Jim's Beer Kit

I believe the inkbird is only capable of outputting 1KW on each of its elements. This might be ok for a HLT as long as you are not doing any step mashing with rapid time intervals (it might still be OK for this, if the volume of water being heated is low). And is fine for heating strike water over n...

Most of the DIY mill projects focus on getting a base mill, and building it into a mill station - motorised, malt hopper, grist collector.

More carpentry than metalwork tbh

Last time I checked, the entry level roller mills were not that expensive. Do you have a burning desire to build a mill? Not seeing how DIY is going to save you a lot of money. Milling can be a faff, and it causes me a lot of grief on my brew days, my cordless struggled with the crush more times tha...

@ChrisA - big nitpick - we dont consider the addition of 'liquid malt extract' to a kit beer to be an enhancer, despite the marketing/labelling of kit manufacturers. You are just now making normal beer, rather than diluting down the malt derived extract with cheap table sugar. Kit manufacturers have...

And you can get around a lot of this variability by buying in some supermarket water with low minerality/alkalinity/buffering.

Tesco Ashbeck still good in this regard.

On flushing oxygen: Common misconception - CO2 will settle underneath the air and oxygen. the 'proper' way would be to fill the keg with water and push that out with lowest possible CO2 pressure. When flushing multiple kegs you can push the water from one to another, Ingo This is what I do, but I u...

The new 10L growler kegs with an included spear head/dip tube assembly are at the same price as new half cornies.

The small poly pins are great value for the money, but you will have to keep them cold or in the original box, or it will lose condition over an extended period

Remember you can also buy RO water from aquarium suppliers/trade cleaner suppliers. Usually very cheap.

Also I believe that Tesco Ashbeck water is still god to use as is, in brewing.

If you wish to back sweeten, cant you introduce some maltodextrin? You could buy some powder, or steep some cara pilsner / dextrin malt

Is this a trick that mead makers favour?

Robwalkeragain wrote:Great yeast! Probably the best dry all rounder on the market for english bitters imo.

You have to work hard to get it to clear, but this turned out a great balanced bitter for me last year, which medalled at London & South East 2018

Wouldn’t call it an over indulgent purchase.

Like the OP, volume calculations drive me cracked. If you can’t rely on volume calcs, your efficiency figures will be off, and from there you will struggle to hit numbers with goalposts moving all the time.

It’s a cheap price to keep the sanity

@mikemelga look out for old chest freezers on the various reseller sites. Really good at getting kegs temps down and keeping them there.

I have my current kegerator setup at 10-14 PSI for dispense ( a Lager)

Even if your personal consumption is quite modest, consider that many brews can be left down for years in bottled form. I found that by brewing large, and carefully with one fermenter, this was how I got variety into the house. It was always nice to have some of the last batch left over to sample si...

I suppose I either take a hit in buying small quantities at a high cost or try and find a few like-minded souls who'd be happy to share the cost of buying in larger quantities at hopefully, a proportionally lower outlay. There are a few home brewers who contract out their hops, and sell on what the...