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Have you been playing water mad scientist with all your brews? :) What about using some of your city's finest simply filtered to get out any off flavors and sediment and then treated for chlorine/chloramine if needed with some campden? Your process looks pretty good. I like to do simple...

No need to preheat and drain. Preheat and use the water. If your strike temperature is 166, I'd heat the water up about 10 degrees more @ 177, close the cooler and let it preheat. Let the temp fall down to 166 (check in 5 minutes) and then mash in. If you don't do this you'll be having fun...

+1. If your water has chlorine/chloramine in it and you do nothing to improve it the beer will suffer. Filtering the water with carbon and treating with campden (if needed) are two incredibly simple steps that will drastically improve the beer. Having the water tested or buying a test kit will...

Don't expect to understand your efficiency issues by taking a hydrometer gravity reading right before pitching yeast and discovering you are low, high, right on. A refractometer is a required piece of equipment in my opinion. Get used to taking readings on your batches as you learn your system...

My negative experiences are; A little more trub and beer loss. Harder to maintain mash temps. Lower efficiency. I've only done a couple BIAB and normally use a mash tun. I would suspect that if I wanted to go exclusively BIAB that I could minimize those issues. The end product tasted good...

I can't see mr malty from this ipad but did you select "stir plate" in the drop down box? 3L seems high for 1070. Also did you put the correct date for viability? White Labs born on date is 4 months prior to the date on the vial.

If working with a flask marked in liters the ratio is 10 to 1. Use a 10 to 1 ratio. Add 1 gram of DME for every 10 ml of final volume. (If you're making a 2 liter starter, add water to 200 grams of DME until you have 2 liters total.) If you have a refractometer this is another time to play with...

Check out the beersmith recipe cloud for ideas from within the beersmith app. I have made several recipes based on recipes posted there. If you check beersmithrecipes.com you can view them by highest rated and most commented as well as sort by type. It's easier to view them than in the beersmith...

2L flask only. I have no idea why big shops like NB sell the 1L kits. Simple test, go to Mr. Malty or your brewing software's yeast pitch calculator and put in a beer with even a smallish OG like 1046 for example, 5.5 gallons of beer and poof... already outgrown the 1 liter flask. You need some...

I think the magic happens in the bottle also. So rather than letting the batch sit in primary for a couple extra weeks, on many average sized beers and basic ale styles I will just let sit an extra week after fermentation is done and then if it's going to bottles, bottle it. Then I'll let it sit...

I second the above and would add understanding water as another thing that helped improve my beers.

How do you calculate IBUs with home grown hops? I'd almost think those would be best for dry hopping. Would love to try some sometime.

It's hard enough to get them in so I'm not sure I'd plan on getting them out until carboy cleaning time. Your plan would go much smoother with pellet hops since they dissolve and a big portion will fall to the bottom. Dry hopping with leafs is a good case for using a bucket. I'd just leave your...

I sanitized a funnel and the end of a long plastic spoon. I also sanitized the scissors that cut the package and the outside of the package like you would a yeast packet. Put a little bit at a time in the funnel and jammed them through with the end of the spoon. The next time I use them I will...

The hops do not need to be sanitized. I have dry hopped with Hop Union and it's amazing how much an ounce is in whole leaf! Trying to jam them in a carboy is really fun! When dry hopping with whole leaf I lost more beer than I thought I would to absorption trying to rack the beer off. It was...

This is in addition to everything already mentioned about the process. Not knowing anything about the water you used is a big deal. If it was distilled or spring makes a big difference. With extract it's **preferred** to use distilled water as the extract will have what's needed due to the...

That looked like a dumper right off the bat. This is one of main reasons I ferment in glass carboys... surprises! I like to see fermentation, high krausen, flocculation, etc. It won't stop an infection but at least I'll get the bad news sooner. Since I have at most two beers going at once and...

Do you use a refractometer? Are you reaching your expected pre-boil gravity with the kettle at pre-boil volume? Do you take a gravity reading of the fly sparge runnings before shutting the valve off? I'm guessing this is all done so the only thing I see as an issue would be... I batch sparge so...

Beer is mostly water! It's the main ingredient. Using potassium metabisulfite is really beneficial when it comes to removing chloramine from the water which hangs around longer and is more difficult to remove than chlorine. A good place to start is by checking your city's public water report to...

I filter the water with carbon to remove chlorine/sediment and off flavors and treat with approx 150mg of potassium metabisulfite per 7 gallons (approx pre-boil). The water is treated before the grain touches it. I can't run the water without smelling chlorine out of the unfiltered tap. Did you...