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You need about 2400 watts per hour to boil off one gallon per hour. There are on line calculators that will help determine what size elements you need. I would suggest you get the spa panel type of breaker as mentioned above, and look into PMW control. I use that on my eKeggle with great...

I made an eHLT from a pony keg. I used a spa/hot tub heater that mounts through the bottom of the keg, using two 1/2" holes instead of the great big hole the water heater elements need. You can see some pictures of it if you search my name on this site. Be aware that the construction of the...

Look at your mash tun filtering setup as well. If you have a system that is prone to channeling, you might be leaving a lot of sugar in the mash when you do a fly sparge. I would suggest you do a standard batch sparge and see what you eff is. Batch sparging is unaffected by channeling. I...

Irish moss/whirlfloc in the kettle at 5 minutes, time and cold are what I use. A few days at 35 F will work to clarify most beers.

I brewed with extract for 25 years before I went to all grain. The reason it took so long was due to time constraints. I raised 3 kids, worked a lot, had a lot of house and yard projects, and brewing time was at a premium. Once the kids were older, I had more time. I was brewing a partial...

I crush my malt at my LHBS, and routinely double crush it. I have had no issues with stuck mashes, and it did increase my efficiency a few points. I think the rolls on the mill I use are set at 0.040" so fairly tight to begin with, but not overly so.

In 30 years of brewing and talking about it, I don't recall anyone in "recipes or conversation" as the OP mentions, talk about brewhouse efficiency when dealing with how much grain to use to hit an OG target. I don't use BeerSmith or any commercial software, so I can't say what they are based...

It is efficiency from mash tun into the boil kettle, since an assumption of this efficiency is the basis of most grain bills. There are too many other individual variables to use brewhouse efficiency for the basis of grain bills.

Something seems a bit odd to me. I would have expected 9 lbs of grain to retain about 0.9 gallons (typical retention is about 0.1 lbs per gallon). You had a retention of 1.8 gallons, which is pretty high, about 0.2 gallons per pound of grain, twice what is considered normal. This could be due...

Tubba, I would do some reading on the UK homebrew forum at this address: http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/index.php and see how some of those folks have built brewing equipment. The equipment available to you in Sweden is more likely similar to that available in the UK than in the US, so the...

Are you a batch or fly sparger? The answer to this question will guide your choice of manifold or braid. Both types will be fine for batch sparging, but braids won't give you the best efficiency in fly sparging due to the flow of wort through the grain bed. See the chapter in Palmer's book on...

Hard to say; probably came from the same manufacturing facility, but wasn't tested to FDA (FCC is Fed Communication Commission, nearly as corrupt as FDA) specs. I'd give the manufacturer a call and see what they say - ask to talk to their quality folks. Don't know the answer to your second...

I use a March pump from my rectangular (blue) cooler to my boil kettle. The MT cooler is equipped with a copper pipe manifold. I set the pump lower than the MT and use hoses with QD fittings. The pump and hoses fill by gravity. To vorlauf, I recirculate through the pump to the top of the grain...

Bleach is temperature sensitive, if you boil it you will destroy it. The best temperature for bleaching is from room temp to about 150 F. Yooper's suggestion to throw it in the washing machine is the way to do it. I would still soak in metabisulfite to ensure all the chlorine is gone afterward.

I would use dilute chlorine bleach, maybe one ounce per 2 gallons. It should clean up pretty well. After that a couple good hot water rinses, then a soak in a couple gallons of water with two or three Campden tablets/ metabisulfite, then a final couple hot water rinses. The meta will react...

Out of curiosity, why did the recipe call for both rice and sugar? Either one would have provided dryness and increased gravity to the recipe.

I think we have a semantic problem here. I would define absorption as the act of a liquid being taken into a solid material, like rice absorbing water as it is boiled. The hops will absorb the same amount of wort regardless of their shape or size. Whole, chopped or pelletized, they will all...

That's what I did when I used 5.2. Get the water to the mash in temp in the mash tun, mix in the grain, add the 5.2 by sprinkling across the top of the mash, and still like heck for a few more minutes to mix it and completely even up your temp.

If you have high hardness water, then the cloudiness is likely due to a precipitate of calcium phosphate, since I believe the 5.2 is a phosphate based buffer. Add the 5.2 to the mash tun after mixing in the grain, and don't worry about the cloudiness, it won't carry through to the wort as...

Conversion of starch is not the issue, because you are right, starch to sugars should be done in the mash. The issue is further conversion of non-fermentable sugars that give "body" and "mouth feel" to the beer. These can continue to be converted during the post mash time if the temp isn't...