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It's in need of a new edition, but I found Ray Daniels' book Designing Great Beer to be a great help in understanding how all the numbers fit together, and how to modify recipes to work in different systems -- or better yet, how to design your own recipes.

One big advantage of the larger kettle is that boil-overs are not a concern. I started off doing 5-gal batches in an 8-gal kettle, and I had to babysit the thing through the entire boil. I now have a 15-gal kettle, and have never come close to a boil-over with a 5-gal batch.

At the beginning of this thread I thought I was going to be squarely in the "repetition is good" camp. There's nothing better than a recipe you've tweaked to meet your tastes perfectly, and there's nothing wrong with repeating that again and again. But I think some of the partisans are...

A lot of minerals and whatnot comes in with the malt -- not only from the grain itself, but also from the water it was malted in. Certainly enough for the yeast to get by when using RO water. Not to say that they might not get by better with additional nutrients and minerals, but you're not...

To get your desired color without a ton of crystal, try a few ounces of black malt or roasted barley. I.e., lots of color with little or no flavor contribution. Weyermann's de-husked Carafa series takes the same concept even further.

I decided to just get a stainless steel immersion chiller. Lately I've been really trying to simplify my process and do as much as possible by gravity. While I could conceivably rig up a recirculating whirlpool with my CFC and pump, it would be the opposite of simplification.

I think your recipe looks good as is. For boosting sweetness, you could dial back the hops a bit, or add some caramel as suggested. But for my tastes, I'd go with some additional kilned malt. 4 oz. more Victory, or jack it up a bit with Aromatic or Honey Malt -- or maybe even Melanoidin Malt.

Thanks for the link, MSK_Chess. Seems like trub removal is at least a "best practice" for LoDo brewing, even if not essential.

It seems to me that the beauty of using US-05 is that you don't have to worry about stuff like this. I've never experienced or heard of diacetyl problems with it, and everything I've heard suggests that it's cleanest when fermented in the higher end of its range. So why not just do a...

I've never worried about cold break material in the fermenter. I've always used a counter-flow chiller, and gone straight from the kettle to the fermenter. Primary ferment rarely exceeds 7-10 days. I've only ever brewed ales, and would likely continue that for the foreseeable future. The...

I'm not convinced Columbus would be overly harsh when used as a bittering hop. Even if you buy into the cohumulone story (and not everyone does), it's not the highest cohumulone hop out there. I think the "harsh" reputation comes more from its use as a finishing hop, because it's very resinous...

For a brown porter, I'd try replacing the CaraAroma with Brown Malt or Amber Malt. This would give you a drier, roasty or toasty (respectively) flavor.

Is any part of the old farm still attached to the old farmhouse? If so, why aren't you brewing outside? That would allow you to get everything set up one day, brew and clean the sticky and grainy parts a second day, and do the remaining clean-up and take-down on a third day. If you are...

The molar mass of NaMBS is 190.1 The atomic mass of sodium is 23 The molar mass of sulfate is 96.1 Each mole of NaMBS yields 2 moles each of sodium and sulfate. 25 mg of NaMBS * [1 mmol/190.1 mg] = 0.132 mmol NaMBS 0.264 mmol Na * [23 mg/mmol] = 6 mg 0.264 mmol SO4 * [96.1 mg/mmol] = 25.3 mg...

It's been a LONG time since I used it, but from my recollections, don't expect much fruitiness and prepare for a blow-off -- no matter how much head space you give it. It's a great Kölsch/Alt yeast.

The amylase enzymes are destroyed at temperatures over ~170° F. But they are no longer needed after the starch conversion in the mash.

It's obviously just a matter of taste, but I would definitely want it darker and roastier than 13oz of chocolate malt could provide. I'd want either black roasted barley or black malt in addition to the chocolate malt, and bring the total roast malts to between 1 and 1.5 pounds. Going with your...

Too much for what? Dry stouts typically have 10% or more.

What is a reasonable expectation for the number of re-pitches a given strain can go through? While I would think a run-of-the-mill strain should go more than 3, maybe one cannot expect that from specialized strains? Is it really standard practice to step up alcohol tolerance by going through...

You really don't need a long hose braid for batch sparging or no-sparge, so that one is plenty long for the 10 gallon cooler.