Recent content by Ellis

I apologize for completely missing that people wanted me to elaborate. Here is my process: In the morning, I get 1 gallon of water up to 165 (in order to pre-heat my mash cooler). At the same time, I get 3-4 gallons of water (1.25 gallons per pound) up to 165. I dump the 1 gallon from the...

I wish someone had told me...that getting into homebrewing as a hobby will more than likely mean weight gain, in the neighborhood of 20-30 pounds.

About 3.5 hours for all-grain. Hear me out. I'm an "overnight batch sparger". Typically, I mash right before I go to work, and boil right as I get home. Also, I use a wort chiller to get the temps to about 100, then use a chest freezer overnight to finish. So, 30 mins to get the mash up to...

I have thrown out 4. To this day, I am still not certain what happened. But I think it had to do with how I was washing yeast. I think I was not doing a good decant of the junk at the bottom, and was getting perhaps some proteins or something capable of spoiling in my yeast harvests. My only...

I am reading through information on harvesting commercial yeast from bottles, and also looking through "Slanting yeast": https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/slanting-yeast-133103/ There is always talk of doing several stages of yeast starter. For example, the above talks about a 1 cup starter...

I hate to be the person to argue the premise of the question. Have you considered plastic soda bottles? I use them when I run out of bottles, and it is very easy to get empties.

Making sure you know about this similar thread (that does not show up in the Similar Threads box below...): https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/southern-star-stout-biab-75-efficiency-248601/

Austin Homebrew lists WLP 051 as an equivalent. http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?products_id=1784 I've been working with Pacman all season; it is comparable to WLP 051 and WLP 001.

In the attached photo, you can see a clear difference between the darker, more clumpy material, and the white, more frothy material. Do I harvest all of this? My instinct says to discard the brown clumpy stuff, and keep the white stuff. There seem to be many helpful resources on yeast washing...

I put the coriander in a ziploc, then pound the ziploc with a rubber mallet.

This advice is repeated often. Why is that? Specifically, would it be wrong to add fruit to the primary (let's say in the second week of four in the primary). Same with dry hopping: can this be in a long primary?

Try a look through Austin Homebrew's "Version of Commercial Beers" list. They might possibly have a clone you already enjoy. I'm a fan of Pike's IPA (which they have), and the New Belgium Ranger (which they do not).

I think you need to be careful with your "near-boiling temp" water in the bucket. Those plastic buckets are rated food-grade safe up to 180 F. Past that, they are probably melting.

What do you recommend in terms of water pressure while using a chiller? During my first use of a chiller, I realized I did not need to be running with full water pressure. I figured as long as a steady trickle was coming out, the chiller was doing its job. What do you think? Is this correct?

I am interested in hearing what the more seasoned veterans will have to say, but I did notice you are transferring to a bucket once the wort is cooled to between 80-85. All of my notes indicate 80 as the highest acceptable temperature (80+ is oxidation, 80- is aeration). See...