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I've never needed any sort of finings at all in a ginger beer. I also tend to find that I need more ginger & less sugar than that. It also benefits from a bit of lemon/lime juice. Yet to try the other spices some people use (cinnamon, cloves), but I will in the next few batches. US-05 yeast...

I bought one of these (500g, 0.01g accuracy) this week. Should get them on Monday/Tuesday to play around with.

Does that urn getting to a good rolling boil going, or just a slow boil? That might account for a bit of the discrepancy. And also, being an urn, the shape is usually a bit bit skinnier than other vessels, so you get less exposed surface area, so less boil off.

Well, at least you know roughly what your boil off rate is now. Easy adjustment to make for next time. I ended up about 5L short on my first BIAB (and it tastes so damn good, I wish I'd been 5L over!) I was already a bit under anticipated OG, so I didn't feel like diluting it any further...

My numbers were brewhouse efficiency (into the fermenter). Can't speak for anyone else.

+1. I know my first brew was a bit of a mess. Just worked out that I got 48% efficiency... Improved a few things (mainly temperature wise) for the second brew and came out at about 59%. I know I've got a way to go yet experience wise, but... onwards and upwards. It's nice to know a few of these...

Wiring.... Cannot. Be. Unseen... Nice job on the rig, but that wiring will give me nightmares for a long time! Then again, I may be the only one here who would consider some conduit/dune tube to route all my wiring. When I get to that stage. BIAB is sufficient for now. *starts designing a...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I always check, and get "near enough" on the occasions that I use dried. I would have thought that just for rehydrating, most yeast would be relatively similar. If they're not... I stand corrected. I don't think you'll do any harm, but then again I'm not sure you're going to do...

55L down to 30L sounds like a hell of a boil off rate. Was that expected? Looks like you've got a huge surface area on your pot for that volume. I think some people float pie tins, etc. on top to reduce the effective surface area of the pot. Should be one way to bring the boil off rate down a...

Ok, not a lot to go by. Have you taken any gravity measurements? If you can compare what it is now to what it was when you started, we will have some sort of idea what the yeast may/may not have done. Do you know your expected OG, actual OG, and expected FG? Rehydration is pretty hard to get...

Just came across this thread, and thought I'd put up my design. Rigged up an old 555 timer I had lying around with a pot, a diode, and a few resistors + caps. I see there is a different 555 design floating around here somewhere. I might as well add mine to the mix. Schematic for the PWM...

A PC water cooling system is designed to handle relatively high temperature coolant. Whether it's designed for near-boiling though, is another matter. Also, are the contact surfaces food grade? They probably won't rust (being designed for water), but with an altered pH, different chemical...

Ok, so if it doesn't take long before there's a positive pressure of CO2, won't that prevent any more O2 from making its way in from that point onwards? If that's the case, I don't see a huge difference between airlock or foil. Unless I'm missing something, it appears to be the same as the...

That is a fantastic looking rig there! :icon_drool2: Dropped my hydro yesterday, too... :( *a moments silence for our fallen comrades*

I was wondering about this. Wouldn't the old foil thing be just as likely to let unwanted microbes in as oxygen? I was going for the whole airtight is microbe tight theory. So do you think I'd be much better off ditching the airlock altogether? Or keeping it on until the yeast start showing...

Thanks Shmang. I did do a proper mashout this time - probably one of the reasons I had a better result than last time. I will try a longer mash next time, though. If I can maintain better temps, I should have a better (or more consistent) extraction, and increasing time is no big deal. I might...

Yeah, definitely couldn't insulate the bottom. Sides around the bottom is touch and go. Maybe something silver backed would be ok, but I started wondering the same thing. The upshot though, is that I wouldn't need to fire the burner up so high if it didn't lose so much heat. Less heat applied...

It was only once, and for no more than 10 secs. The only time I plan on doing it. In fact, I usually have an airlock lid to go on it. But I only have one, and it's on the other fermenter at the moment. Maybe if I hadn't double glad wrapped it, I might have been able to see through. Live and...

yeah, should have noted this. I have glad wrap on it. Just needed to take it off quickly for a photo. It was only off for a few seconds. Camera [and eyes] don't see through it too well... Well enough, but no real detail. I couldn't tell what the vague brown splotches were. On closer inspection...

You're using Fahrenheit, correct? The numbers that of mice and gods gave were in Celsius (as are most temps on this site). Just a heads up as to why some of your numbers are completely different/may not work properly.