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What sort of fermenter are you siphoning from, and are you siphoning into kegs, bottles or a secondary fermenter?

As others have already mentioned, insulation can make a big difference. Try your water test again with some old towels or blankets wrapped around the kettle and see how you go. From there you can use something a bit sexier. I just use a $5 camping mat from Target because it's cheap and easy to...

Hotel pillows. What sort of evil genius came up with the perfect combination of thickness and firmness such that one pillow is always too thin and two are always too thick? And how did he get them into every hotel in the world? I realise that as first world problems go, this is probably near...

Depending on your starting head space, this could be a plug and play solution. It's an inline filter housing with push fittings, about $30 on ebay. At 10"x2.5", this would add about 750mL to the volume of your blowoff hose. This should be enough to allow you to start with 11L of headspace and...

If you're open to using dried yeast, Mangrove Jack's "Empire" is a good, low attenuating strain. I typically get about 65% attenuation but you'll probably get a bit more with your low mash temp. It works quickly, drops bright and isn't nearly as estery as the labelling suggests.

Instead of attaching the spunding valve to the kegmenter, could you vent the kegmenter via the keg you will eventually rack to and attach the valve to the receiving keg? That way the receiving keg would be purged and under the same pressure as the kegmenter. You would also have a purged line...

I liked this yeast the first time I tried it, but didn't get the famed crazy krausen. I think it was just trying to lull me into a false sense of security. I only half filled this fermenter and I don't think I've reached high krausen yet.

I'm going to assume that's a really bad auto-correct of "diminish"! Food products use English lavender. French and Spanish lavender are more heat tolerant so they are the ones you will typically find in australian gardens. These Mediterranean varieties aren't much good in food because they will...

I'm using this yeast for the first time and it's currently chugging away in a British IPA. Does anyone have any thoughts as to how this strain differs from Nottingham? On paper they look very similar - fairly neutral, high attenuation and good flocculation.

I've just spent the morning of a public holiday brewing an old AHB favourite - Three Shades of Stout. I bumped up the OG and IBUs by about 15% since I wanted to pitch a low attenuating yeast (M15) while still hitting the same abv.

This yeast has been around for a long time, but only in 500g packages. It appears to have been released to the US market in 11g sachets earlier this year. Has anyone used it before and has anyone seen the 11g sachets on Australian shelves yet? On a side note, there seems to have been a boom in...

......until somebody opens the door!

I have moved from no-chill to chilling and yes, the same beer chilled will have more hop flavour than its no-chilled equivalent. However, there are ways around this, most notably with cube hopping. You can get massive hop flavours from cube hopping. My experience with both techniques is that I...

I'll add to the chorus of approval for M20. It produces a nice weissbier with a touch of banana and spice which I find to be more vanilla than clove, but it's still very good. It only manages 70% apparent attenuation for me, but I have never noticed any unpleasant sweetness even with the low...

It looks like Fermentis is joining the saison party and will soon be releasing a rival to Danstar's Belle Saison and MJ's French Saison. BE-134 has been added to Fermentis' product range (not to be confused with the already released BE-256). Any retailers out there know when this will hit the...

Download Brewdog's recipe book "DIY Dog" and have a look at "How to Disappear Completely", which they describe as an imperial mild: OG 1.037, FG 1.010 and 198 very theoretical IBU. I was lucky enough to taste one and it was amazing. You'll notice that it has about 30% crystal malts! While this...

I'm currently drinking my first attempt with M54. It fermented strongly and ended up with about 80% apparent attenuation resulting in a clean, crisp beer. If I have one criticism of it, it's that there's more to lager than "clean and crisp" and that it's missing that certain...

...........and welcome to the forum!

Palmer's advice is good, but I think it was written before recirculating systems became as common as they are now. In a more traditional 3V home brewing set up, slow sparging is good for two reasons. Firstly, it helps to avoid compacting the grain bed and ending up with a stuck sparge. Secondly...

I have the unit in your picture and I used to use it for step mashing in my BIAB days. I use a Birko urn now, but I have kept the immersion element just in case something blows up mid-brew. *Will a 2400 unit be suitable for volumes up to 40L without taking hours to reach the desired temp? It...