Recent content by jameswatsonuk

Yeah, sort of. I was going to just connect with a ball lock valve on the outside, bsp threaded into a spare SS elbow pointing laterally and clockwise (flowing chill water anticlockwise through IC , when appropriate) with hosetail to narrow the flow, therefore increasing the pressure. The pump’s...

Aye, I’ve already clocked those, and they do look fancy…. Though I’ve got too many 1/2” bsp SS ball valves, elbows and hosetails lying around from previous creations to justify forking up for one is those! Only done 38l batches, so 10 USG (UK brewer: I stick to metric litres and kilos as...

Yo, here’s a picture of my kettle (50l) and my current recirculating solution using a cheap (but surprisingly powerful) eBay pump. Hose clamped over the brim, angled in slightly below the wort level. Recirculating to speed up wort chilling and heating, and getting mash/sparge water to...

Understood. I guess I’m better off sticking with what I’m doing with batching, and just using the pump to move wort to the kettle. Conventional wisdom suggests vourlaff should be done with the valve slightly open, then with batch sparging, fully open to collect runnings. Could vourlaff be...

Fair enough. I think I understand. 8% efficiency loss seems plausible in a no-sparge method, if what I described qualifies as that. Could I therefore preserve some efficiency, or perhaps improve on the expected batch-sparge efficiency, by collecting the first runnings to the kettle and...

Cheers for the verbose reply. I started with batch sparing due to limited gear (mostly DIY, bucket-in-a-bucket mash later device, rectangular cool box mash tun etc) so it made sense to keep it simple. I upgraded my gear over time and started fly-sparging, until I had kids and found I needed to...

Hi folks. I’m a batch sparger. It works well for me, I get pretty good efficiency and it saves me time. However, I’ve introduced a pump for circulating/whitpooling wort in the kettle, and to speed up water heating/wort cooling, and I like it…got me thinking where else I could put this to use in...

Update: popped another couple of bottles and it seems that the stronger the beer, and the darker (anecdotally) the longer it takes to carbonate (so confirming common wisdom), and the better the result. This beer has a nice even carbonation now. The yeast lives!!!! This beer is stronggggggg tho...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/dry-hopping-options-in-a-borderline-imperial-stout.704134/ For reference. This was the beer in question

Ok, so obviously I didn’t wait a full month…standard home brewer practice. However, pleased to report that the same I opened last week WAS carbonated. Don’t think it was full carbed yet, but another couple of weeks should yield better results. I did find, however, that aging in the Carboy...

Ok, so I added around 5g dry yeast into the bottling bucket whilst siphoning in with 80g priming sugar solution, stirring gently to mix in well. Sitting bottled at 25C, coolest I can manage at present but should be fairly consistent temperature. Will chill and crack one in a month and see what...

Think I’ve convinced myself that skipping the starter and chucking in about 5g is the dry yeast should suffice. Either way, it’ll be a good experiment, and I’ll report back what I find 4 weeks after bottling

Yeah, cheers. I figured as much. It’s whether it’s worth doing a starter for it or not that gets me. I’ve never really bothered with starters (or even rehydrating) for main (primary) fermentation, and always just tipped dry yeast straight in without any noticeable issues. Seems the only...

Hi brewers. Subject sums it up, but I’ll add context: This is a bit of an experimental brew for me, so I’ma little daunted. I am ready to bottle this big, dark beer (around 10% ABV) and since I didn’t have a spare keg or the time to bottle straight away, I’ve racked this one and let it age...

THROW in (sorry, had a coupla Hobgoblins 😁)