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Thank goodness she’s gone

Skimming is way down on the list of thing to fret about..if you want to harvest yeast you may want to consider building a starter and harvesting that yeast rather than harvesting after fermentation. You’ll have no trub or hops to deal with and contamination risks are also reduced.

That blows. I’m in the north burbs if you need a brewhouse for a day pm me. I’ll keep an eye out. The scrapper idea is an interesting one. I’d send a note to the local brew clubs. I’ll forward it to Nubs for you. Chaos should be notified as well. My first thought is a bad neighbor...

I wouldn’t dump em just yet. I’m sure it’s roughly the same as freezing some meat. You could look for signs of freezer burn? I’m not familiar with those bags so I can’t (or shouldn’t speculate) on the cause.

Yummm kimchee!

I don’t skim it anymore. It certainly won’t hurt to remove the protein scum. When making stock in the kitchen I remove it but I honestly haven’t noticed a difference in my homebrew. Stone brewing co has a homebrewing book and they suggest you skim it off but that is the only reference I’ve...

You definitely grew some yeast up from the creamy look of it. Two years is a bit old and you may have some drift or mutation going on after the all starters and time. I’d say you got the best of that pack and it may be time to get a fresh pack.

Fruit fly is the likely source.

I’ve been running glycol for three years and have never noticed any grunge. Two of the three years the unit was in a garage.

I run a 1/2 bbl herms system. It’s basically the blichmann pilot system that I designed before Blichmann came out with one. I pieced the system together over time and bought used gear where I could. It’s a great system because It doesn’t collapse the grain bed during recirculation and it’s...

Your off to a great start, it took me about a year before I got a keg set up. I also relied heavily on a few buddies recipes in the beginning, they both brew professionally so I had great ideas and good tested recipes. Since I relied on them I probably slowed my personal advancement in the craft...

Yes those numbers represent packs of wl001. The chart is based on a 1.040 wort@70F. No stir plate or o2 was used. Each pack is 100b of liquid yeast fresh. The left axis is desired pitch target, the top is liters of starter wort. Pitch rates vary for lots of reasons so you should use some...

More wort is better for growth than more yeast. See the attached chart to see how much yeast to pitch to hit target growth. A stir plate makes a huge difference in the process. So does a larger vessel. You can always buy more yeast. Four dry packs probably have been enough without any...

Yes that’s possible. Cleaning and sanitation may help you isolate your issue. Try to keep and open mind and eliminate possible causes as you move forward. What’s common and what can you rule out as a cause.

My buddy brews professionally, he turned around the other day because he heard a huge rushing water sound to see one of the other brewers getting blasted with trub hops and beer. He pulled the wrong triclamp as you did and unleashed a torrent of beer from a 30 bbl fermentor. They lost about 5...

Foam crust is yeast!

Your starter is not large enough to build the required cell count for a lager. A 2l starter at 1.036 and one pack will yield 140b cells. 2l with two packs of fresh yeast will yield 196b cells. You can do multiple steps to increase cell counts. Brewers friend says you need 3 steps to build...

Fusel alcohol is often created by high fermentation temps. Phenolic is more yeast strain dependent but may indicate a brett infection. Chlorine is another cause but shouldn’t be an issue on well water. Your well water could be an issue as well. I’d start by asking if your controlling...

morgan is our 11 year old lab and Payton is our new puppy. Both are highly trained brew dogs

Make up air is pretty easy and works great. I have zero humidity or smell on brew day. Broan makes a 6” powered damper that I wired into the fan switch. I installed a commercial hood from fast hoods and it’s a bit of overkill but it works very well.