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Geez, didn't mean to annoy you, day_trippr (hope that's not too empathic for you...). Stainless is usually a combination of mostly iron, some nickel and some chromium, plus very little of some other stuff. 304 is 18-20% chromium, 8-12% nickel, almost all the rest is iron. Normal 304 has up to...

I don't think these kettles are an 'amalgam of stainless and steel'. Actually, I've never heard of such a thing. Regardless, passivating after removing the corrosion is a good idea. These spots could be contact corrosion where the basket (also some type of stainless, I assume?) touched the...

Nice progress! You really don't know what they (the manufacturer) used to work on the surface. Maybe they gave it a good scrubbing with steel wool. That would certainly leave iron behind. Regarding phosphoric acid: I think some rust converters contain it. You can also phosphatize steel as an...

The article actually talks about a simple single decoction, and the freedom it gives you in picking an almost arbitrary temperature sequence. Again, me paraphrasing and simplifying. I find the two articles (or two parts of one article) very entertaining and worthwhile. There is nothing...

That's just me paraphrasing it. It makes more sense if you read the article.

Right. Back to my question: why not stainless (copper is too expensive, I got that) everywhere?

Yes yes yes, the metal parts all look stainless or zinc coated. I meant the plastic tubing. In countries with electric trains, people will throw grounding hooks over the wires, wait for the power to drop, and steal the high voltage conductors. Ditto for construction sites. They used to just...

I don't think I'm going this direction anytime soon (very nice systems, by the way!), but I have a question anyway: why not use copper or stainless for the plumbing, if no hoses get moved? Wouldn't that be better for sanitation, longevity etc.?

Aha, the plot thickens! It sounds like they are wistful about the demise of decoctions, and advertise all the fancy things you can do with them. Also, in part one they talked about boiling (or almost boiling) the alpha-amylase mash part, but in part two they admit that decoction fell out of...

I don't know. Is it? Can one blow out the trub through the beer dip tube a day later? I find that even with cooling the wort I'm still transferring a lot of sediment into the fermenter. It doesn't seem to hurt the beer. (This was Weissbeer, with a brew-in-the-bag attempt; sparging just didn't...

How are you getting the cold (=removing the heat) from your fridge into the glycol? Transfer via air gives a very low heat flow. People have bent the fridge evaporator down into a glycol reservoir.

Thanks, RPh_Guy, very interesting. So, this is indeed described as a more logical sequence by Weihenstephan brewing faculty. Additionally they mention that by doing a real decoction and going close to boiling after doing the 72C alpha-amylase rest with 1/3 of the mash brings added benefits for...

Reverse step mashing: It might be interesting to set some portion of the mash (1/3?) aside with beta-amylase still fully intact (not heated above 65C), bring the rest of the mash to 72C for alpha-amylase activity, let the alpha-amylase do its job on this part of the mash, and then cool it down...

Unfortunately my 5 gallon brewing kettles are only 11" ID, so I can't use the very nice 13" stainless mesh baskets recently advertised (Stainless steel basket for BIAB brewing- cheap! ). Therefore I ordered 5 feet of 12" 40 mesh (about 400 micrometer) 304L stainless mesh and some 1/8" 304L bars...

I either missed or already forgot the point: what's the connection between step mashes and disadvantages of brewing in a bag? I did my usual steps when I used a bag, and now that I replaced it with a home-made stainless steel mesh filter basket, I'm doing the same thing. Actually, with the bag...

Once the dewpoint of the ambient air moves above your coolant temperature, your system becomes a dehumidifier. Only your cooling power limits the amount of water you can pull from the air, unless you stick the cold side of your system into a dry enclosure; then you have essentially build a...

Oxygen bleach yes, chlorine bleach no.

If it's fermenting, it's fermenting, whether you see bubbles or not. Let it be, and leave fixing the gas seal for the next batch.

So, my understanding (and I'm not a chemist) is that you only need to passivate if your stainless equipment has excess iron embedded in the surface. This could happen due to machining (like cutting threads), scrubbing with steel wool, or something done wrong while welding - actually, welding...

Math taking up too much shelf space? Is that what happens just before you run out of numbers? :bigmug: