Recent content by RichE

I have come to the rather obvious conclusion that the perfect batch size is 2.4 gallon BIAB size.:drunk: Here is my logic: 2.4 gallons should fill up a case of 12 ounce bottles with about 20 ounces left for waste/trub/minor spills etc... That being said my last 3 or 4 perfect size 2.4...

I assume that's using the hydrometer in a bucket. I don't know how you would get it back out of a carboy.

In our neck of the woods, a water softener is a must. For dark beers however, I bypass the softener, which means using cold water as all the water in the water heater has already been softened. Pils, Kolsch, other light beers, I use the softened water from the water heater as you mentioned. No...

I have my first lager in a secondary and my second in my fermentor. The question is, how would lagering in the secondary be different from letting them lager in the bottle, assuming that the time and temps were the same. Or would the bottled beer not count as lagering becasue the priming sugar...

I also do 2.5 gallon batches in a 5 gallon pot. I started out doing the full volume mash, but more recently have been holding back 1 gallon water. I don't do this for the purpose of a true sparge, but rather the 5 gallon pot with the full volume of water gets a bit un-wieldy. I move the mash...

I also use the oven method. I usually end up turning the oven back on for about a minute each time I stir the mash. The oven loses a lot of heat when the door is open fully for a minute while stirring. I also started mashing with a smaller volume of mash water in order to reduce the weight of...

Do you see an advantage in pouring the sparge water over the grain bag rather than just dunking the bag in the sparge water in the pot that was used to heat it. I guess it would be one more pot to wash. I would think a longer soak in the sparge water (like 5 -10 minutes) would extract more...

The 1 Gallon kits at Northern Brewer are Extract kit's with specialty grains that are steeped in hot water for a period of time (20 to 30 minutes I think) before the extract is added and the wort is boiled. Hops are included in the kit and are added a various times during the boil. The 3...

So that batch is in the can. I thought since so many were willing to take the time to read and reply, that I would recap. Pretty much everything went as planned. I did the "All In" water with the recommended 3.39 gl of water to 4 lbs 1oz of grain bill for a 1.75 gal batch (per recipe and...

OK, spent an hour reading a bunch of other posts on BIAB Mash-out and it seemed to be the majority opinion, doesn't really matter. So let's flip to the other side of this question, full volume mash vs. mashing with only the strike water quantity and adding the sparge water to the pot after 60...

Many have advocated that the high water to grist ratio of an "all-in" mash makes the beer dryer and changes the chemistry if not the taste of the wort. Since I haven't even done my first BIAB, I should probably just go with the flow, but I was just wondering what the practical experience on...

First post to this forum, hopefully someone doesn' already have a thread running on this topic. I am planning for my first BIAB session. I'm planning a MASH out per many recommendations, but haven't decided yet on how to do so. My first thought is to do what seems to be the standard full...