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Hey all. Curious if anyone has any insight into why stir bars have become so popular in homebrewing as compared to shaker tables. In the rest of the world of microbiology, the very few labs I've seen use shakers. Is it possible that the stir plate solution is just cheaper? Curious as to...

For science, did an experiment with a 1.070 porter and a 1.069 CDA. Both had fermcap during boil, but only the porter, on right, had fermcap added to the fermenter (10 drops). Both had a 1.6L starter pitched directly into the beer, no crash cooling. Both starters ran for 13 hours. I used US-05...

Has anyone successfully used a force transducer to measure the weight of a kettle as a way of calculating volume? Obviously it gets a little complicated when you have water in the piping and pumps of an electric brewery, but ignoring that, has this been done? Can't seem to find any threads on...

Hey guys- Long post, but I'd appreciate the read: Background: This is my last semester in Electrical Engineering here at Purdue. I finished senior design last semester, but my senior design Prof. acquired funding through Texas Instruments to fully automate (read: add hops, grain, yeast by...

Did a 5 gallon batch of IPA last night in my keggle with a 6" bazooka screen at the bottom with silicon tubing connecting to the output valve. I'm almost positive the hops clogged my screen because when I opened the valve to drain, nothing came out. absolutely nothing. After fighting it for...

Gents- Anyone ever tried something like this before? I've noted something that looks like yeast in my blow off buckets, and I'm wondering if this might work. As a side note, do you think you lose a substantial amount of yeast with a blow off? As in, with a blow off tube, does your fermentation...

Just giving my 2 cents about this pump: I bought the 15W ($75 w/ shipping) pump from us solar. I'm using a 12V DC, 500mA phone charger. (Note that it IS under rated, but I'll come back to this). Last night, I used the pump to transfer 170 degree water from my BK to my Mash tun (home depot...

I had a vial of White Labs Saison Yeast laying around in the back of my fridge (expiration date NOV 2011). I pitched it into a 600ml starter. 20 Hours later I pitched it into a 1.5L starter. I then crashed it in the freezer for 1.5 hours and it appeared all the yeast flocculated. I decanted the...

Took the plunge and bought all the yeast starter equipment (all $40 bucks of it, but who on this forum isn't thrifty) and holy ball sack did my IPA take off. Put 5 gallons in a 6.5 carboy and I still have blow off. Fermentation started in 3 hours after I pitched my 500ml starter at high krausen...

Just picked up 3 Sanke kegs from Widmer's distribution center on Russel St for $45 a pop. Decommissioned. I figure with the money I'd save by looking on craigslist and then gas money to meet the guy, this is a damn good deal.

First post! Woo! After reading what feels like every post on this forum, I've noticed there's a lot of misconceptions about wort chilling and what's most efficient. Thus I propose treating this concept like any other engineering problem. Summary is at bottom. What is heat transfer? A...