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Great feedback. I started brewing in March, and using BeerSmith's carb calculator has been pretty reliable for all 10 of my IPA series so far. I know there's a lot more to cask conditioning than the sugar, but I wondered if DME contributed additional dimension and creaminess. I also appreciate...

I've been curious about alternatives to corn sugar, specifically whether DME produces a smoother, more solid head and better lacing. I had a cask conditioned Marsten Pedigree Bitter at a local pub last weekend, and I loved that faint yet silky smooth carbonation. I wonder how they condition...

That's good to know. I wasn't sure if it was possible to do much better with batch sparging.

Sounds an awful lot like my IPA grain bill. What was your preboil gravity and your OG? What was your postboil volume? My end of running gravities are typically pretty high too, like .030, and I've wondered if I can do any better batch sparging.

Cool. Another vote for the way I've been doing it. Aside from long lagering periods, are there any compelling reasons to rack?

Thanks. I'm making what will likely be an endless series of IPAs. The first few I racked to secondary, but since then, I've kept it in primary until bottling. The guys at my LHBS are trying to talk me out of it, but I can't get any good reasons either way.

I'm looking for opinions and rationale on whether it's better to let beer finish attenuating in the primary fermenter until it's time to keg or bottle, or rack to a secondary after initial fermentation. What are the pros and cons for either approach?

Yeah, pretty well. The final runnings read 1.025, and the preboil gravity was 1.050, so I think it was stirred pretty well.

Good. I'll fine tune everything. Maybe I'm not too far off. Just looking for predictability.

It checks out in water. But are my calculations solid? If I start at 1.050 and 7.75 gal preboil (387.5 pts) shouldn't I end up at 1.062 and 6.25 gal post-boil? I want to confirm the math while I look at calibrations.

I've recalibrated once already, but I don't mind doing it again. I think I'll take my hydrometer into my LHBS next time and see if it matches theirs. They make a lot of good beer on site. Do I have the "conservation of sugar" formula right?

The saga continues with mash efficiency and gravity dilemmas. I've been working on improving my batch sparge techniques (getting better!), but I'm ending up with irreconcilable gravity readings. Yesterday, I mashed 14.5 lbs of grain crushed at .024", and produced 7.75 gal of wort with a...

7.75 gal of sweet wort in an 8-gal boil kettle. How long before I have to upgrade to bigger stuff?

Home-made immersion wort chiller from 50 ft of 1/2" soft copper.

Starting the boil as the sparge water drains.

Home made gravity system from leftover lumber in the basement.

Tilting the MLT to get as much goodness as possible into the boil kettle.

Various photos of my process during different brewing sessions.

OK, so here’s where I am after the June 12 post and reply. I usually buy the pre-crushed 2-row malt at my LHBS, and it appears to be very fine, then I grind the specialty malts, which comprise about 25% of my grain bill, using their mill. For my next session I noticed that it was still...

I'm struggling to reconcile mash density and efficiency. Denny, in a recent post, you suggested a mash density of 1.66 to 2 qt/lb to improve fluidity. First of all, I assume that this density represents the strike and the sparge volumes separately. I'm trying to hit 75% efficiency, at least. If...