Jim's Beer Kit

Stick a 2 way onto one of the 3 way outputs?

It depends what your water report says. If you have low enough alkalinity then a mix of lactic and phosphoric would be ok. But as someone with alkalinity >250ppm (as CaCO3) whose supply of sulphuric acid seems to have dried up, I’ve just purchased a cheap RO system. I’m an advocate of working with s...

I should say that it really helps to have good quality beer line. The Valpar stuff from the Malt Miller might not be cheap, but in a year of usage I’ve not had to replace any lines due to spoilage or beer taint, with just light occasional cleaning as per above.

I used PBW for a long time until it became unavailable. Stellarclean was decent, but more recently I tried Chemclean, and it certainly foams at first but I’ve also been pretty impressed at its performance. It’s also going quite cheap at the moment at brew2bottle: https://brew2bottle.co.uk/pages/sear...

Personally I use a normal sodium percarbonate based cleaner (e.g. PBW, Chemclean). When a keg is empty I rinse it out with hot water, then add some cleaner with more hot water. Leave it to soak and shake it about a bit, and then run some out through the line and tap. Give it a minute and run a bit m...

Hi there. To answer your question briefly, no this isn't a problem running gas through 5/16" line, and you can certainly run two kegs off of that as long as you're not intending to pour both kegs at the same time. As you're splitting after the regulator, both kegs have to be at the same serving pres...

And then there are the bottles returned by friends which not only have they not rinsed -despite being asked to! - but they’ve been kept for weeks bedsore returning, leaving them with a dried and frequently mouldy mess in the bottom which requires semi-nuclear treatment to remove! I have found the m...

Previously I used to just rinse with hot water after drinking, put on a plastic cap and then sanitise with starsan before use. However, I found that with bottle conditioning I'd gradually get yeast building up on the sides of the glass, not just at the bottom. That showed me that there is some biofi...

It's certainly profligate with CO2. I'm not sure if there's a better way though.

Once the keg is purged I briefly take off the lid and drop the hops in quickly. There’s not a lot of oxygen pick up in that time. If you’ve already filled the keg then you’ll need to turn off or disconnect the gas, pull the prv to depressurise it and then you can remove the lid. Do it quickly and t...

Once the keg is purged I briefly take off the lid and drop the hops in quickly. There’s not a lot of oxygen pick up in that time. If you’ve already filled the keg then you’ll need to turn off or disconnect the gas, pull the prv to depressurise it and then you can remove the lid. Do it quickly and th...

Also try and figure out where the shanks are coming through the other side of the door. Make sure they won't bang in to anything on the inside.

If it’s definitely rust (you’ve tried soaking in sodium percarbonate/pbw with a kettle full of boiling water?) then I’d throw in some citric acid or bar keepers friend and a little water and leave it to soak, giving it an occasional shake. You might need to repeat that, but putting a scouring pad on...

I don't have a bulldog brewer, but can comment a little on dealing with hops. In short, there's no ideal solution. For leaf hops a coarse mesh screen works well as it allows liquid to drain through the leaves. However, they will block any ports/outlets smaller than 1" easily without some kind of fil...

Thanks for those responses - really useful! Before you go adding DLS though - do you know what is already in your water supply? Without knowing that then you can't estimate what the effect will be, and adding DLS may have an undesirable effect. I was going to follow the brupaks guidance: http://mai...