Hang on... let me explain. Let's say one conducts a two step mash, with the first 30 minutes at 145ºF for beta amylase and subsequent 30 minutes at 160ºF for alpha (one hour total). Normally we would achieve this either by applying direct heat, or adding boiling water, to raise the...

Here's an idea - I wonder if anyone has done this: As the wort comes to a boil, pull out a small volume - maybe a pint - and chill it down to 150ºF or so. Decant it into a mason jar, and toss in a bag or two of hop pellets. Cover and let it sit for the duration of the hot side of brew day...

In traditional bag-less brewing, we stir the mash at the end, vorlauf to set the grain bed, then lauter without disturbing it further. Mashing in a bag makes a vorlauf unnecessary. And so I wonder, for those of you who mash in a bag inside a cooler, have you tried stirring the grain while...

Having just come back from the LHBS with a bunch of Czech Saaz and an appropriate lager yeast to brew a Bohemian Pils, I had one of those moments where I question my well-laid plans. I have a pile of slightly off kilter English hops that need to be used: Challenger, Whitbread Goldings...

Homebrewers most often use a recipe convention where raw measurements in pounds, ounces, etc. are provided. This requires us to know the batch size. It is meaningless to tell someone, for example, that they can “Use up to 1 lb” of chocolate malt in a recipe. Would 1 lb of chocolate malt be...

Consider if you will, a kettle full of cooled wort. There are no hops in it, only liquid, sugars, and break material. The apparent volume of the wort, measured with a ruler in the kettle to the nearest 1/16" and visually confirmed in the fermenter, is 2.080 gallons. The wort weighs 8.049 Kg...

I'm fermenting a 2.5 gallon batch in a 5 gallon corny for the first time. It's US-05 at 68F, which I have done many times in a carboy. I have a blow-off hose connected to the keg's gas input port. When fermentation has finished, I want to transfer the beer off the trub to a 2.5 gallon serving...

I thought this cheat sheet might be helpful for beginners trying to get a handle on all of the added/subtracted volumes that occur in all-grain brewing. Green items are additions, red ones are losses. Time progresses from top to bottom. I hope it's self-explanatory...

Hi all, I would appreciate some feedback on my proposed process to make a very basic, lacto soured blonde (with or without fruit): I’m making a very small batch, about 1.75 gallons, to test the process. First, I’m preparing a lacto starter with 0.5 cup of un-milled grain sitting in 100F+...

I see a lot of discussion about the opposite approach - how to brew quasi-lagers using neutral ale yeast. But how about brewing ale styles where everything is in line with tradition except use of a lager fermentation regimen? My thought is that it will focus on the malt and hops ingredients...

It's rare-to-never that I have a brewing problem that I can't Google and find a dozen or more instances of people experiencing the same thing. It's all been done before. But not this time! I brewed a Saison with 100% pils, mashing around 150º. I pitched WLP565 at 68º and after 24 hours...