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I ferment in a chest freezer. I tape a folded up wool sock to the fermenter and stick a ranco probe directly on the fermenter insulated tightly by the sock. I will switch to a thermowell ASAP.

I hit 1.095 @ 61% efficiency. I'm pretty happy with it. Only negative is the CFC got clogged by a combination of 6oz of pellet hops and the high gravity. I had to scoop the last half gallon with a cooking pot and got tons of hop trub in the fermenter. Its bubbling away, hope it turns out great!

Well its mashing away! I ended up getting pre-milled grains and re-crushing half of them to increase efficiency a little. I'm going to do a 3gal sparge and a second 3.5gal sparge. I'll have the results this evening!

I switched to AG somewhat recently. I've made dozens of extract batches and some of them were excellent. However, I would not put them up against commercial versions of the same style (doesnt mean I didnt love them anyways). Once I made the switch, I immediately noticed my brews losing the...

I've forgotten the irish moss on plenty of batches. Cold conditioning in the secondary has consistently worked for me. If you dont have fridge space, a month in the closet does it too. I've also heard a lot about using gelatin but I've never tried it.

Ok, thanks for all the input! I've been hitting volumes pretty well, I'm really just asking what you would do to get the highest efficiency possible on this one. I'll be using sugar, DME and re-crushing milled grains through my corona mill. I'm mostly concerned about the sparge; I wasnt sure...

I'm thinking so. I'm mashing with 6gal (1.2qt/lb). Now if I sparge with another 6g and do a 100 minute boil- I should end up with 5.46g in the fermenter. I dont want a thicker mash, so the only other thing I can think of is a longer boil.

I just talked to him aaand he didnt sound too forgiving. I'd not stand in any fields during a thunder storm if I were you.

On thursday I'm batch sparging my first double IPA that should hopefully get around 1.100. I'm trying to do everything possible to increase efficiency. The higher the better. I'm using 20lbs of grain. I'll be sparging with 6 gallons. Should I add it in two 3gal phases or should I dump it all...

Cool recipe. It's like a bitter with a dry hop twist. I'm interested to how that wlp008 turns out too, I've never tried it. 6.5 gallons would boil down way below 5 for me but if it worked on your system- right on! Yeah for AG! :tank:

some of my favorite homebrews were extract, not saying it cant be tasty. It just lacks the process that makes brewing unique. The mash is where its at! Extract still has its place, I'm thinking about doing some super high grav 2gal extract batches soon to do experiments with yeast. Anyways...

congrats cheyco! You'll probably find the malty flavors to be vastly superior to extract. AG puts it all on the hands of the brewer, allowing you to control all aspects of the beer. I dont even know if I'd call boiling extract 'brewing'. Pale malt? Vienna? Munich? Pilsner? 152? 155? 1qt/lb...

My efficiency has been pretty consistent between 58-62, but I'll take note on the next few batches to see if thats a factor for me. I just ordered the ingredients for a double IPA from austinhomebrew, I added in the comments box to give the grains a fine crush. I have an old corona mill my...

I'd leave it in primary for at least 2 weeks to make sure the yeast gets as high attenuation as possible, especially for a big beer. I'd leave it in secondary for a month and bottles for at least a couple months before sampling. My next batch will be an IIPA around 1.095 and I plan to primary...

I just want to add one more thing. If you look close at the yeast cake in your primary, you'll notice tiny little spouts of yeast coming out of the cake that send particles into suspension (looks very much like a lava lamp). They're very small and hard to see, but I've noticed them over a week...

That's got to be it. Extract is pretty simple and straight forward- its not like your process can make much of a difference to the gravity. Either you have way too much extract or not nearly enough water. To reach 1.093 in 5.5gal of water you'd need 11lbs of DME. You just couldnt get there...

the hops mellow out considerably with time, that may be the change you noticed. I would still say 3 weeks minimum in the closet and then put them in the fridge for as long as possible before drinking them. Cold-conditioning in the fridge is the best thing you can do for your homebrew.. See...

I have noticed that the #1 thing that causes the 'green' taste is racking out of primary too quickly. I give all my beers 2 weeks, and if I'm feeling lazy I'm not afraid to let the higher grav batches sit as long as a month in primary! I've gotten nothing but improvement from this.

I dont have any EKG so I dry hopped with 1/4oz columbus pellets and a pinch of cascade whole hops in a nylon bag. We'll see how it turns out. Should I try to take the bag out at any point? I tried a squirt of lemon juice in a glass today and it definitely improved the flavor and the aroma...

I'm pretty sure I'm using the first as well. I'm going by the numbers in Promash, and setting recipes to 60% is the only way I can land close to my target gravity. I just did an arrogant bastard clone and hit about 56% so I added about 1/4lb DME to make up for it. I might start doing that...