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I live in the Bear Gulch Water district (on the SF Peninsula), but the report I get from the supplier does not have enough information to tweak my water recipe. So this month I had my water tested by Ward Labs. Most of the San Francisco Peninsula from Menlo Park up to the City gets their...

I have a Blichmann Burner that I stored for a while and managed to lose the little orifice doohickey. My retailer doesn't carry replacements and says ordering from Blichmann will take weeks. I suspect that this is a standard part that I could pick up at the local Grainer, as long as I know the...

I'm just starting to learn about water and I'm struggling with alkalinity. Wikipedia says that most of the bases in solution come from bicarbonate and carbonate, due to environmental contact with carbonate rocks and atmospheric CO2. It also says that there are other bases including borate...

Howdy folks, in preparation for building my own all-grain system, these days I've been spending a lot of time researching the great work that others have done, and I have wished for a central location to compare and contrast brewery designs. The only homebrewery registry I've found is...

I am building an electric RIMS, but I only have one 120V circuit and that circuit has other loads on it (lights, motors, etc). I want to avoid tripping the breaker with the RIMS. I could use PWM to control an SSR, but since the SSR is either "on" or "off", and not "in-between", in the "on"...

I asked Ward labs whether they could test for chloramine and perchlorate, and they said no on both counts. Dr. Ward came on the phone and told me that nobody had ever asked for either of these, and he wasn't sure how they would test for them anyway. He wished me luck but warned me that he...

I have two propane burners, each with their own regulator on their own propane tank. I would like to get rid of one of the tanks, and just plumb a single tank into my brew stand, with a manifold that the two regulators connect to. I don't know what components I need, but I've been looking...

What are people using to draw plumbing schematics? What do process engineers use? I suppose I could hack away with a generic drawing program, but it seems like there should be a specialized design tool out there, with icons for the various kinds of valves, heating elements, heat exchangers...

I have a question for you Brutus-10 users. Maybe Brutus-20 too, I don't really know the difference. I don't own a Brutus, I'm just trying to picture the actual operation with regard to plumbing configurations. I see that there are two pumps on a Brutus-10. The outputs are hoses stuck through...

I'm looking for a table of all the configurations that homebrewers have used to brew beer, with references to canonical implementations. If such a table doesn't exist, I'd like to try to compile one. I realize that there are potentially infinite configurations of brewing systems, but I'll bet...

I'm headed to Tokyo this October for a week, and I'm looking for craft brews. I've been to Baird Taproom, which is awesome, and The Aldgate (for the Yona-Yona), but I'm looking for something new and great. I'll be staying in Ebisu. I know about this map...

I'm building a new system and using 1" fiber-reinforced silicone tubing to connect the MT, HLT, BK, and Fermenter to the other hardware, which is all Tri-Clover. The vessels have a combination of Tri-Clover ports and other threaded ports. I got a Tri-Clover / hose-barb adapter and shoved it...

OK, this is embarrassing. I wanted to reduce my time cleaning so I designed a new brewery based on lots of expensive Tri-Clover ported 1" OD bling that I assumed could be cleaned in-place by twiddling valves and pressing buttons. Apparently I am wrong about that. I was recently told that even...

I need about fifteen fittings, mostly Tee, mostly 3/4" OD. Cruising the interwebs for these is very discouraging, the prices are insane! I haven't found a 3/4" OD tee for under $150. St. Pats has 1" OD tees for $21, so I would expect to find 3/4" for less than that. Should I give up and...

Is there a way to measure the level of sanitation of a system of hard-plumbed tubing and components? I'm sure the beverage or dairy industry must have some techniques for this. Maybe pass some solution through the system then analyze it for boogers? Is there a standard measure for...

I am designing a CIP brewery but I'm not finding the pump I want. I want something like a March 815-SS-C but with Tri-Clover clamp ends instead of NPT. I saw one of those on MoreBeer's pro site once, but it is gone now and nobody there knows anything about it. Can anyone recommend a pump that...

I have been offered a good deal on a new double-diaphragm pump. But I can't try it out before buying. Judging from the design, it seems like the pumped liquid would surge quite a bit. Has anyone ever used one of these? How bad is the surging?

Here's something I don't understand about Tri-Clover clamps. There is a gasket between the ferrules. The gasket must separate the ferrules by a certain amount. That means there is a gap, a niche, a crack, a non-polished surface for bugsies to get a foot-hold. I understand that Tri-Clover...

So I've got all this hot water in my HLT, and I've got these march pumps, and I'm thinking "if I could boost my pump's pressure I could build a sweet hot-water pressure washer for my brewery". Has anyone done this? It seems like I should be able to bolt some kind of second stage onto one of my...

I'm designing my brewery upgrade and I would like to standardize on Tri-Clover Clamps, preferably sanitary (i.e. no threads). I can figure out how to get tri-clamps most anywhere, but there are a couple places where it seems like the only solution is to introduce threads into the joint. My...