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I would leave it alone completely in the primary for at least 2 weeks regardless of airlock activity. A beer with that high of an OG (over 1.070 as I see it) will require a good deal of time to finish the work and then clean up after itself as already mentioned by jdhasse. There is no need or...

Do you think all the grains were uncracked, or just the 10 pounds of pale malt? Either way, that's going to really impact the final result. You can technically add some sugars (boil a pound or so of corn sugar in water for a few minutes, cool it, and then pour it in). But while that will add...

Yeah, the water profile looks good the way you calculated it. Personally, I would break up the additions separately for mash and sparge to ensure the pH of each are on target. But as long as you hit the mash pH in the right ballpark, and the sparge water is under 6, you should be perfectly...

I use the Bru'n Water spreadsheet to calculate additions separately for the mash and sparge water. I typically toss in any additions while heating the mash water so that they dissolve completely. Then, after I start my mash, I add the additions to the sparge water when I start heating it and...

First, the recipe: With all that chocolate malt and roast barley I'm afraid that beer is going to be way over the top with roast flavors. You could have used half that amount and it still might have been too much. Also, the hop amounts might have been a little on the light side, but again, all...

The plastic and rubbery taste could also be from fermenting at too high of a temperature. I would completely rule out the mash tun. As for the water, have you ever looked at a water report for your area? Do you modify your brewing water in any way or just use straight tap water? If you don't...

That looks good on the surface. I do have a few questions about details though: 1. Have you given any thought to the mash pH? 2. What is your planned procedure for adding the water and grain to the mash tun? Which goes in first, etc.?

I have two trellises, each about 8 feet high. I have one on either side of a walkway leading into my backyard. I ran a few strings from the top of one trellis to the other, and planted hops under one of them. The hops grow up their own trellis, and then across the strings to the top of the other...

I've done 20# no problem with a bazooka, FWIW.

I have no experience with that strain, but here's what I found from someone else: "Used this in a Cali Common fermented at around 65-70* for a week then dropped the temp to between 55-60* for two, finally to 45 for three weeks. The beer turned out very well. At racking it was god awful and I...

Well, I guess you just had a great mash and sparge resulting in abnormally high efficiency. :D Regardless, I think you could feel confident saying the OG was around 1.078

Well, let's say you got 90% efficiency. What efficiency were you expecting to have in order to get 1.062 as an OG? Do you use Beersmith or similar software?

Worried? Of course not! RDWHAHB. The beer will be stronger than you planned, though. I hit 88% efficiency one time, so maybe you got lucky. Did you temperature-correct the gravity readings?

1. Trub doesn't affect hydrometer readings (unless your hydrometer is sitting on top of a pile of it at the bottom of the test tube.) 2. I haven't used a refractometer, but I know the calculations are different once there is alcohol in the beer, In other words, you use one calculation to find...

I estimate your OG before fermentation to be around 1.078. It's a guess, but it is probably in the right ballpark. There is a calculator you can use HERE. In the second section of that page, you can see where it says "The target volume is known, the new gravity unknown." I just entered in the...

Sorry, I think you're just out of luck! Although it might be possible to get a decent estimate based on pre-boil readings if you also know the pre and post boil volumes. Do you have those?

Some initial thoughts: 1. Strike water temp and heat loss: It depends on equipment, how long you take to do it, and how much you stir, but I'd say the temp loss is closer to 10 degrees than 20 when mashing in. You say you use Beersmith-- in the mash section of the software it should tell you...

Pretty good. But it doesn't compare to my assistant brewer and I sanitizing our hydrometer.

That's my house when I am bottling. You can get fumigation tents and a CO2 tank at your LHBSS.

Yikes. Number 6 on that list is extremely simplistic, isn't it? No mention of Ph when making water additions? Sparging is incredibly important and it is where people lose a lot of their efficiency points. It's also where people can inadvertently extract tannin when using water that is not the...