Jim's Beer Kit

PET bottles are rinsed/shaken as soon as they are emptied and all sediment removed. On bottling day I line them up in the bath and add 1/3 hot water to each, then shake vigorously and drain. Next I split a litre of Videne from a jug into three bottles, shake again for five seconds to get a froth and...

This article seems to be suggesting there could be a glut of malt. I wonder when this will filter through to retailers ... and how much will prices drop? :) "indicators point to the demand for malt plummeting by more than 150,000 tonnes this year because of the impact of the credit crunch on distil...

I've bookmarked this hop chart, which I then proceed to ignore and go my own way

I have this amongst my notes: "hop bitterness balance guide: grams = 5 x (OG - 1000)/aa%" e.g something like challenger for bittering, alpha acid = 7% and I'm aiming for OG 1040 then 5x40/7= 28g of bittering hops. I'd use about 10g first wort hops and 20g @90 mins. Only a guide, I guess anywhere fro...

I find the Beer Engine program helps a lot, free for personal use. Written for Windows but also runs just fine for me on Linux with Wine.

Just mash with a bag in the FV, don't worry about the cool box. Wrap a blanket or duvet round the FV and secure with rope if your don't want to spend any money. I use a single foam camping mat (around £3) which I cut up and stuck on with gaffer tape. Mostly only a single layer, though I had enough ...

Oh, go on, try some pet food. After all, we don't demand our barley is grown in poly tunnels so we don't consume liberal quantities of lightly roasted bird sh1t.

For recipe priming sugar volume perhaps add 0.5% to the ABV? Probably nearer half that e.g. easy example of 100g sugar theorectically adds 0.33% . I use the Inland revenue factors 0.129 or 0.130 . So: (OG - FG) * [factor] might be (1045 - 1010) = 35 * [factor] "35" means I use a factor of 0.129 35 ...

I did my first few AGs using BIAB so I needed to get a large net curtain, immersion chiller, boiler with some sort of hop strainer (small sheet of stainless steel mesh twisted into a tube and stuffed into the back of the boiler tap). Under £60 to upgrade from kits.

When a brew is fermenting vigorously with lots of bubbles through the airlock and your FV is translucent or transparent, you'll see the blobs of yeast moving around in the convection currents like a crazy lava lamp. My point is that if you haven't fully mixed your kit the billions of yeast will easi...

I had a few problems with CityLink a few years ago. Ordering stuff from Ebuyer and watching the goods transit online showing "at depot", "on van" etc and then showed I was "carded". There was always at least one person at the house and I never got a CityLink card - I don't even know what they look l...

Have a read about Brewing in a Bag . The "sieve" in this no-sparge method is a net curtain. Give a try if you want something straight forward. I've done quite a few of these, efficiency is a bit less than batch sparging (expect 65%, I got 68% with grain crushed by the supplier) so you either use a b...

I'd add to Suttonbrewer's advice. Check all mating surfaces with a magnifying glass. Also, I had a cheap tap on a fermenter that had an uneven seam that needed "scalpling" off due to the tap being constructed from two moulded halves.

So, your water to grain ratio is around 7? that seems high Er, I think we're at cross purposes here. I've not really come across that "3-4" l/kg ratio though I have come across 2.5 as a ratio of mash liquor to grain - i.e. 4.5KG grain added to 11.25 liquor for a 90 minute mash. My 35/4.5=7.8 where ...

Seems wrong to me. My total grain bill is usually around 4.5Kg, for that I'd start with a total of 35 litres. That's for BIAB or batch sparging. Now, I only have a single element boiler so I guess if you have a fierce gas burner you might boil off way more than I do in 90 minutes? I aim for around 2...