Jim's Beer Kit

Sure, if you think so. Always happy to oblige. It's more a case of getting a brew down pronto, to give me 3 weeks left before we get on the big winged silver bird in the sky for our trip to Europe. I want to transfer it for lagering before we go, so it can sit undisturbed in my brew fridge for the m...

All done, dusted and cleaned up with this one by 11 am Saturday morning Aussie time. Munich Dunkel Batch Size: 25.00 L Brewhouse Efficiency: 85.00 % 4070.00 gm Munich I (Weyermann) (14.0 EBC) Grain 81.40 % 660.00 gm Vienna Malt (Weyermann) (5.9 EBC) Grain 13.20 % 100.00 gm Caraaroma (390.0 EBC) Grai...

You shouldn't ever get bottle bombs if you follow a few simple rules: 1. Use some brewing software such as BeerSmith, or any of a number of free programs you can download, to do the calculations for you and give you a ballpark figure of what you can expect from your brew. 2. Allow the batch to ferme...

Use malted wheat for your Bavarian wheat beers. You really only need to use Wheat Malt and Pils Malt. Minimum 50% wheat, the rest Pils. And I think a single infusion works best, based on my results, and no matter what others say. I've done decoctions, I've done acid rests, I've done protein rests, a...

Too much Black Malt for my taste.
I'd much rather use Carafa Special II instead.
Looks good otherwise.

With those low alcohol beers, I prefer to mash somewhere between 68 to 70ºC to ensure I have nice body in the beer.

Cascade, Chinook, Magnum, Saaz, EKG, Challenger. Can't limit it to just one.
Cascade is great in combination with Magnum and Chinook.
Try bittering with Magnum, flavouring with Cascade, and dry hopping with Chinook in an APA or IAPA. Great combination which works very well.

I've done both, single infusion, and also with an initial acid rest. For me, the best result I ever had was with a single infusion at 65ºC. I'm not a real fan of the clove character. I fermented quite low with WY3068 at 17.5ºC, and it produced a beautifully balanced beer, with a hint of spice and ...

I know it is not the prevailing wisdom on this site, having been shot down about this issue once before.

However, my experience (note the my) is that even after lagering at 2ºC for up to 7 weeks, I've bottled my brews without aditional yeast, and they've carbonated just fine.

If you use a program such as BeerSmith, or any of the other approriate brewing software, you will after a few batches work out what your mash efficiency range is. Once you have that, you can set the batch size to what you want, and then select your grains to arrive at the OG you are aiming at. I don...

I've not had a bottle bomb since 1973 (yes, 1973).

Yours doesn't look like the normal bottle bomb.
To me, it looks like the bottle had some inherent or introduced weakness, and that's where the pressure from carbonation caused it to fail.

Someone posted that the temp for making lager needs to low, like 2deg or so and also needs a month or two to complete everythnig, then i read elsewhere that lager just ferments at the same temps as beer i.e 18-22deg or so? Don't confuse fermentation with the lagering process. I brewed a Munich Dunk...

If chemicals won't clean it, maybe investigate those things used to clean rifle / shotgun barrels?

Didn't we say the same thing? The beer itself should be clear, it's the yeast which supplies the cloudiness. I know a fresh hefeweizen for example, will be cloudy, but that's because the yeast hasn't settled yet. What Hoegaarden recommend, is to suspend the yeast to make it cloudy. It implies the be...

Wheat beers should be clear, just like any other beer.

The cloudiness in Hefeweizens should come from the yeast, not anything else.

If you want a clear wheat beer, try to buy some Kristalweizen, it's totally clear, but is still a fantastic drink.

Better get yourself a job with one of the mega-brewers.
You have just hit on a technique to save them lots of pounds or euros or dollars.

I really do wonder why they have never worked it out for themselves so far.............