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Yup this is one of my key complaints too. I was dumping everything in from BIAB and in the end gave up on removing via the collection jar because it was taking 8 or so bottle swaps and considerable grief. I've since got a Grainfather which produces MUCH cleaner wort from the recirculation. On...

Not sure if this is a silly question or not. I got a filthy infection in a plastic bucket - maggots, flies and a good 3" crust on top that looked and smelled like rotten vegetables. Needless to say I won't be brewing in that fermentor again. However I do need something to keep 5+ gallons of...

I'm an all-grain brewer but have been doing some partial mash brews lately and loving it. Doing 30 min mash and 30 min boil to save time. I generally use around 50% extract 50% grain and just add the extract at flameout so it dissolves nicely. If you were using a higher proportion of extract...

A keg would be better because it's completely sealed. But don't go buying one if you don't already have one. Otherwise, you will be fine. Plug up the airlock hole with some other sanitised object until you get there. So long as you don't drop it there's not much that can go wrong here. If your...

There is no chance of infection if it's all sanitised and sealed up. If you pitch the yeast before you leave then the extra splashing while you transport will be very good for the yeast. The question is whether you can carry 50 pounds of wort for the distance without spilling it. Or, just go...

I've had some fun under pitching hefes with wlp300 (same thing as 3068). Last brew I made a vitality starter on brewday with a 12oz glass of beer from the previous batch. No yeast, other than what was in the glass. Pitched that into 4 gallons of wort. Took 48h to start but the flavour of the...

I was listening to Jamil Zainasheff's podcast the other day and he was talking about poly-gyle brewing. Mash some grains, and get a normal gravity wort, then add that wort to fresh grains and mash again to get a double-gravity wort. Apparently they weren't getting any efficiency issues with...

As above. Also good luck finding a pressure capable vessel that is not round. Anything square is going to buckle outwards under any sort of pressure, which is why kegs are round. If you are on a budget and want pressure capable it's hard to beat a keg fermentor. They aren't that hard to clean.

Why does it have to be substandard? We can brew awesome beer at home with basic or flash equipment, so nothing stopping a restaurant or bar doing the same. They have professional chefs on site, good gear, good ingredient turnaround and are doing the same recipe over and over so there's no reason...

I have a stainless pressure conical with a viewing port in the top and a clear collection bottle at the bottom. It's not the same as a carboy for view ability but better than a semi-opaque bucket and far better than a normal stainless vessel. Works great.

I love the concept of a house ale. For me it does need to be brewed by the establishment to count, though I'll accept it being contract brewed if it's their recipe and demand got too much for them to continue making it themselves. WilliamsWarn actually target this market which is cool. The...

34/70 is as versatile as it gets. Anything from yellow lawnmower beer to big malty beasts. A traditional bock done well is very different to a Munich dunkel IMO. I try to get lots of rich flavor without too much alcohol. You could look at rauchbier, schwatzbier, APLs, rye pilsner or rye...

This is a grey area, but I'd call this more of a porter than a stout without the roast barley or black malt. Carbonation levels should be pretty similar either way. You may also find it turns black when the yeast drops out. 10% chocolate is a fair bit and should make it very dark, depending what...

I won a bunch of extract kits in a competition and honestly have been really enjoying them. I found a rough breakdown of what is inside (% of each malt, colour, total IBU) and this makes it way easier to build a recipe around them. Part of the fun is that they were free of course, but nothing...

Here's an update. At 48 hours from pitching this was starting to get well underway and from there it continued to ferment as normal. I force carbed half in a keg, bottle conditioned the rest which is my preference for these. It's day 17 and the flavour and aroma is really great. This is a...

17c or 162f, plus a mash rest at 44c / 110f to promote clove. Underpitch big time so there's still some banana balance in there. My latest batch, which I'm bottling tomorrow, I pitched one 12oz bottle of hefe in a small 6 hour vitality starter, no yeast. It took 48 hours to get started but went...

I love a high FG with WLP-300. Anywhere between 1.015 - 1.020 is ace. No idea about how to maximise the banana, as I'm a clove guy myself. But underpitching and fermenting warm, skip the ferulic acid rest would be my goto.

So you have a 35L pot, BIAB bag and an immersion chiller. Great start. Only other big consideration is your heat source. Are you planning to brew this on the kitchen stove or do you have another burner in mind? I started off on the kitchen stove until the wife kicked me out, it worked pretty...

In my experience, maxxing out your gear makes for a harder and slower brewday. You have more risk of boilovers, your efficiency may suffer, your burner may struggle with the larger load, just more things to go wrong. It's the last thing you want to be doing if you are just starting out. I would...

Well this is about to get very interesting. There was some airlock action yesterday which got me all excited but that turned out to be the heat belt warming things up and creating pressure. So I aerated with the electric drill again and poured in another glass of beer from the keg while the lid...