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Yep, I'm using a rectangular cool-box as a mash-tun. The manifold is the one that was supplied that I then modded. A large D section that runs around the edge of the bottom of the tun with slits every 5mm (that was a long time with a hacksaw!). I fly-sparge with it and that's easier that...

I use an insulated mash-tun (30L I think) and that fitted 16lbs of grain easily for a 8.2% ale. Plenty of room for at least another 8lbs of grain.

I'm having problems whilst sparging the grain bed. I vorlauter fine, and the wort begins to clear, so I then open the tap on the boiler and start to sparge the mash. This seems to go fine for about 10 minutes, with the level of hot liquor being about 1/2 - 1 inch above the grain bed. After about...

They work really well. I have three and serve all my beer from them (except if going on a camping trip or making a particularly high grav beer, in which case they get bottled). Very little hassle whatsoever and easy to serve from. If you know you'll get through the whole lot in a couple of days...

It's a plastic barrel that's rated to take a certain amount of pressure, but has a safety valve on the top. There's also an inlet valve to take a canister or bulb of carbon dioxide. We brits like our ale warm(ish) and flat(ish), so don't need to chill or artificially carbonate the beer. You use...

They all do this. I've found floats more of a hassle than anything. As for the level of the tap, it could be with being about half an inch to an inch lower, but all I do is very carefully tilt the barrel when it gets to about two thirds empty and put a chopping board (1 inch thick) under the...

Now that I'm keeping yeast slurries between batches, I'm starting to become more concerned about sanitisation and yeast preservation. A couple of questions cropped up in my mind. *Does anyone sanitise the tap on their boiler/kettle? It occurred to me that everything up to the boil in...

Don't have a pic of the one that I made, but here's a commercial one. Actually, it works wonderfully. I don't use hop pellets though, I use dried hop flowers, so it may not work with hop pellets. The hops form a filter bed on top of the hop filter which filters out the cold break. The hop...

You should be able to buy a hop strainer from a homebrew store. They're just a section of copper pipe with small holes punched in it. I made my own with a section of copper pipe. Cut myself about a 9" length and crimped one end shut in a vice. Then just drilled a load of small holes in it with a...

I made a hop filter a while ago by getting a section of copper pipe, crimping one end in a vice and then drilling a load of holes in it - works like a charm (and saved me about £9!). I'm now wanting to put as S-bend in it (like you get in the commercial ones) so that the hop filter will sit...

I think that it's about £5 a pint (US$10). That's not really the point of this thread though... we were just talking about it over lunch and I got to wondering what you'd have to do to get a good taste out of it if you were insane enough to attempt it!

The faster you cool the wort, the better the cold break. This is where the long chain proteins flocculate and drop out of solution. the quicker you cool, the more they clump together and fall drop to the bottom of you kettle. If you cool slowly, they do not flocculate as well, stay in solution...

OK, so this is a stupid idea, but speaking hypothetically... I have a few friends who are going to Iceland (where beer is really expensive). We were talking about concentrating a beer syrup (fractionally distil off the ethanol, boil off water, re-add ethanol) and taking that with them, then...

when i'm doing consecutive batches in a week, i tend to repitch directly onto the yeast cake. this then ferments like crazy as there is so much yeast at the start of primary fermentation, so it's generally finished fermenting in 3 days or so. is there anything bad about this short primary...