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Very nice simple set-up! I was all proud of my minimal BIAB set-up (small New York city apt), but you have me beat - I have a stove and everything (Luxury!). Seriously, I think this is a great thread, especially for people who want to make the jump to all grain - its easy! Try it!

I use it as a base malt for all my British beer styles - British bitters, stouts, etc. For German style ales and American pales I use Pilsner malt - personally, I think the biscuity-ness of Maris Otter, which is delicious in a bitter, is too much for a Hefe or an APA. Having said that, I do...

THIS. Like a question about bottling when people reply "Just keg!!!LOL!". Or a 1 gallon batch question that inevitably gets the "Do 5 gallons, you wussy!". Seriously not helpful, and incredibly condescending.

OK, I'm posting this just because I think its funny - obviously this is a small batch (4 gallon brew pot), so I put an old down vest on it. Keeps temp pretty well, actually.

I though your question was interesting, so I went digging around in the literature, and I found a nice review (Flavor-active esters: Adding fruitiness to beer, J Biosci Bioeng. 2003;96(2):110-8. - its too big for me to attach, but I got a copy by googling the title). Long story short, wheat beer...

Dude, the entirety of any lab safety training course can be boiled down to: don't eat the chemicals. Yet they are routinely at least an hour...

Oh, it was cottage cheese - cottage cheese swirling around the fermentor because of the vigorous ferment, hence the lava (LAVA, not lave, I can't type at all..) lamp comment. I was so sure I had contaminated it, I ran right to the these here forums...and realized that everyone who has ever used...

LD50 is 2mg/kg for a rat. Assuming scale-up (not a great assumption, mind you), and a 70 kg human, that's what, 140 mg? I wouldn't want someone noodling around with that at home. And I don't know about you, but I'm pretty cavalier about gloves, but I use them for EtBr, acyrlamide...

Flocculation assay: "Cells were harvested and washed twice in deflocculation buffer [20 mM citrate (pH 3.0), 5 mM EDTA]. After washing, cells were suspended in deflocculation buffer to an optical density (absorbance at 600 nm; A600) of 2. An aliquot of 800 ll of this cell suspension was...

You need to freeze your original cultures in glycerol stocks and store them in the -80C. You will get changes over time in the flask, even without manipulation. According to Verstrepen et al, "Flocculation: What Brewer's Should Know" (Appl Microbiol Biotechnol (2003) 61:197–205): "Storage...

You can get 'broad' numbers, but you really need to do this yourself - grow up some yeast, dilute it to several different OD's, and do counts with a hemocytometer. Then you will have proper numbers that correlate with your spec. Because of variation between specs, its the only way to be accurate.

British yeast strains are highly flocculant and so form chunks. Totally normal. It'll chunk out in the fermenter, too. First time I had a very vigorous ferment with a british strain it looked like a lave lamp - freaked me the hell out.

Yes, its just strongly flocculant, so its forming chunks and sticking to the walls. Its fine.

Don't worry about starting with small batch size - I do a lot of testing in one gallon batches, then scale up when I have the recipe tweaked right. I do use Beersmith for scaling, though - Bob's right that hops isn't usually linear, but you can get pretty close with Beersmith. For my coffee...

Its OK - I like the different recipe ideas it has (though some of them are a little too twee, but they have some cool ideas), but as a slightly more experienced brewer at this point the lack of hard data - IBUs, OG, etc - drives me a little crazy. I got started with their recipe kits, though, so...

Crush is huge, fortunately my LHBS has a good mill, but I usually ask for two rounds through the mill, just to be sure. Also, for BIAB I routinely mash for 75 minutes, bring it up to 168, and hold it there for ten minutes like kable suggested - I find this gives me a few extra gravity points...

I got my start with BBS kits and still do 1 gal batches pretty regularly to test recipes and do comparisons (large batch split up to ferment with different yeast strains, with or without dry-hopping, etc). The only other thing I would recommend that hasn't been recommended is a good digital...

Do you know the difference between bittering, flavoring, and aroma hops? If you want to front load the bitter, you at a ton of hops at the beginning of the boil, not the end (see amandabab's hop schedule). Alpha acids in the hops are isomerized to iso-alpha acids during the boil, which is the...

What you want is acrylic water, which is available at hobby shops to make things like artificial flower arrangements with fake 'water' in the base, and for dioramas with water features - brands include Liquid Illusion and Quick Water, but there are others. Mix food coloring with it to get...

544! Smashed him in the sink like a moron. Ah, he was a good soldier. At least he didn't take out any beer with him...