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So, I ended up doing 1.5 qt/lb with a pretty light sparge. In retrospect, I should have done 1.25 qt/lb. Anyway, I ordered the grains crushed by MoreBeer because I'm at my parents house for the holidays and my dad doesn't have a mill. The crush was pretty terrible honestly. I ended up with the...

That's an awesome idea, thanks for sharing!

That's what I figured, but brewfather tells me I would have a 9.42 gallon total volume grains+water with no sparge and brewfather has never been wrong for me before. The mash tun has a very small dead space since it uses a braided hose instead of false bottom. I'll probably meet in the middle...

I'm gonna brew a more beer kit with a 10 gallon cooler mash tun and turkey fryer set up. Its a 15 pound grain bill. With my normal numbers (brewfather), this would give me 6.75 gallons mash water and 1.5 gallon sparge water. This is with ~1.75 quarts per gallon mash. Anyway, 1.5 gallons is not...

So, I did rip apart my Brewzilla and found a decent amount of crud in the pump tubing. I soaked everything in PBW and cleaned it very well. I put it all back together and pumped star san through. Right now I'm thinking that was the source or contamination for the best bitter. I think the porter...

Thanks for all of your ideas and input. I actually did brew a 1 gallon extract batch recently. That one so far seems fine. Gonna bottle it today and we'll see what happens. I'm gonna try doing a simple 5 gallon extract batch next week with the Brewzilla and see if I can work out the issues.

I either use an autosiphon or if I use a fermenter with a spigot, I will just hook up a tube to the spigot and transfer directly to the bottling bucket. You get a bit more sediment, but it's really fast and convenient and no autosiphon to sanitize or clean.

You want to hear something really funny, here I am at my wits end bleaching and boiling s*** and can't get rid of my issues, while my dad when he first started brewing, dropped a digital thermometer in his chilled wort and quickly grabbed it with his bare hand and his beer turned out great.

That's a good point. Interestingly, I listened to the Brewstrong podcast where they interviewed the guy from 5 star and he says star san degrades over time from contact with heavy metals, but that if you make your star san with distilled/pure water, it can last a really long time. I think I will...

I got a used plate chiller for really cheap. I gave it a few tries, but now I never use it. I suspect it was responsible for one of the infections I had. I've boiled it, baked it, pumped hot PBW through it, and still there is gunk coming out of it. I much prefer an immersion chiller and I'm...

Good to know. I will use a healthy dose of listerine on bottling day!

That's a very good point. I will take it apart and clean it very thoroughly. I'll even set it aside for the next couple brews. Thanks!

That's true. But I'm not holding my breath based on recent experience. I can see no reason why it would suddenly start fermenting again (air lock was going like a machine gun after being still for 5 days). Also, I've got a Tilt inside the fermenter and it is giving me a gravity of 1.006 when the...

Thanks, good to know. I think I will try hitting everything with idophor.

Good point. I don't use the ball valve on my Brewzilla ever, but will still deep clean in. I transfer wort by pumping it through the recirculation arm to the fermenter. This has never been a problem before and the arm gets boiling wort pumped through it. However, I will deep clean and boil all...

I've been brewing since 2012. I've done 100+ batches and I'm very happy with the beers I make. For years I never had any infection issues. Then a few months ago I brewed an ESB. Fermentation went great, hit proper FG, and the beer tasted perfect on bottling day. I bottled it and within a couple...

That's a good question but I'm positive of the infection. With the ESB I only used enough sugar to carbonate to 1.8 volumes, but it ended up more carbonated than a Belgian ale, and some bottles are really foul. There's also a visible ring around the neck and floaties.

Ha, yeah, I've realized that the Tilt is a completely unnecessary but very fun and amusing toy. Mine has been surprisingly accurate so far, but I've heard more krausen = more Tilt error and hefeweizen has quite the krausen. I have primarily used my Tilt for monitoring temperature and timing dry...

My three infected batches got infected during/after bottling, I almost positive from the bottling wand. So, when I bottled them they all tasted excellent, just as I had hoped/expected. All of them had stable FGs for several days. One was an ESB I think hit FG in 4-5 days, but I left in primary...