Recent content by snathanb

Oxygen entering the process prior to wort boiling is not going to cause any issues. You need to aerate your wort after boiling for your yeast to thrive, specifically to get oxygen back *in* to your wort. It's only after the wort and yeast have gone into your primary and started fermenting that...

I let the hops float free.. then use a super fine mesh bag around the tip of my racking cane when racking into my bottling bucket.

Kegs typically use C02 tanks to carbonate the beer.. and the C02 displaces the oxygen in the head space.

I usually have the exact opposite condition.

Having just gone through this twice.. I've found the easiest place for things to deviate from the calculator is the water lost during boil. The first time, I didn't boil hard enough and ended up with an extra half gallon (which diluted the OG from 1.046 to 1.041) and the next time I tried to...

Thanks for your thoughts! Since I'm fairly (ok, very..) new, I was just strictly (and blindly) following the hop addition schedule that came with the prepared all-grain kit I purchased. Learning from experienced folks the why behind the schedule is excellent, thanks again!

I just tried this.. as I was walking through a Walmart and they had 5 gallons buckets on sale. It worked great! I got quite a bit more out of the grain than I did before just squeeze or mashing the bag.

So... brewed batch number two today, identical recipe. I was a little over volume after mash/squeeze.. so I added 20 minutes of boil time pre-hopping.. and boiled much harder... and went half a gallon under. Hit 1.052 on a 1.046 recipe. Boiled up half a gallon of water on the stove, added it...

Since I'm new to the board.. just wanted to followup and thank everybody who took time to chime in with advice. Much appreciated! The airlock is happily bubbling away this morning. :)

Ah, good to know. So, using this recipe as an example.. I had various hops to add at 60, 30, 15, 10, 5 and 1 minute (and hops to add during secondary). Where would the demarcation be between the boil hops and the finish hops?

Now I know, thanks!

Agreed.... i was afraid to boil longer this time due to the hop schedule.. (OMG what happens if the hops I added at the last one minute get boiled longer... etc) I'll probably do both next time.. use a little less water and boil a little harder.

First off.. .thank you so much for you work on the calculator.. it is awesome. That's very likely a rookie mistake on my part... I didn't input anything into the boil rate. I assume the 1.2 I saw there was calculated as a function of the kettle size, diameter, etc. Now I know better :)

So, I've been trying to figure out why my post boil volume was so high... the priceless calculator says that I should have lots 1.3 gallons of water after an hour of boiling... but I lost under 1 according to my post-mash and post boil measurements (which are etched in quarter-gallon increments...

Ok, thanks, I'll go with the bucket!