Jim's Beer Kit

I don't think it will cause problems if you add it towards the end of active fermentation. Beware that there's both sugar and sweeteners in there, and it's really only about 20% mango puree, so 80% of what you're adding is just diluting the beer. Personally I'd go for adding a good quality puree of ...

As far as I know it doesn’t reduce foam, it just closes the flow off when the keg runs out so your tap doesn’t spurt foam everywhere.

I don’t think it’s particularly useful in a home context.

Looks great. Really neat, much better than mine.

Are you going to attach taps to the collar? Insulation on the inside might need to be removed to firmly attach the back nut.

Get a splitter and then insert a stem reducers?

Some things I would point out though: The kit presumes you have the now most common (exclusively so?) second-hand Corny designs (all AEB I think, stumpy with continuous rubber ring on top/bottom mouldings, posts not arranged directly opposite on circumference). If you have some of the other designs...

Not easy to find kegs at that price any more. There’s a small premium on that spares kit, but it has everything (including spare posts) and for people that starting off and aren’t sure about all of the parts it’s a great thing to have. After all, you only tend to find out that a keg seal has failed ...

But universal poppets from eBay. Seals too.

This is a good kit that will give you all the spares you need in case of a problem: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Cornelius-Ke ... 4150087615

You really shouldn’t put a cheap hydrometer into hot wort. It causes the glass to expand and the paper scale inside moves out of place.

Not going to be your problem I think, but might contribute to it.

I've just checked - 5/16" beer line is a tight fit, but it does fit. You can soften it up by sticking it in some hot water.

I've got a couple of these dispense lids. One with a smooth bit and what looks like a threaded section near the top as shown on your ebay link. That has a diameter of 6mm on the smooth bit, obviously it's wider on the threaded bit, and I currently have a length of 5mm internal diameter silicone tube...

And starsan is not a cleaner, it’s a sanitiser.

You can buy caustic beer line cleaner, but a bit of warm PBW/percarbonate seems to work just fine for me as long as you don’t leave it in the lines for more than a few minutes.

You don’t need a keg to clean lines. Buy a carbonation cap, put the line cleaner in a plastic bottle and then either squeeze the bottle to push the cleaner through, or just add a bit of gas to the bottle. As for when to do it, you can clean the line any time. I’d avoid connecting the gas until you w...

It’s fine.

The display?

Or was the water bath empty?

There's ways to split up the brew day. I set up the night before and put the water heating on a timer. Come the morning it means I just dough in and then walk away and get on with my day for an hour, but it can be longer if needed. Lautering and batch sparge takes about 20 minutes, then you put it a...