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If you have a sealed kettle with a 6" diameter pipe rising 15 feet to the roof, when the kettle is boiling, steam will rise up the pipe. I would suspect most of the steam would condense on the sides of the pipe and drain back into the kettle. If the pipe is insulated, it will reduce the amount...

I suspect that "Rule of thumb" is based on barley malt grists. The grist in question is more than 50% wheat malt, which I suspect affects both the mash pH as well as the ideal "target pH" for best conversion. In any case, using more than 3% acid malt to a mash blindly is ill-advised as it can...

For the chlorine, my understanding is the metabisulphate "unbinds" the bound chlorine and makes it all "free chlorine", which can be driven off pretty easily by heating. That is, adding it to the water before you begin to heat it will free the chlorine and as it is heating, most or all of the...

Interesting discussion. Matheos, if you are new to homebrewing, my advice is to not worry about water chemistry. With the exception of chlorine (which has been addressed by use of a campden tables, or sodium [or potassium] metabisulphate--they are the same thing), your water is fine for just...

While the various spreadsheet programs can do a pretty good job of predicting mash pH, there are so many factors that they never will be exact. Even batch-to-batch variations in the malt from the same maltster will affect the results, let alone different malts from different maltsters. These...

I disagree. It is not typical, but there are some municipal water supplies with low Ca and Mg and high Na. College Station, Texas, for one, and I am sure there are others. When I lived there, I brewed exactly one batch before I obtained an RO system. If you search the HBD archives, you will see...

Yes, I would just enter zero for those listed as <1 or less. They are just letting you know what their detection limits are.

Are all these listed as ppm? My suspicion is that you are looking at their limits for detection. That is, for a particular constituent, they may not be able to accurately say that none of it is present in the sample submitted, but, they can state that it is less than the limit of detection for...

You are confusing density (specific gravity) with weight percent. Like the VikeMan says, specific gravity is weight per volume, but weight percent is weight per total weight. If you were to mix one pound of sucrose in one gallon of water, you would end up with a solution with a SG of 1.043...

Tyler B, for your purposes, the Brix and Plato scales can be considered identical. They are both defined by the specific gravity of a sucrose solution of the indicated weight percent. The major differences come from whether the standard is defined at 15.5C or 20C. You might think that...

Thank you. I have never seen these. Here in the US, the 0-32 Brix refractometers are more common, although they have a similar appearance. Although the Brix and Plato scales are slightly different, I consider them the same. Even the 32 Brix scale wouldn't read your wort, though.

Can I ask where you find a refractometer that reads in degrees Plato? The only ones I see read in Brix (or, maybe Brix and SG). I realize that Brix and Plato are essentially equivalent, but I didn't know there were any that read in degrees Plato. Honestly, I believe refractometers should give...

I may be off base (and tell me if I am), but how well do you know the purity of your reagents? For the Citric Acid, you have mentioned that it will form a mono-hydrate. Even if you have the anhydrous form, just from humidity it will hydrate (just like CaCl2) and my understanding is to do precise...

Hi. My name is Chris, my brewery is the Smiling Frog. My first batch was in September 1996, and I have no idea how many batches I have made since then. I have gone through several hiatuses, some lasting years, but every time I come back, it is with renewed passion. I am no award-winning brewer...