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I’ve had a lack of success in brewing that quintessential beer where you walk into an old English pub that only has a few beers on tap and say, “pint of bitter please mate!”… and then you get handed that delicious pint of liquid gold. So… does anyone please have a link to a tried, tested and...

So I’ve been mulling around the idea of buying a hop spider. Reading various customer reviews has me on the fence on whether or not it’d worth it. Here’s my circumstance: I brew a variety of beers but one of my main staples is a 15 gallon batch of an IPA in a 20-gallon kettle. It uses a...

I’m assembling ingredients to make a 10 gallon batch of raspberry wheat beer. Will it make a difference if I use frozen raspberries or should I only use fresh? The price is certainly different, but I’ll pay for it if I have to.

Can someone please advise me on how to adjust my tap water (aside from campden tablets) for the following two recipes please? Every time I try to read up on understanding water reports and water adjustments I go cross-eyed and re-read the same thing a million times without understanding it. I...

Hello everybody. I've recently started building a custom-designed fermentation chamber and I'm halfway through the project. However, I've suddenly got a sinking feeling that I may have made a huge oversight: I don't know if the mini-fridge I intend to use will be powerful enough for the size...

I'm having a lot of trouble with these calculators and formulas for necessary mash tun sizes that I'm seeing online, partly because they're not directly answering the specific question I have, and partly because it seems that my real life experience contradicts what they are saying. Perhaps...

I'm trying to determine the ventilation requirements to run a Blichman burner indoors. I'm aware that the rule of thumb is generally "just don't do it!" due to concerns over carbon monoxide, oxygen depletion as well as the fire hazard. However, given that commercial kitchens are known to also...

Goodmorning! I am in the market for a new mash tun. My original mash tun I converted myself out of a 48 quart rectangular cooler. However, the filter hose has become all mangled over years of use and now that I'm brewing 10-gallons batches using the batch sparge method, it's just not big...

So I've got a batch in the keg that just didn't turn out very well. It's both too malty and bit too high in alcohol content for what I was going for. I don't particularly like it, and I'm not looking forward to drinking the whole keg as is. Is it unheard of to open the keg and simply some add...

Hello folks, I have a quick question: I have a 5 gallon batch of Pliny the Elder fermeting in my basement (OG: 1.074). I used 2 packs of rehydrated US-05. My basement is unheated with an ambient temp of 60F. I brewed it on Thursday (4 days ago), the blow-off tube has been chugging along...

Out of curiosity, is there any reason why I'd want to transfer to a secondary vessel if I'm going to add fruit? I've heard all of the arguments in favour if not using a secondary in most circumstances, but I'm wondering why we'd suddenly want to use a secondary when there's, for example...

I'm looking at getting a second pot, but the one I'm looking at has the same diameter as its height. I hear several companies raving that they have a 1.2:1 height to diameter ratio (or something like that). Is there a reason I should be thinking about this, or should I just go ahead and pull...

Well Jesus H. Christ Almighty - I just figured out that in my last 4 years of brewing I may be sparging wrong. This is what I've been typically been doing -- I heat my sparge water up to around 168, I pour the entire thing into my cooler where all the grains reside, give it a mighty stir...

Hello everyone. Sorry to keep asking so many questions on here, but the next decision I have to make in setting up my 3-kettle HERMS brewery is which elements to go with, either the 4500w Blichmann Boil Coil or the 5500w ultra-low-density curved elements. I have a few questions about this...

I'm just starting to research electric brewing. I'm looking to do a 3-kettle HERMS setup, with each kettle being 15 gallons. Ideally I'd like a controller that will allow me to heat the coils in the MLT and BK at the same time (so I can more quickly do back to back batches), and control the...

How comfortable is it to do 10 gallon batches in an 18 gallon kettle? I've tried it in a 15g kettle and it wasn't comfortable at all. I'd like to have the option of doing both 5g and 10g batches which I feel I don't currently have, and getting a second kettle will allow me to do back to back...

Hello everybody! I'm currently an outdoor propane brewer, but I'd like to move indoors to an electric set-up in my basement, using the 3-kettle HERMS system. However, I'm having a lot of difficulty choosing kettle sizes. My biggest concern is the size of my boil kettle. I'd really like...

Hello everyone! I'm looking at moving indoors to an electric setup, using the 3-kettle system. I plan on doing 5-10 gallon batches with my boil kettle being 15 or 20 gallons (still undecided). Most photos of indoor setups that I've seen feature custom designed vent hoods that typically are...

I recently had to build a new copper immersion wort chiller because, stupid me, I was storing my old one outside in the winter in below freezing temperatures (amazingly it didn't break sooner in 3 years of brewing). The water inside froze and ripped right through the copper. So I built a new...

The old immersion chiller I made was destroyed by winter, so today I made a new one using 50 feet of 1/2" copper refrigerant tubing. A question came up about this tubing: does it contain any lead? While obviously copper drinking lines do not, I can't seem to find any information on this tubing...