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Nice!

Try pinching the tubing shut a bit with your fingers until it fills completely - I had a similar issue when trying to fly sparge very slowly and that helped. Also, are you pre-boiling/deoxygenating and treating your sparge water with SMB/trifecta too?

The first post in this thread provides a very general set of functional recommendations for treating "soft" water, such as RO for various types of beers. It's not nearly as comprehensive as what you'll see elsewhere, but it should help get you in the ballpark.

Watch out on the lower end. It seems a good number of the base malts the last year or two have had gelatinization temps in the 147-149 range. Staying below those for the entire mash could cause some problems. Best to get a malt analysis if possible and plan accordingly.

Take a bottle of hoppy beer and set it in a window for a while. Keep another in the fridge to compare - definitely a thing and can be quite pronounced

I'd be offended if you didn't! BBQ sauce is an appropriate alternative, though.

I've done both, but prefer to calculate the necessary sparge water and add a bit extra (maybe .5 gal or so) just to make sure I have enough and don't start pumping air. With #2, it actually seems that you'd be potentially extracting a bit more, but diluting it substantially and leaving a lot...

Given that you don't appear to be adding anything basic/alkaline to the water anyway, for sparging/tannin extraction purposes I don't think it'll make much of a difference if you treat the sparge water or not. But, if you sparge with RO water your "finished"/overall water profile for the beer...

You're gonna love the Eherms I think. I converted about a year ago and it's been great.

Looks pretty good to me. Make sure you take a flap disc or some sandpaper and smooth that lip really well. Your wrists and forearms will thank you. No need for any additional protective edge if you smooth things out well.

Have fun...and take notes! It's a big step, but nothing to be intimidated by. If you improve something each time, you'll be making great all-grain beer in no time.

My wife and I make a house sparkling apple cider with US-05, and I've definitely noticed that once I get down to 61-62 F it throws a subtle white peach character. I haven't tried to go much lower, but we actually target this temp to get that peach ester. It's been very reliable that if we stay...

I just switched to this arrangement from the large loop of silicon hose sitting just on top/under the surface method. Even with fairly slow/moderate recirc speeds, the silicon hose created a whirlpool of sorts around/under the mash cap that I wasn't happy with. The tee sits an inch or two under...

These sit a little lower than the plastic QDs and the hoses exit at 90 degrees rather than upward. I had a similar issue where I only needed about 1/4" of clearance and these did the job...

I'm not familiar with some of the maltsters, but one of the Pale Ale malts is probably your best bet. Rahr/American 2-row malts don't have a lot going on, though, so what you see there might be a little more malty. Depending on the recipe, that could be a good thing.

I ended up replacing mine with Intertaps too, the makeshift replacement parts started to leak a bit and it just wasn't worth fussing with anymore. Too bad, the Shirrons were great faucets.

I loved my 1st gen Shirron Ventmatic faucets, which I think the Intertap design is based on. But, you can't get replacement parts for them anymore, and after about 13 years I've had to retire them for a set of Intertaps.

I think they cover similar territory, but I was reading a Bamforth paper the other day discussing starch degradation "myths"/dogma that focuses on limit dextrinase in some detail. Bamforth notes that low limit dextrinase activity isn't so much an issue of temperature-related degradation as it...

Thanks! I'm pretty curious too, given a number of posts/comments that Chinook is a good candidate for biotransformation changes. It should be interesting given how distinct and prevalent it is in West coast style beers that I'm more familiar with.

After reading through a bunch of this thread (and numerous others), I'm planning on taking a first crack at one of these - how does the following recipe look? Some quick thoughts: The Victory and Carahell are intended to add just a touch of color and flavor (I like the slightly orange color...