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I was mostly following along until this. Where does 24.052 come from? I assume it's the mass of the pre-boil wort, but how is it calculated?

I went through a lot of iterations before settling on a malty brown ale recipe I really liked: 85% Maris Otter 10% aromatic type malts (split between biscuit, aromatic, victory, and/or special roast) 2.5% 75L crystal 2.5% chocolate malt I shoot for a much lower gravity than you, but I think it...

I agree about dialing back the brown malt. Also, I like Robust Porter to be darker and roastier, so I would split the roast grains between a half pound each of chocolate and black patent malts.

It's just a matter of population growth vs. resource consumption. A given volume at a given sugar concentration can only support so many cells. If you start well below that limiting number (say 1/10th or less) the cells will quickly multiply until they come close to the limit (exponential...

It looks to me like you've got the fermentation process pretty well nailed. How are you set for mashing, chilling, etc? If you're happy with the control points there, I'd just go for equipment upgrades. The beginning of a starter is much less important than the end -- and for the end, a...

What a confusing mess! Sure wish I'd had the foresight to get additional Perlick 425s when I still could. I figure my best option is to just get a couple spare picnic taps for now, and then wait and see how the 630SS and the redesigned VentMatic shake out.

There is certainly a saturating sugar concentration in water, but it's so high that it's not an issue for homebrewing. Unless you sparge, adding twice the grain will not give you twice the gravity points, but that's because more liquid (along with dissolved sugar) is lost to absorption with the...

Far be it from me to dissuade you from doing something you enjoy, but both items seem low-priority to me with regards to critical control points. If you pitch a fresh, saturated starter, you're doing as good as you can: getting a viable cell count is not going to help, even if it's accurate...

I originally missed the split batch trick as well, and agree that is a likely culprit. Regarding lautering time, while I always drain ASAP, I really doubt that is going to hugely affect efficiency. Sugars are highly soluble -- there is no way they are going to come out of solution, or be...

Hose braid version 1.0 was about 18 inches long, and serpentined around the bottom of the cooler. It worked great a few times. but then I must have stirred the mash too vigorously, and the end of the braid came up off the bottom, coming to rest somewhere in the middle of the grain bed...

I have a 54 qt rectangular Coleman cooler and get good, reproducible results. The only times I've seen huge swings in efficiency in batch sparging have been a change in milling, or something going wrong with the manifold or hose braid in the mash tun. If you mill your own grain, double check...

Depending on your set-up, compression fittings might also be an option.

You don't need to rehydrate. Until you do. And after that, you'll always rehydrate. I recommend preempting the time you'll wish you did, and just always do it. It's stupid-simple anyway.

I can't help you, but please post if you find out.

They seem to be using a unique definition of "plant".

The limiting factor on generations in a fermentor is cell density, not time. If you're pitching a decent amount of yeast, you'll get at most 6 or 7 doublings (ie, generations) per batch. Let's be generous and call it 8. So 5 batches represents about 40 generations. Mutations are random...

Do you mean you want ginger root? If you just want to buy it, most grocery stores carry fresh ginger root in the produce section. You can also get it dried, powdered or candied in the spice section. If you want to grow it yourself, it apparently grows well in USDA zones 7 or higher...

Is baking really a good idea? Seems that would just dry and harden any remaining crud to the point where it would never come out. I don't know about other plate chillers, but a Therminator easily fits into most brew kettles. Boiling it for a half hour or so would not only kill anything that...

Too much crystal, and not dark enough for a porter. How about 1 pound of 75-80 L crystal, and 1/2 pound chocolate malt. Keep the biscuit (or increase to 1/2 pound). Don't go higher than 25 - 30 IBU to keep it on the sweet side. EDIT: Oh wait -- is DME "dark malt extract"? If so, you don't...

There should be very little difference between dry and liquid as far as re-pitching goes. People are always going on and on about accumulated mutations with re-pitching. While there may be some of that, accumulated contamination is a much more likely source of batch-to-batch degradation. 5...