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I've had great luck simply fermenting in a carboy or Better Bottle and transferring with CO2 into a keg. I use a carboy hood with the racking cane going down into the beer and a CO2 line connected to the other hole in the carboy hood. I only use 1-2 psi of CO2 in my carboy because it's glass...

I got a cheap oral syringe at Walgreens to measure small quantities of Star San or lactic acid. For 1qt, use 1.5 mL of Star San (based on the 1oz/5gal suggested ratio).

I could squeeze 15# of grain in my old 5 gallon cooler with a hose braid (1.0 qt/lb ratio). With my regular efficiency of about 90%, that much grain would give me a 1083 beer but realistically the efficiency drops when my gravity goes up so the cooler can probably handle about a 1073 beer. I...

There's really no way to tell if it's going to fit two kegs unless you have the interior dimensions. You can find the dimensions of corny kegs from this page on wortomatic.com. Often the freezer compartment or the door shelving can also get in the way of corny kegs in those smaller fridges...

You probably can dillute it to 1035 OG and use it for starters after boiling it

You could force carbonate in a 5 gallon corny and then fill a 5 liter keg via a counter-pressure filler or a cobra tap with a piece of tubing in the faucet.

First things first: do you have a grain mill yet? If you do not and you have to buy pre-crushed malt, the malt has a much shorter storage time and you'll not want to buy more than 1-2 batches worth of malt.

The Reynolds vacuum sealer looks like it is taking between 75-80% of the air from the mason jars. Thanks for the input on how to test it!

I'll give it a go when I get home. Sounds like a very interesting way of measuring air content.

I don't have any way to measure it of course. Enough of the air has been removed to necessitate me prying off the lid of the jar so I know at least it's done some vacuuming. The only other anecdotal evidence is that the Reynolds pump work very well with the Reynolds bags in really getting the...

I found that whole leaf hops take up 3-4x as much freezer space compared to pellets. I took the cheap way to vacuum seal my hops: I store them in wide-mouth pint mason jars. For $10, I bought a mason jar attachment for a FoodSaver device. Then I use a Reynolds Vacuum Pump instead of a...

Try North Country Malt. It looks like they're out of Simcoe pellets but have whole leaf. Personally, I'm waiting for the 2009 crop to be pelletalized before order more hops. Hope it's within the next month or so...

Gelatin works better the colder you can get your beer. I put gelatin in a pale ale with US-05 yeast (not the most flocculant...) three days ago. After 48 hours in a keg at 33 degrees F, I dumped a pint off and then poured another to check the clarity and found it rather cloudy. Today, after...