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So your SG has gone down a little. That's encouraging. Call it a science experiment. Let it run and see what happens.

Like I said, it is not about getting the desired gravity. That isn't why we boil.

Should be yeast and tiny bubbles moving around slowly and obscuring the beer slightly. Well, unless the wirlyfloc has knocked all that down already. Honestly it is a product I am not familiar with but I have never heard of it being used on a small batch like that. Usually it is used for 5+...

The lid and stopper are on nice and tight? No bubbling in the airlock? Since I have never used whirlyfloc I don't know exactly what you should expect, but I would expect some serious hubble bubble activity in the airlock after 24 hours. And as @tracer bullet points out, the beer is suspiciously...

Well, a gallon or nearly a gallon boil-off is common for 5gal or bigger batches with 60 to 90 minute boils. At least that is my experience. As for commercial brewers, I really can't say what they do, exactly. The boil does a lot of things and reducing the volume is an outcome but not an...

I have made several batches now from my house yeast. I harvest a couple of small samples, enough to innoculate quart starters. I make my starter the day before brew day and if it ever refuses to take off overnight in the starter, then I will pitch some dry BE-256 and start over again. If you...

You could drill a pot lid for a stopper and airlock. Place the lid, then tightly stretch several turns of saran wrap around the whole pot lid to pot joint. Just watch the airlock. If you have a good seal everywhere, then you will know fermentation is complete when after a couple days in a row...

Hmmm 35L is about 36 quarts so 9 gallons... you have just enough capacity to do a 5+ gallon batch if you watch the boil during the foaming stage. With BIAB, maybe mash in 5 gallons, lose a little in the bag, sparge in a bucket or large cooking pot with 2-1/2 gallons and squeeze the bag good...

I carbonate in the fridge with nothing connected to the beer post, gas connected to the gas post, regulated at 5psi, so at kegerator temps the CO2 volume in the keg is normal serving pressure at normal serving temp, after stabilizing over the next few days. Even if I run empty on the tapped keg...

A very light application of keg lube on the gasket might help, too. I have one keg that will NOT hold pressure unless I do that, and even then it is not always a sure thing. I hate that keg. It is the kind with the big black plastic handle ring instead of the metal handle. Tried a new gasket...

I have done that with excellent results, the only issue is that with a really big beer, you end up definitely burying your spigot with the second batch. I cope with this by doing a swirl when fermentation slows down, carefully tipping the fermenter back a bit away from the spigot and bracing it...

This looks like a good recipe for me to try one of these days. I have been re-using my yeast for several generations now and it is nice to not have to buy it, and I have been getting excellent results with the high gravity ales I have been brewing. The original was a pack of HotHead and since...

sprinkle-pitching is common and usually works okay. Certainly it is less effort. I personally think a starter is better because it puts an overwhelming yeast cell count in the wort that a light bacterial load simply can't compete with. How much better? Probably not so much to notice, if you keep...

Welcome, and Happy Brewing!

Similar. I use the back of my Buck 110 pocketknife blade. I lever it up one place, then another and it pops off the second, and I can usually even re-seal by mashing the cap back on, if I want to. As you say, the cap suffers no damage.

5m, that's what, a bit over 15 feet? It will take a while to chill a 5 gallon batch. A longer coil would be much better. I would at least double that. 50 feet is good. You get plenty of heat transfer, and use less water. For such a short coil you would probably want a second coil immersed in an...

Ice bath will work fine for a gallon batch! Be sure to cover it. You can also freeze some water ahead of time in zip locks, spray them with star san solution, and plop them right in the hot wort. You can chill it with the flame-out hops still in the wort. You can remove them before transferring...

Well, most folks here aren't going to use what they read on this forum as medical advice. I like to think that everyone here is savvy enough to read internet forum posts with their BS filters set to an appropriate tolerance level. If it comes down to preference between inappropriate posts and...

When I put 5 gallons of beer into an empty keg, the keg contains 5 gallons, according to my calculations. I'm not quite sure how to break it down more than that. That means that a standard corny keg is pretty near full.

Welcome! As a relative newbie myself, I will offer a little advice. 1. Don't lead with your wallet. Keep it simple and cheap in the beginning. It is hard to beat a complete basic kit, for simplicity and cost effectiveness. Which leads me to, 2. Start with a kit, either a complete kit or just...