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You waste lots of ice if you use it from the start, especially if you recirculate. I just use tap water and don't even think about recirculating until I hit about 120-130°. Even with 80° tap water in the summer, it only takes my chiller about 4 minutes to get that far. Last week with winter...

I use a harbor freight pond pump. It was super cheap and the flow rate is fantastic. no reason to spend a ton of money...I only paid $9 or so when it went on sale last spring.

I have the BC 36 Qt and it's great for brewing 5 gallon batches. I can safely fit ~7.25 gallons in there pre-boil. I use mine inside on an electric stove, and have never had a scorching issue. As long as you take care of it properly, it's a great quality pot for the price. All of my cookware is...

I used a 1.5" bar for my stir plate, and it works great in a 2 Liter flask. The trick to using a larger stir bar is that you can't mount the magnets directly on the fan...they would be too close together. Plus, I'm not a fan of mounting magnets directly on a fan anyway, because they interfere...

stir bar size mostly depends on the spacing between the magnets. If your magnets are 1" apart, then a 3" stir bar won't work too well. When I put my stir plate together, I bought the stir bar and some rare earth magnets. Then I stuck a magnet on each end of the stir bar. The magnets will...

Yeah, kettle dimensions are a big factor. I purposefully chose one that is taller than it is wide, in order to minimize boil-off. Instead of just guessing/estimating, I actually measured my boil-off rate prior to brewing for the first time with my new kettle. Just fill with 7 gallons water...

my mash tun is an old cooler that had been sitting unused in the garage for years. Prior to using it for the very first time, I just cleaned it with a little oxiclean, then sanitized with starsan. Works perfectly, beer turns out great, and after each batch I just rinse with hot water and let it dry.

I lose 20% to boil off during a 60 minute boil (sea level). Looks like you lost 30%, which seems like a ton (assuming of course the pre-boil measurement was accurate...I made this mistake once). I've only ever used an immersion chiller, so I'm just guessing here, but since you just switched to...

Those Radio Shack magnets are only 3/16" diameter...seems pretty small, and kind of expensive since you only get two in the package.

I guess my reasoning for preheating is that I can just dump some hot water into the cooler while heating my strike water, and let it sit without paying any attention to it. Then I can dump that hot water out and add my strike water/grain immediately and it usually comes out pretty close...

out of curiosity, are there any negative side effects to adding 180F+ water to a cooler, other than simply warping the plastic? I like to pre-heat my cooler with a ~1.5 gallons of hot water (then dump this water down the sink) prior to adding my strike water. So far I've just been guessing when...

I bought these rare earth magnets at a local True Value hardware store http://www.hardwareandtools.com/Master-Magnetics-07046-Super-Neodymium-Magnet-Discs-7380702.html They are extremely strong...I have a 2" stir bar, and if I stacked two magnets on each end, i was able to run my stir plate...

Yep. Standard stir bars are just magnets coated in Teflon. Teflon melts at 327°C, so boiling is perfectly safe.

In a real pinch, Sometimes you can get away with using two worm clamps per hose instead of just one. Placed about 0.5-1.0" apart, they seal better than just one clamp. But I agree with the previous post. This is a great excuse to learn to sweat copper...hose barbs exist for a reason. Clamping...

If you crushed then soaked then smoked, wouldn't all the starch/etc from inside the grain just dissolve in the soaking water? then wouldn't you just be smoking the empty husks? Were you planning on saving the soak water and adding it to the mash?

This is incorrect. Better bottles are plastic, but they are made of a different type of plastic that is impermeable to oxygen. They've got all the advantages of glass in that regard, but they're much lighter and you don't have to risk huge catastrophe every time you move it. regular old...

After hearing rave reviews for this beer in the past, I finally bought a bottle last year. It smelled and tasted like creamed corn (DMS?). Absolutely disgusting and we ended up dumping it...talk about a let-down. The first thing that popped into my mind was that they have some serious quality...

FYI, Stone is publishing a book titled "The Craft of Stone Brewing Co.: Liquid Lore, Epic Recipes, and Unabashed Arrogance," due to be released on October 18th. According to the description and table of contents, the book includes multiple homebrew recipes, including Saison du BUFF. However, I'm...

As far as your fermentation taking a while to get started, I assume you're shaking/aerating the cooled wort really well prior to pitching? Just wanted to check and make sure it wasn't a lack of oxygen causing the yeast to sit around doing nothing at first...

when you bend soft copper, it becomes hard. Trying to un-bend it will typically deform and/or kink the tubing. You basically get one shot at bending it into the desired shape. The only way to make it flexible again is to anneal it.