Search results

Dry malt is easiest dissolved in cold water, in my experience. Simply pour it in and swirl it around. The malt balls are caused by the outside layer getting partially melted/inverted/caramelised in the heat and this prevents them from falling apart.

In secondary for sure.

Welcome! I'm very interested in Mexican beer culture, and love your country! I visited last year, in Oaxaca and Mexico City.

Your refracto won't stay ambient very long if it keeps equalising with hot wort. If you're doing any kind of reliable measurement, you'll be doing it multiple times. Hence cooling the sample. Whatever works for you to get a reliable and repeatable measurement.

I'd be interested to hear about the longevity of these meters, and expecially how well they endure beer line cleaning. The flowmeters appear to be a turbine type, ie, positive-displacement. As the turbine turns, a hall effect sensor is tripped for every (x) volume units. This should help with...

The only thing that makes pre-boil gravity hard is the cooling of the sample whilst minimising evaporation. Otherwise it's exactly the same as any other gravity reading. Personally I use a refractometer which makes things a little quicker, and once you get the hang of how to cool your sample (I...

Stainless steel is the benchmark. The book is wrong.

Look, if you can assemble it, then it'll probably work. As for the longevity and reliability... I personally wouldn't do this, but I've already learnt my lesson (the hard way) with gas lines blowing in the middle of the night and coming back to an empty CO2 bottle. You don't need fancy tubing...

Typically exactly as I want. There are bound to be all sorts of heat differentials but I've had good results so far. I believe the heat transfer rate through the fermenter wall to be high enough to give a representative reading of ferment temperature.

The accuracy of your weighing equipment as well as the accuracy of the stated alpha acid %age of the hops is likely to be the weakest link in attaining precision of BU rather than fiddling with calculations. Hops of same breed can vary substantially in their AA%, and is likely to be different...

My hunch is that yes, the mountings are the same. There are some DIN standards relating to switchgear sizing that I believe governs this sort of thing. There are set "frame sizes" for various components. Nope. You're "pouring" the excess heat down the "sink".

Yeah I just tape the probe to the side of the fermenter, directly onto the plastic wall. Some people put some foam over the probe to try and get a more representative reading of the fermenter temperature rather than air temperature.

Yeah they'd probably add sulphur notes too. I definitely agree with your sentiment - I also had very inconsistent gravities but for a different reason. Essentially my volume measurements were woefully unprecise which meant I would chronically under-sparge. Once I started being more methodical...

Nah that's just the body of the probe which covers the highly sensitive RTD element. Even industrial probes are put in thermowells: A thermowell has threads so it can actually be part of a pressure-rated pipework system, and you can remove the probe without opening any part of the pipework.

I am very skeptical as to the suitability of a cable gland to seal liquids under pressure. A thermowell is designed for exactly this application.

KK stainless fittings are fine.

Hmmm, I'm wondering if it's the right page. There should be a few posts only days old. We meet whenever someone bothers to organise a meet up. There is actually something happening at Nomad brewery this Saturday from ~5pm.

You need a thermowell. Screw this into the T piece and then put the probe into the thermowell with some heat sink paste.

You can but I'd fill them up with tap water. If you apply pressure to an empty keg you'll waste a shiteload of gas. Removing the volume with incompressible water means that less CO2 needs to be injected into the keg to reach test pressure.

Same with aggressive hose barbs. This is why I like pushfit (aka john guest) fittings.