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What kind of mash do you do? What didn't you like about the hose braid that made you switch to a manifold? I do batch sparge or no sparge, and I switched from a slotted copper manifold to a hose braid and got an increase in efficiency. I never had a stuck sparge with either.

270 million == 2.7 x 10^8 x 10^3 = 2.7 x 10^11 == 270 billion (in American English, where 10^9 == 1 billion and 10^12 == 1 trillion)

Lots of people don't seem to know the difference between accuracy and precision. Or that you can be as accurate AND precise as you want to be with any system of measurements.

I don't see how it's easier (or more accurate) one way or the other. Just different constants in the equations.

Ethanol works fine. So does isopropanol (rubbing alcohol).

Lactose has the same molecular weight as sucrose, so I'd just use the same potential value as sucrose (1.046 per pound per gallon).

A mash-out to "preserve the sugar profile" would need to be high enough temperature to deactivate (denature) the amylase enzymes. The traditional temperature for this is 168 F. If you mashed for an hour at 152, there wasn't much left for even a proper mash-out to accomplish, and your 156 F step...

The bottom line for me is that rehydrating is bone-simple to do, and gets active fermentation going much faster than direct pitching. It also gives you a good indication of whether the yeast is any good: no foam within a half hour of rehydration, then you've got a bad pack.

First, don't dissolve it in "hot" water. Dissolve it in warm water -- 90 deg. F is ideal. Much higher than 100 deg. F will kill the yeast. Dissolving directly in wort subjects the yeast to osmotic shock: the high sugar concentration in the wort forces water out of the yeast cells. Many yeast...

Could have been the specialty malt, depending on the type and proportion of the grain bill. Could have been the mash temp. overshoot, which could have knocked beta amylase out of the picture. Or the yeast could have just floc'd out early -- that happened to me once with Nottingham.

Then you either need new software or do the calculations yourself (it's not that hard).

If temperature control is a concern you could consider Nottingham. It flocs like a champ and is clean well into the low 70's.

With hydration I get insane krausen in 8 hours (and noticeable activity in 4). I prefer that.

US-05 is fairly attenuative, but no more so than its liquid siblings, WLP-001 and Wyeast 1056. You can certainly try a less attenuative yeast (I have no experience with Windsor). Or you can play with mash temperatures (try mashing at 158-160 degrees). Or just use different malts -- for...

It depends on the geometry of your kettle and how vigorous your boil is. My evaporation rate is 2 gallons per hour. You also have to take the dead space in your kettle into consideration.

The goal is to pitch sufficient yeast into the fermenter to achieve active fermentation as quickly as possible. A 50% kill going into a starter is no big deal, because you don't care about the lag time in a starter. You do care about it in the fermenter, or you wouldn't bother with making...

From the description it sounds more flocculant than most versions of the Chico strain. Did you find that it behaved much differently than US-05/1056/WLP001?

I calculate expected OG based on the potential extract for each malt, and the amount of each malt. I suspect that any brewing software worth its electrons does the same thing. The potential extract is measured by the maltster, and is actually fairly consistent and reliable. The expected...

I think it would be overkill. I simply sprinkle a packet or two on a cup of warm water (slightly less than body temp), and let it sit for half an hour. It should foam around the edges by then. Then I swirl it a bit to suspend it evenly, and dump into the fermenter. It usually gets going in ~4...

For fly-sparging, some recirculation is necessary to set the grain bed. For batch sparging it's a waste of time. Everything drops out with the break, and boiling a few husks is not a problem for the same reason decoction mashing is not a problem: tannins are only extracted at high pH, and wort...