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NSMikeD

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Seems to that home brewing can be an endless journey of next steps.

It was a number of years ago I decided to “up my game” to all grain using the BIAB for small batches. It didn’t take long to start legging when I got my hands on my sons dorm mini fridge and then add a fermenting chamber with another mini fridge bargain from Craig’s list. Last year I pulled the trigger on an Anvil Foundry 6.5 and that put me in a position to do more challenging brews.

So my recent upping the game is I have a Pilsner lager in the fermenter (after a number of successful Kolsh brews) and my next brew will likely be a NEIPA. For that I am looking to use one of my kegs as a fermenter and to a closed transfer.

i Know I am not alone with this obsession to get better do more.

what are some of your recent or planned game upping some?
 
I just picked up kegging and lagering.

I need to optimize my wheat beer decoctions and step mashes.

Next steps will be filtering, water chemistry and closed transfers.

I'm still scared about washing and reusing the yeast. I'll keep buying new liquid yeast until I feel more comfortable with the rest of the process.
 
I just begun all grain, and I think I will brew some E+G and also one hopped extract kit that I like in the future, but all grain is the new step at the moment.

Then it's probably keg/kegerator.

Then, or before that, some way of going cold and fermenting cold or cold crushing;

The next step might be counterpressure bottling or isobaric bottling;

Then I will begin experimenting with LODO initially with the easier steps, then maybe with the entire crazyness (actually the easier LODO technique will probably be anticipated to before the kegging step).

I have my "next steps" already set for the next 8 years or so, God willing.

And let's not even talk distillation! :)
 
what are some of your recent or planned game upping some?


well i'm waiting on a report from a second person if there's any point in getting better effec. with my homemalt....i think it will require some fancy gadgets which will fun to figure out...automatic mixing/misting while sprouting.....think i have drying and kilning pretty much down, but don't get a really good sprout evenness....
 
There's always more, I'm reconditioning a beer engine and working on cask ale to dispense from one gallon kegs, so I can have real cask ale. Avoiding the beer in a bag or breathers on the keg. It's a challenge but should work just using one ferment and staged priming after filling of the mini kegs. Will dry hop some of them as well. Simple beer is a real challenge, hop bombs can hide a lot but do have their place.
 
I'm guessing space constraints.
fwiw, I bought both a 2.5 gallon and a 3.0 gallon ball lock keg from AIH last year. One is for my keezer glass rinser supply, the other is a drip-tray catcher. If you want to see the "equal opportunity pain", where no matter the size, it's $75, check out their page here: Home Brew Kegs - New and Used Kegs for Kegging Homebrew

Cheers! (It was like pulling a crusty band-aid off, but worth it :))
 
full size Corney kegs are 125 dollars here. I use sankey kegs they can be a bit cheaper.
But I think our 240 volt Grainfathers and other all in one brew systems might be a bit cheaper.
At least we have a malt and hop industry here so those are reasonably priced. Last bag of 25kg ale malt cost 36 US dollars and hops about 7 US for 4 oz.

I expect you can get the Aliexpress stuff in half the time as well. Shockingly slow since Covid.

At least we don't have the Covid though so some silver lining to the gloom. It's pretty much normal life down here, although trapped in the biggest planetary bubble as difficult to get out and into the country so not seen the children and family ( except wife ) in over a year now.
 
i Know I am not alone with this obsession to get better do more.

It is a good attitude to have. I brewed my first batch in 1993. These days I find that I learn something new with every batch, and for everything I learn I discover two things I don't know. Beer can be as complex (or as simple) as you want it to be. I see people asking for advice on NEIPAs after they have already brewed 40 batches of NEIPA, or people that are dedicated to perfecting a core set of Belgian styles or people that brew 200 gallons of crisp lagers every year.

Brewing my first NEIPA a few years ago, pushed me to address some of my cold side oxidation holes. Even getting a few infected batches a while back forced me to readdress my cleaning and sanitization process.

I heard a quote recently: "Either you win, or you learn" (though I could argue that you can win AND learn).
 
I try to improve my technique every time I brew in the hope that each batch gets a little better each time. Some brew days are great. Then there are some where Fate intervenes. But I never stop trying to improve and make a better beer.
 
My next steps are to get more into yeast harvest / farming - I have some strains in the back of the fridge that I want to try stepping up and freezing. |I've had some in there for a year or more, so I don't know how viable they are - I'll probably make a relatively weak starter and see what |I get.
If I have to start over, I'll do that, but I hope I can resurrect some of what |I have in there.
Also |I want to get more into water treatment.
Thinking of getting a relatively inexpensive RO machine, and start building.
The machine will be that much less if |I convince my dad to go halvsies on it for his tropical fish - he's always complaining about the tap water he gets; always has to add things to it, then the PH crashes a couple \days later, no matter what.
 
Absolutely, Next steps are essential always room for improvement. Right now I'm trying to rap my head around the whole process of limiting oxygen contact. I transfer from boil kettle through a plate chiller and drop into the top of a conical fermenter. If I add oxygen from a tank into that transfer why is that process different/better from it aerating as it falls into fermenter? (I always get very good attenuation) and then transferring from the fermenter into Co2 filled kegs, not sure I can push beer into a pressurized keg? Now that I have wrote it down I may have figured it out, I gravity feed to a pump and pump into the keg? I was always thinking I needed to Pressurize my fermenter.
 
I think I would like to get into decoction. Everything else kinda got good at and have yet to try a decoction mash. I started with all grain and kegging so it was a crash course with those but was simple enough to grasp pretty quickly. Closed transfer I just fill one keg with co2, then have the gas out go into my starsan 5 gallon bucket and push the wort into the co2 filled keg while the gas out bubbles away for a closedish type transfer. I think if you burst carb your beer, it shouldnt matter anyway, your co2 will push out any o2 when burping it.
 
always room for improvement.
If I add oxygen from a tank into that transfer why is that process different/better from it aerating as it falls into fermenter?
It's the higher partial pressure of pure oxygen ( 100%) as opposed to air only 20% oxygen. So with pure oxygen you can increase the dissolved oxygen in the wort to a higher level and that helps with yeast reproduction.
I have only just started it and the yeast is behaving more dynamically, apparently reduces stress.
Regarding your Low O2 transfer not sure a pump is a good idea as it can cause a lot of cavitation and infection risk perhaps.

If your conical is at atmospheric pressure and the keg has above atmospheric pressure CO2 then if connected CO2 would go from keg to conical ( not ideal ) until pressure balanced. If keg has been purged with blow off from fermenter then it's atmospheric pressure, but as liquid runs from conical ( by gravity as siphon ) into keg the pressure would rise in the keg and then the transfer would stop.
If you connect from Gas out of keg to the gas in of the conical ( if not possible can you fit a multi post ? ) then the siphon will stay in equilibrium and all will be transferred oxygen free.
Multi post means that you could put liquid connector on it as well and so add finings etc to primary before transfer useful option.
Or you can just attach CO2 to the multipost and run that in slowly, but the recycle does work.
 
If I add oxygen from a tank into that transfer why is that process different/better from it aerating as it falls into fermenter?

Because if you aerate by splashing you are incorporating your ambient air into your wort, not only the oxygen in it. Bacteria, dust, molds, flies etc. all can get into your beer. If your ambient air is like mine, you don't want to get that inside your wort.

If you inject oxygen from a cylinder you know that only oxygen will get into the beer, without unwanted anything.

Best next IMO is an air pump with a stone and a filter to filter the air. That will inject purified air into your wort and is almost as good as pure oxygen. According to White (Yeast) though, an air pump cannot go past 8 mg/l of dissolved oxygen which is OK for most worts but it's wanting for certain difficult high-gravity worts.
If you use oxygen you can go much past that (some sources indicate you could reach 40 mg/l which is bad in any case).

The best practice when using an oxygen cylinder would be to measure the oxygen injected into the wort by means of a flowmeter. Other sources indicate that, even if you oxygenate too much, oxygen will rapidly get out of solution by itself.

My personal resumé of all this:

a) Ambient air is bad, especially my bachelor ambient air. Your kitchen may very;
b) Filtered air and porous stone gets you 0 risk but needs half an hour and it's limited to 8 mg/l and not optimal for dense worts;
c) Pure Oxygen and porous stone is very fast, allows you to reach more than 8 mg/l, but allows you also to exaggerate with oxygen with the potential risk of undue oxidation.
 
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Finally putting together a kegging setup. Beer Gnomes left a set of 2.5 gallon kegs, a CO2 tank and all the hoses and fittings on my steps this afternoon. Next step to up my game is getting my hands on a glass front beverage cooler to use as my kegerator/fermentation chamber.
 
Given the number of cafes and bars likely to or have gone out of business with covid you might find a deal there.

Been keeping my eyes peeled. Other option I'm leaning towards is getting an Avanti glass front fridge from ABC Warehouse using their 90 days same as cash financing option.
 
Think I saw that you had your eye on one of those elsewhere. My ferment fridge has solid doors and stainless got it for nothing as it was " broken " all it would do is chill to freezing. STC 1000 controller sorted that out and controlled the hot side as well. It's been really good. ISpindel has added to the monitoring as well.
 
I have a pretty basic biab system. A 10 gallon kettle, a bag, and several plastic fermenter buckets. I also bottle condition.

Lately, I've really considered having at least a closed system to reduce O2 exposure. Ive looked around for kegs, but then it getting taps, tubes, co2 thingys. Its quite foreign to me. Heres what else stands in the way of my progressing to the next step....

1 SWMBO
2 i have 4 kids to feed $$$$$
3 SWMBO
4 the cruncher is probably the fact that i quite like what i am making now, and do really wonder how much better stuff would taste if i had a closed system, and perhaps a couple of kegs. I have convinced myslef not much. :)
5 my 40 pints of beer is gone in under a month or two, and i make 2-3 batches at a time. its got no time to oxidize.

Ive started a gofundme page for poor brewers........
 
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