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+1 on the chiller. The less expensive immersion chillers work OK...but once you can afford a Counter-Flow chiller, you'll be amazed at how much faster they cool. I'm in Florida, so running my 75F tap water gets me from 212 to ~95 fairly quickly. Then I use a cheap pump to pump ice water through...

Aye, I thought a swamp cooler was placing your carboy in a vessel with water, draping a t-shirt over it, so it hangs in the water a few inches. Then: - put a fan on it to increase evaporation (equals increase cooling - or put a 16-20 oz frozen water bottle in it - or both. I always just...

I thought this post was a good one: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Fermenting_Lagers Learned much from it, and my Maiboch is now on tap, and causing cravings so strong I sometimes run to get one right in the middle of something and forget to finish what I....

ahh, didn't catch that on the secondary...yea cool. Oak chips are easy to overdo, so go easy. maybe add just a few chips. I use irish moss, never finings, and get clear beer...unless I screw something else up. :-) Campden tabs safe, aye.

I used to use a swamp cooler technique, you only have to swap a small frozen water bottle about 1, 1.5 times/day - not too bad. Then I stepped up to the "son of fermentation chiller" (search online) awesome, and under $100 parts from homey Depot. Then I went to CraigsList for an old fridge -...

+1 for all the "depends on the yeast" comments. I go online and lookup the yeast I'm using, find the manufacturers site. Usually a .pdf you can download or just check the range on line. I go near the middle of the range, maybe 1 degree colder than the middle number. Make sure you have a good...

Hey man, Congrats on the new system, and chutspah to start w/all grain right outta the gate. After brewing for ~3 years, I recently completed my 25-gal all electric system, and loving it. Recipe looks good for what you're going for to me. One suggestion is on your "10 days primary/10 days...

I have a chiller box I use to ferment ales at around 66F, an old fridge with controller to ferment lagers, and a serving fridge with taps in the front. If you are on a budget, I strongly suggest building a chiller box! Search for "son of chiller" and you'll find it. Kudo's to whoever designed...

I'm thinking of both, kind of. A brew friend has that pressure sensor/bubbler idea working fairly well, but I always like to "have a compass along with my GPS". 1. SS float attached to a rod. 2. Rod protrudes up out of vessel, held to a calibrated "backer-board" w/ screw eye-hooks. 3...

I'm in

One of the best things we did to dramatically reduce chill times (in Florida) is to use our homemade Counter-Flow chiller, AND the old home-made immersion chiller we used to use back when we did small 5-gallon DME based recipes. We run tap water through the immersion chiller, while circulating...

Hmmm. maybe I'll try that after a few multi-steps. I picked those temps/times after studying a bunch of on-line and textbook stuff. Those temps seemed to ones that were best for modern grains to convert the most complex carbs down to sugars. here's the (highly summarized) story I got: -...

we use three keggles in our system. Started out with gas, but converted to electric 240VAC elements about 10 months ago (AWESOME). 1 is the boil kettle, 1 is the Hot Liquor Tank (HLT), and 1 is the mash tun. We have a march pump and a bunch of quick disconnects (QD's). We built our own...

I learned something about controlling dry vs. sweetness. My AG results have been consistently good, including Irish Stout, RyePA, OctoberFAST, Centennial Blonde Ale, etc. Yet they all tended toward the sweet side. Not so sweet that it seemed “off”, but leaned in that direction. Also, while I...

I risk skewing the topic, but the subject of "getting to the right volume" is something I was wrong-headed in for a while. I'd simply add top-up water to reach some desired volume. Now, I take an OG reading & use info from my...favorite...book "Designing Great Beers". Say you read 1.068, &...

+1 for google docs. Let us know what the url is, I'd be interested to compare it to my process. I've only done a dozen AG batches, but they've all turned out very good (except for the Nut Brown, but that was due to my rectal-cranial inversion during ferment - thanks to Revvy for helping with the...

Also might mention that I'm a bit torn between DIY and "semi-DYI" using the brewtroller. Those are very reasonable prices for those components, and would save a lot of dev time that could be devoted to brewing. Still going back/forth on that. Thinking about a mash-up of ideas from...

I've uploaded my crude code here. http://code.google.com/p/arduino-brew-poc-v1-0/downloads/list I'm not a programmer, so critique, better methods, etc are very welcome. cheers

Sir Beeblebrox, I do not have them posted, but am certainly willing to share what I've done. I'm not much of a programmer, but fumbled around enough to get some proof-of-concepts working. Where's an appropriate place to post that stuff?

Thanks! Lots of good info on your brewtroller site. Like you and Yuri, I'm interested in using Arduino to control brew processes. Unlike you guys, I've only been playing for a couple months now - I have it opening valves, and controlling 120/240VAC, in response to temp. readings, which I'm...