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Post your water profile. You might be able to reduce alkalinity with boiling. Kai

When working with a lager yeast after propagation you'll have to unflocculate it before you can count it. If you still want to brew with the yeast you should use fresh wort to accomplish this. Here is what I do: - let the yeast settle overnight - decant the starter wort - weigh the...

I would brew the recipe as you planned. Either option should work. Without being able to measure mash pH you can't really tweak mash pH unless you are willing to brew the beer multiple times with different acid additions. I think your actual mash pH will be around 5.4, +/-0.1 to be...

50 ppm bicarb works for lighter beers. You'll need to add acid anyway. If you want to build your water I would try to get the bicarbonate from blending or baking soda. Kai

I like the idea of being able to predict mash pH and necessary adjustments w/o having to do test mashes. When I brew I’m usually doing lots of other tasks and I really don’t want to spend time adjusting mash pH. Ideally I’d like to skip mash pH measurements completely and have done that on a...

Let me chime in here as well. Regarding pH and temperature, I don’t care about the actual pH at mash temp. When brewers try to figure out the benefits of different mash pH environments they make a bunch of mashes with different pH environments. They then test the room temp mash pH and...

It depends on what you want to brew. Kai

I don't have answers to these questions either, but that's stuff I'm looking into. Kai

No. that's how German brewers are doing it. Kai

You'll get a lower mash pH and are less likely to extract excessive tannins during sparging. This section has a nice summary of the benefits: http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_pH_affects_brewing#enzymatic_activity Kai

That's nice brewing water since it is generally low in minerals. I.e. you will be adding salts to get to a desired profile. I'd pick up some gypsum and calcium chloride since that's what you would be needing most. I put this into the BF calculator here...

I assume you are still working on this?

the limiters of that approach are contamination that happens over time and possible drift of the yeast. But you can definitely go for this. It's easier to keep starter sanitary than beer since you are working with a smaller volume, can sanitize by heat (which is more effective) and don't have...

Yeast needs energy for two things: cell division and maintenance. The energy that goes to cell division will result in growth that we can observe by counting cells. Energy spent on maintenance is the energy yeast needs to stay alive. The longer yeast sits dormant, the more energy it is going to...

VampireSix' approach is sound. splitting the yeast early reduces contamination risk. It should have no problems surviving the 2 month in the fridge. Kai

I think it has all you need. I bought my monocular microscope for $160, so the price seems to be ok. The camera will be nice for offline yeast counting with ImageJ. Kai

you may want to upgrade to a 2l or even a bigger flask. 1l is too small for most starter applications. Is this for a 5 gal batch? I don't think that you need a 3 L starter for that beer unless it is a 10 gal batch. Kai

yes that's what you have to do. At least you can make an educated guess if you know the weight or volume of the yeast. I found settled slurry densities to be between 2 and 4 Billion cells per gram. I know that's a big spread. There are strain dependent differences and there is a difference...

Jonny, are your beers as bitter as you want them? Kai

you're welcome. I wrote this article well after the excitement of having a cool new piece of brewlab equipment has worn off and it should be fairly objective when it comes to the pro and con of owning a microscope. Kai