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Yeah, either the airlock or some sort of visible bubbly/foaminess in the wort itself. I was prepared to have to dump the whole thing if a week had gone by with no activity, but fortunately I "ran the numbers" and things look OK. I will take your advice and take a reading tomorrow and over the...

I'm used to having a pretty active fermentation with lots of krausen, but on my recent batch there was little to no visible activity. However, my gravity readings are just about spot on, so does that mean things worked out OK? It's an Irish Red Ale all grain kit, 5.25 gallons of wort, aerated...

Once I got the damper adjusted properly and got it lit, I had no trouble adjusting the flame up and down as needed over the course of my one brew session.

It's something that always interested me, and a friend got me a beer making kit (no recipe included) for christmas one year. A couple years later I actually started doing research to understand how it worked. My initial "aha" moment was when I realized that recipe kits are not specific to...

The thing I noticed about this regulator is that there is a lot of play in the regulator wheel, before it actually engages and starts opening the valve. Meaning 2-3 full turns of the knob where there is no resistance, before you actually feel it start opening the valve. Once I realized this...

One thing I do know is that I will never be done buying new gear, so I will keep the brewbucket on my radar.

I totally get where you're coming from. Maybe once I've brewed enough to have confidence in each phase I won't be worried about the visual aspect. But for now I'm right there with you in wanting to see the process as it happens.

2 x 7 gal Fermonsters ordered. Can't wait to put em to use!

I've got one like that. It's currently useless as I can't get it deep enough into a 6.5 gal glass carboy to get a meaningful amount, so I end up pinching off some tubing and sticking it way down to get a sample. With a wide opening on a fermenter it would actually be useful again! Doesn't...

Thanks for the detailed reply. I appreciate that info coming from someone with hands on experience with so many different vessels. I've definitely considered the fermonster as well, and actually meant to list it with the others. The only drawback is having to take the lid off to do readings...

So the original kit I received as a gift came with 6.5 and 5 gallon glass carboys. While I'm certainly still in the process of learning about and getting good at brewing, I'm definitely ready to change these guys out for something better. After plenty of reading and trial and error on my...

Beautiful, thanks.

I do like the variety that bottles afford you. And I've purchased/collected enough bottles to allow me to have a number of brews bottled and ready to go. Not ruling out kegging someday, just not ready to add that cost and variable to my brewing. I would love to have a couple of taps at home.

I've considered that as well, but I'm thinking of sticking to getting good at one hobby at a time. It does seem like it would be fun to try though. I just feel like bad beer is closer to good beer than bad wine is to good wine.

Awesome, thanks for the quick reply. I'll definitely add the blow off tube to the collection of gear.

I'm trying to simplify things a bit in order to get a repeatable brewing process down. One of the things I'm doing is skipping racking to secondary and fermenting entirely in the primary. The plan was to ferment for 3 weeks in primary before bottling, but i realize now I'll be out of town...

I have a 3 piece plastic airlock. I filled to the fill line with star-san solution and placed in the rubber stopper on top of the carboy. I aerated the wort for 5 minutes with a stone, and gave it an additional shake for good measure before adding yeast (White Labs WLP001). I had a nice...

That's the temp (at least according to the sitck on thermometer strip) of the fermenter.

70-72 degrees for fermentation, same temps for bottle conditioning. I haven;t dumped the lot yet, so I'll keep opening one at a time to check and se if there's been any improvement.

When you do this, do you have to change your water calculations elsewhere? Less strike water to begin with? I considered doing something like this as well, but figured I would try to keep it as simple as possible first time around.