Recent content by benf

Plenty of Kiwis lurking around this aussie site. I have some from Rotoform, near airport, which have been good. Nice and solid, food grade and will stretch if required (mine stretched nicely when I used them for secondary fermentation once without airlocks and lid on a bit tight!! They do...

Thanks all for your suggestions. Definitely looks like replacing the thermostat is well within my means but I think that I may stick with my Fridgemate as it appears to be doing a good job over the weekend. I have been thinking of upgrading the Fridgemate to an STC-1000 anyway to give me auto...

Hi, I have just acquired an old fridge which appears tp have a thermostat problem in that the compressor is running non-stop and over the course of a couple of days it has frozen my 3 kegs which I put in it. It is a fridge on-top and freezer on bottom. I don't want to use this as a fermenting...

Just done some reading on isohop extract, my local homebrew shop sells 50ml for $6 so seems a cheap option, or better yet I can probably get some from a mate that works for Lion. Calculations I have done would suggest that I would be adding about 0.1ml per keg to get an increase of 10 IBU...

tbh no have not tasted it. I was just trying to get my head around what I could possibly do when I do taste and dry hop tonight if I am not happy with it. Sounds like putting it down to experience might be a reasonable option though. It was just meant to be an easy summer drinker, nothing too...

Can someone please advise on the following? The weekend just gone I brewed a California common style beer. Unfortunately when I put the recipe together in Brewmate I didn't realise that I had inadvertently ticked the no-chill box, so my hop additions were calculated way too low and seems that...

This might be a silly question but better safe than sorry. I have 28 litres coming ready for kegging. A corny keg takes 18 - 19litres. I have two empty corny kegs. Do I fill one up full and then put remaining (lets say 10 litres) into the other. Can you carbonate up a half full keg OK. What...

I'm all for simpler and did intially consider just doing the one boil but didn't really put enough thought into how to stage the hop additions over the final minutes of the boil. For example, some of my recipes have a 10 minute addition and a flameout addition. Could it be that if I do a...

As a result of being able to do 60 litre batches, having limited keg space and not wanting 60 litres of a single batch ready to drink all at the same time, I have decided on the following approach. Mash and sparge as per normal. Split the pre-boiled wort into two kettles. Run one kettle as...

Oh, one more question. When chilling in the kettle I get really good settling of the trub and get a very clear run-off into the fermenters. If I run off 20 litres into a cube for no chilling at flame-out, is it the idea that the trub will just settle out in the cube?

OK, you've convinced me on the no chill idea, would make things very flexible and like the idea of having cubes of various varieties sitting waiting for fermentation. Couple of basic questions on no chill (without turning this into a no chill thread). 1. how much difference will there be in...

Thanks, that makes loads of sense, other than that I have a pretty good chill process set-up so like my fast chilling post boil. That being said, why can I not just fill sterilised cubes with my chilled wort then ferment when required? Can the wort be held at room temperature over long periods...

Hi, as I am now doing 60 litre batches and currently only have 2 corny kegs, there is around 20 litres that needs to sit waiting for a keg to become free. This could be a month or two depending on batch rotation etc.. What is the best way to hold this beer to avoid it deteriorating? Is there...

excellent, that's what I'm going for so sounds all good. While talking of this batch, I made a slight error on the hops addition versus the recipe on the DB. The recipe for the Monggose Brown calls for a good amount of centennial to be used as a dry hop. I completely missed this when...

its been sitting for 8 days now and is still bubbling away (slowly). Might bring it into the houseto warm it up now and hopefully it should be good to keg by the weekend. How's that for a plan. What sort of temperature shold I be going for for a D-rest?