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You shouldn't be losing a higher percentage of your wort because it's a small batch. Turn down the heat. I target an 8-10% boil off whether it's a 1-gallon batch or a 5-gallon batch.

I bought one gallon of 85% phosphoric in January 2021, and it's still crystal clear. Not sure what would cause it to go brown, but something isn't right.

That's how it works. I do try to brew enough to have a few samples to bring to the meetings for our homebrew club, but other than that it's just for my own consumption.

Nope. My friends drink garbage - Miller, Busch, Genny, etc. Zero chance they're so much as sipping a porter or tmavé. Perhaps I need new friends...

A couple packs of Nottingham for ciders. Kegging a caramel apple cider today, then starting another batch that will become a spiced cranberry cider for Thanksgiving.

I would just cold crash to 38ºF. A few extra days at 38º would be effectively no different than cold crashing at 32º.

I do it quite often with lagers. Ferment, cold crash, lager, and serve (floating dip tube) - all right from the same corny keg. No transfers = less chances for oxidation, and less vessels to clean.

My personal opinion - I never rack directly onto a yeast cake in a fermenter. Unless the first beer was a small batch, reusing the entire yeast cake would be a gross overpitch. It doesn't take long to pour the yeast in a jar, clean and sanitize the fermenter, and then refill it. Then pitch the...

I hope the craft lager movement keeps gaining traction. Give me lots of Czech pale lagers, Tmavés, Helles, etc. Anything in the 3.5-5.0% ABV range. I'd love to make it to some of the lager "hotspots" someday (Notch, Schilling, Cohesion), and as of now our area is lacking.

I use 12v PC fans in my kegerator and fermentation fridge. I turn down the speed with a voltage regulator so they're silent, and move just enough air to circulate. Before the fan my kegerator had an 8-10º stratification difference at times. Now the top and bottom are within 1º.

A pack of silicone o-rings for my brew kettle. I broke down the kettle last week for a deep clean and seal replacement. Replaced what I had but I couldn't find the o-rings for the 1/2" weldless bulkhead for the ball valve. Amazon to the rescue.

I built one years ago that's really only been used a few times for cookouts or small festivals. Mounts directly to the liquid side of a keg coupler which supports it. Can be pressurized with a hand pump as needed, or by CO2 via the same splitter hooked to the beer kegs. The shorter nipple is the...

If a hot PBW soak hasn't helped that, I'd replace it. I've been using the same element in my kettle since 2017 and it looks as new as the day I installed it.

Better than stainless? Enlighten me.

All the kegs I've bought over the last 3-4 years were $20 at the most, some less. If you're buying new kegs then sure you're going to spend more. And being able to look into your fermenter improves your beer quality by exactly 0%. Ever wonder why commercial breweries use stainless conical...

They were all used, if you couldn't pick up on that. Some purchased each year over the last 7 years.

There's no reason to see inside a fermenter and light ingress is a detriment, not an advantage. All my corny kegs were $10-20 each. A 5 gallon PET carboy is $25-30.

Good advice is free, but you don't need to take it. I can't think of a single way in which plastic fermenters are superior to stainless.

Post-boil pH is definitely a consideration when large whirlpool or dry hop additions are planned. The general rule is a 0.1 pH rise for every pound per barrel, or 0.5 oz per gallon. With some large WP/DH additions in an NEIPA that could easily push the pH out of the ideal range.

It was a sad day. Dumped my entire keg of Märzen that got horribly oxidized somehow. Still have no idea. I'm extremely careful with oxygen when kegging - fully purged keg, purged transfer lines, zero keg leaks. I guess it's bound to happen eventually. Only the third batch I've totally dumped in...