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Yeah I'm a newish Grainfather user as well (20 or so brews). I started conditioning my grain and adding oat hulls when I got the Grainfather, also loosened the crush (then later tightened it back). I figured these changes would be necessary to keep the grain bed draining properly which was never...

I've been playing around with blonde ales and don't feel that the recipe makes a lot of difference. Process is far more important in low flavour beers. Worry about fresh ingredients, nail your mash temp, pitch well, good temp control, minimise oxygen post fermentation. If you do all that well...

+1 I've had great success with wlp300 at 62f. A bit slow to start due to low temp and under pitching but yeast flavour is delicious.

I'll check my notes when I'm at my computer and post it. From memory it was more or less the recipe from brewing classic styles, upped to 1.060 and finishing 1.020ish. About 10% lactose and apart from that just the usual stout ingredients. But one of the best beers I've ever made for sure.

Good job OP with those dryhop magnets. I'd be interested to hear how that works out. You are effectively storing the hops at room temperature in a co2 blanket for several days. Not sure if this would damage them of if the co2 protects them. But if this is your first brew, awesome! You'll like...

Hey everyone, I'm ready to give LODO a try and are looking for some advice from Grainfather users who do LODO already. I've already made some mods to my Grainfather. I've removed the overflow pipe as it splashes wort and restricted the pump flow to a minimum level, plus added a BIAB bag for...

You use approx 6g per liter to serve and 6-10g per litre to carbonate. So in imperial, that would be like 1.25g per oz to serve only. So 5x 5 gallon kegs, let's call it 4-5 kegs to be safe as the poster above says. All bets are off it you use it for purging etc.

You don't need to. All that matters is that the "other junk like proteins" doesn't end up in your glass. Which it doesn't, because it falls out to the bottom of your fermentor before you bottle or keg it. Washing yeast concentrates the yeast which means you can store the same amount of yeast...

Another thing to note is that immersion chillers work much better if they are moving. I can chill my 7G batches in about 10 mins if I stand there moving the chiller the whole time. Or 40 mins if I leave it alone and stir occasionally.

I believe you can also simply add some to a glass of beer to help understand the flavour contribution it brings.

+1 on the above, with some extra points. If you are going to pressurise parts of your system to 30psi with the set and forget for 24 hours carbonation method, those seals need to be a higher quality than if you only pressurise to 12psi. Secondly, if you get sick of losing whole tanks of gas...

No, the gasket should sit on the top, between the rim of the bottle and the carbonation cap. But they do have a bit of a habit of slipping inside the bottle if you tighten them too much. I find I can get a great seal at 30-40psi without having to tighten it too much. Mine is just a cheap...

Oh yeah, I already have a mill. This is uncrushed malt that has lost its freshness. Uncrushed malt stored in a paper bag for a month or so. Sounds like I might as well brew with it and see what happens, but yeah, definitely will be sticking with the plastic ziplocks in future to keep the air...

Yeah the alternative is chucking them out. It's more that a brewday is a few hours work plus ties up my fermentor for a week so if it has zero chance of success then I might as well not bother. But if it's likely to make drinkable beer, then its worth a shot. I've never had this issue before so...

8kg of manuka smoked pork & garlic salamis for me. These will hang for about 2 weeks then should be pretty decent. I like to fry up whatever is leftover into patties for a preview of what I'm getting.

You are getting 5 packs of yeast at a good discount, with no say in what you get. I agree they should be fine if you make a starter in advance of brewday, and if you don't know about starters this is a good time to learn, plus it's a good skill to have. I would look at this from a slightly...

So one of my suppliers ships their malt in paper bags. Normally I repackage into ziplock bags and i've had no issues storing malt this way for many months. Life got the better of me recently and I never got around to repackaging, so the malt has been stored in the paper bags for maybe a month...

I agree with your basic argument that a lot of brewing is not recipe-dependent. But also I think some things are best learned by brewing the same recipe over again. If your beer has diacetyl then that is an off flavour and there is plenty of literature on how to fix that. Not recipe dependent...

You'll get more boiloff in the larger kettle, but that isn't a problem if you allow for it in the recipe. If anything it will increase your efficiency. One thing to consider is that your wort level might be a bit low for your immersion chiller to do it's job properly. Assuming you use one of...

There is general-purpose brewing skill, which you can develop by brewing any style. Things like being able to hit your targets regularly, understanding yeast health, understanding what different ingredients bring to a recipe, avoiding oxygen during transfer etc etc. These skills you can develop...