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I'm surprised it hasn't been mention earlier, but the best thing I ever did for my beer was to buy a book. Specifically, How to Brew by John Palmer. This guy is a homebrew legend for a reason. Easy to read, entertaining and enlightening, covering the gamut from super-noob to high level science...

I use the 30 plate Dudadiesel with fittings as you link... it's completely awesome, but I find that it has added problems in other places. With the slow immersion chiller, hops were happy to float in the kettle - easy life. Now, you need a way to keep them out of the chiller. I'm not 100%...

Oh, and BTW - carboycleaner.com is throwing up a server error. Is the promo so sucessful that we've brought down your site? :)

I'll play the sympathy card. I just gave up on a raspberry wheat ale that never fermented despite three rounds of yeast. A true disaster brew. After bottling it anyway last night, I was dismayed to see that my carboy brush was completely and utterly useless trying to get the raspberries off...

Here's mine. 2shared - download grainmethod.docx The step by step language steps are obviously customized for my equipment, and leave out some steps that are obvious enough to be assumed. I come from a production floor background, so my key driver was time management. I'm trying to...

Good point. I guess we should be testing it in distilled water to see if it hits 1.000. Haven't done that yet. But we did hit expected OG and FG very closely on our batch that followed this, so maybe I naively assumed it was an OK hydrometer. I can look at that though.

Hi All, I'm currently considering cutting my losses on my nightmare batch, so I thought I'd pick some brains before I give up on it. Several problems were encountered, and several lessons learned, but I'm hoping to save it anyway. History; Base recipe was a standard Heffe, 10G batch. OG...

First off - thanks to all for the comments. Didn't mean to restart the bucket vs. carboy debate or flame war, sorry. Why not leave upstairs at 68? One word - SWIMBO. See my original post about the wheat beer that stalled. I'm currently giving it a kick in the pants so it can finish...

Hi Guys, I normally secondary condition my beers, but my hand is being forced thanks to a stalled ferment on my wheat beer, which is hogging up my carboys. I have an Irish Red that I'm going to leave in the Primary until bottling time, and I have a few questions on the technique. The...

I did make my own. $25 is the price just for the bucket :( It's another $12.50 for a spigot (which I already have luckily). There is only one game in town (Vancouver), which probably has something to do with it. Thanks for the comments everyone. To clarify, I wouldn't literally throw...

Yeah - this is our bottling bucket. LHB charges $25 for these, so sounds like consensus is to cough up the $25... Sigh - I'm getting nickled and dimed to death on all of these, haha. I keep hoping that I'm homefree on gear!

Hi, I'm on my 6th AG batch now, and despite some troubles here and there, the beers have been largely good. (Knock on wood). My question is how dangerous a scratched plastic bucket really is. My first mash tun was a 30L plastic bucket most LHB shops sell as primaries. I drilled a hole...

sorry to revive a dead thread - but I'm just about to get my first plate chiller, so this convo is very relevant to me! What kind of bags do you guys use? Are you worried about food safeness of the bags? I'm paranoid about some of the bag breaking down in the long boil...

Thanks for the tips. Regarding building your own hop spider, what are you guys using for bags? I see people using paint screeners, but are those really food safe?

Almost any burner will work, the only real variables are how quick they are, and how much propane they use. I'm getting by with a cheesy one like this right now, but it's slow and I'm unhappy with it. My Bayou SQ14 is in the mail...

Hi Guys, I've found an awesome local SS welder who's going to help turn my 82L soup pot into a proper kettle. My question is on hops filtering options. My goal is to run straight from the kettle into a plate chiller, and then straight into the primary (we have cold groundwater in...

First off - thanks for all of the replies everyone. Regarding starting a siphon with boiling wort - isn't it possible to start the siphon from the wort out / cold wort part of the plate chiller? That would remove some risk? I'm still not sure I have enough height because the burner is so low...

My "brewing collective" includes a PhD in math, an architect, a marine biologist, and me (a lowly middle manager who dabbles in ERP systems). So yeah, we still have some serious nerd credentials.

Hello resident brew nerds, I wish to pick some brains! What I'm trying to do is to set up a gravity feed plate chiller set up, but I'm not sure I will have enough gravity at my disposal. I wanted to double-check if I'll need some way to raise my ketlle before take the plunge and buy a plate...

Hi There, I've tried hard to find first-hand experience of HomeBrewStuff's Chill-Out! line of plate chillers. I know that you can get better deals on the DudaDiesel stuff in the US, but I don't have that luxury in Canada. The Chill-Out! series is the only one I can find locally...