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Aside from crush, what about channeling? Do you think your setup might be prone to channeling?

I'd keep it under 20% of the grain bill and do a cereal mash.

Trust me, the comments made here will not affect my decision making. This is utterly and completely for curiosity.

We're only being anal on the sanitizing until she gets her shots in about a week. After that we'll change the game.

Not sure if this is the right place. We had our first baby 7 weeks ago. The pediatrician said it was ok to use Starsan and/or Idophor to sanitize baby bottles and other stuff. What does the brewing community think?

I've been a big fan of Six Feet Under. Not sure if they fit the definition of Death Metal but I like that I can actually understand most of what he's saying. I like the covers they do, too. <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390"...

Yeah, you'll want a gallon to a gallon and a half of headspace in the carboy. Recommend that you syphon off the excess or you're going to have a big mess when the yeast start fermentation.

How did you store the saved wort? If you put it in the freezer it will be fine for starters. If just in the fridge, I would dump it.

I just received a reply from dudadiesel and he said that the max operating temp is 220C not F, so autoclaving should be just fine.

Would it hurt a plate heat exchanger to autoclave it? I just received one from dudadiesel on Ebay and it says the operating temp is 225F. Autoclaving is easy and convenient for me cause I can just have one of the labs run it through when they do their daily autoclaving.

A 1-2 L starter is composed of about 90-95% beer. When we talk about starters in liters we're talking about the amount of wort you put in to a container along with your yeast. If you decant the spent wort and collect just the yeast you would measure it too in ml.

My yeast people tell me that even -20 would be fine. The yeast may continue to metabolize at a very slow rate so you may not get indefinate storage potential like you would at -80 but it should be ok. One professor said that if this were his only option in the lab he would reculture annually...

This particular scientist I was talking to mentioned this as well. He said that even the big breweries with expensive labs have this problem and most likely even their strains have mutated over time. Glycerine stocks and -80 freezers are what all of our yeast labs use for long term...

It will over time if you're trying to keep a special strain of yeast. After successive generations you will be selecting for traits in the yeast that allow it to survive washing and sporulation and deselecting for the traits that made you want to use that strain of yeast in the first place...

Freezing at -80C was his recommendation. He said he actually thawed some out that had been frozen for 20 and 40 years and was able to revive it. He also recommended freeze drying. Since most of us homebrewers don't have access to a freeze drying machine we toyed with some other ideas for...

I was talking to a retired faculty member today and it turns out that he's an old yeast scientist. I was discussing the various methods that we homebrewers use in our yeast ranching methods and getting tips and advice. He advised against the distilled water method. He said that in that...

Try a search for the "swamp cooler" method. There's also the "son of a fermentation chamber" you can read about and look in to building. Personally I got tired of dealing with it so bought a chest freezer and a temperature regulator.

It speeds up the lautering time IMO. I get horrible effiencies when I batch sparge on my set up for some reason. I get great efficiency when I fly sparge but as we know it also takes a bit longer. So instead of rinsing the grains slowly from start to finish I figured I'd save my self some...

Once you make a starter it will keep for a couple of weeks with no ill effects. Depending on the yeast and its health you can go a little longer. It will be fine as is.

An oatmeal wheat steam. It was interesting but has kind of a grayish color.