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so an update went on a short vacation, left the freezer unplugged. Turned it on when I got back 4 days later and whacked the compressor with a hammer. Was hopeful as compressor seemed to be making a buzzing noise I did not remember from before and seemed like one of the copper lines running...

And everyone more or less in agreement low/no refrigerant is not really fixable?

I’m all for whacking this thing with a hammer at this point. What pump would I be aiming at? The compressor?

thanks didn't see any ice on the fins. But maybe running a fan with a bucket of damp rid and a heater for a few days is worth trying.

Hoping for suggestions for diagnosing issue with stand up freezer. Pretty new unit - maybe 2 years old now, I use it as temperature control for my conical. Tried brewing with S04 recently and went out of town day after pitching yeast. I was pushing the limits on capacity, so had a blow off...

my understanding is that the bacteria in the scoby are only active in presence of oxygen (aerobic fermentation). In a closed keg you mostly get a yeast driven fermentation converting sugars added at time of kegging into alcohol and CO2 just like when we ferment beer. Yeast and bacteria will...

The cold crash will decrease pressure in the keg. If you are at 28 PSI in a 70F keg and drop temperature of the keg (and the beer in the keg) to 38F pressure in the keg should drop to about 10.1 PSI. To pressure transfer beer from a keg at 10.1 PSI you will purge the receiving keg, and...

yeah I used a hop bag with the ginger and lemon peels. For the elderberries I make syrup and filter it with a kitchen strainer before adding to the keg, no containment needed.

How about WLP099? I don't have personal experience with it but data sheet looks promissing. 15% ABV tolerance and reports of getting to 25%. 80-100% attenuation. It is STA1 positive so I'd want to be careful if bottling. I would keg it but if I had to bottle I'd probably start checking...

I dedicate one of the taps on my keezer to kombucha. It lasts a lot longer than the beer (fewer kombucha drinkers at my house) but seems to have very good shelf life in the kegs. I make it in old brew bucket with a spigot. Usa a tee-shirt streteched over top and held on with a bungee cord and...

That is not an unusual spread. Every calculator will give a somewhat different result. For that matter if you are on city water it probably comes from more than one well/source and changes throughout the course of the year so the Ward Labs single data point is only useful as an estimate, and...

So went to swap my blow off tube last night for pressure manifold. I do that when the fermentation slows down, there is a PRV on the manifold and a gas post, I put a spunding valve on the gas post and let fermentation wrap up at about 10 psi. Something looked wrong after I took off the blow...

I've got the MM3 you linked. Used it to replace my old barley crusher. It works well but after a couple years I find it did start to sometimes fail to grab grains and I poke it with my old plastic spoon I used with my barley crusher. Should probably take it apart and clean the rollers but...

What is a breakfast sour?

I brew 17.5 gallon batches to get 15 gallons into kegs, the rest goes to dumping trub, yeast, dry hops. It works out to about every three weeks. For a long time I was brewing every 2 weeks but consumption seems to have slowed at my house and could easily seeing this go to once a month.

nice looking pump. How come not sharing a pump curve with the marketing literature?

This overshoot on day 1 is pretty similar to what I experienced trying to control 60L spiedel tank in a fridge with a single probe STC controller. My heater (reptile bulb) stayed on too long because the the thermowell was in middle of the beer and it took a long time for the middle to warm up...

I think if you leave the beer on the dry hops for a week or so at room temp before bottling you should be fine. Some/most of the hop creep should happen in the fermentor and be fermented out by time you rack to bottling bucket and dose with priming sugar.

I think a space heater is going to produce way too much heat and likely drive temperature swings. I agree with @AlexKay ... a small fan, always on, is a good way to go. I put mine on top of a ducting tube so that it pulls air from the bottom of the freezer, past my repile bulb, and pushes it...

I believe most of these UK breweries use or at least historically used top cropping at peak of fermentation for harvesting as part of the selection bias pressure. Avoiding collecting dead yeast and non yeast trub, and avoiding selections for early or late flocculating yeast.