Recent content by The lunch man

I've read a lot of threads over the years regarding off flavour troubleshooting in homebrew and sadly often they end up unresolved. It's understandable given without tasting the beer described it can be difficult to narrow down the cause. As it happens I've been on a quest to master delicious...

I have the 70l guten and found I was getting around 65% efficiency with the shop milled grain. Once I bought my own mill and played around with a few settings efficiency went up to 73-75%

Thanks nickxb, I'll treat as if it's an infection for now and see if I can nail it. Will also look into the brewers club you mentioned 👍

Yeah just going to do regular kit can brew I think with some DME. I'll do my best and brew like I'm in the infectious diseases ward 🤞

Cheers grmblz, I might struggle with the small spare room but will definitely take your advice on the bleach bombing and do my best to treat the workspace I'm using too. Used it in the past for some equipment but never hit every single bit of kit with it. Seems logical to eliminate any chance of...

Good to hear, hope this solves the problem.

Yeah I have tried to follow the manufacturer's advice for pitching rate, maybe on the more generous side if in doubt. I do brew outside but aerate and pitch yeast inside so possible infection could be from either I guess. I'm going to try an extract brew next with store bought water. might try...

Cheers Ian Smith, a lot of handy tips here. Good to get confirmation on the local water. I've played around a bit with yeast pitching rates and due to poor results probably tend to over pitch now, might try dial it back a little for the next few batches then. Yeah possibly not OCD enough with...

Yeah next batch will be a kit for sure. I'm using a stainless immersion chiller. You reckon try no chill to eliminate chance of infection during this process? Maybe hot wort straight to container, seal and let cool on its own? Just doing the shake and pour from a height into fermenter to aerate...

Yeah righto, I'll keep that in mind. I usually find the flavour pretty flawed from the early stages of bottle conditioning so there could be something else going on there too. I find after about 4 weeks in the bottles very little change in flavour occurs after that.

Yeah I store bottles at 20degrees for the first 2-3 weeks of conditioning

Yeah I actually tried this a while back. I've lived in two different locations up north with different water sources too and haven't noticed any changes in brewing results between them.

Interesting, I haven't used iodophor or peracetic acid before but I know they sell iodophor here so will try it for the next brew. Cheers

Possibly. I have a .5 micron carbon filter I run my water through but have never experimented with water treatment. I'm in Townsville and the LHBS have the same filter set up for customers to come and fill containers to take home. I'm guessing the quality is ok if that's the case.

Yeah they store it in a fridge. Tbh the fermenter I've been using the last 12months or so doesn't seal perfectly so can't use airlock activity as indicator, but equipment in the past would often show no activity in the first 24hours.