Jim's Beer Kit

Just remember that your £35 (or less) refractometer is measuring an SG based on sucrose at a specific temperature. Your wort will not be anywhere near the refractive index of sucrose so do not get too hung up. Take an intial RI (refractive index) and when you think you are done a final RI. Then wait...

I would strongly sugest you get a water analysis so that you know what you are dealing with. I suspect that you are not in the UK as we would not normally use phosphoric acid for alkalinity control. Once you know what you are dealing with it is easier to decide on the treatment, which very much is i...

This might help. What you are measuring is the apparent Brix. Brix is defined as percent-weight containing in pure sucrose solution. For sugars other than sucrose, it is called the "apparent Brix" and is always a relative value. Although the designation of Brix is strictly valid only for solutions w...

If it is any consolation obtaining sulphuric cid in the UK is now very difficult, all due to a certain ethnic faction having a propensity for throwing acid into the faces of women. Thankfully AMS/ CRS is still available. One option that you might wish to consider is to go back to the old days and so...

Pitting corrosion on stainless is possible but requires extreme conditions which I would very much doubt would have occured with a corny keg on beer. The thing to avoid on stainless is wire wool which can leave fragments of steel which will corrode the stainless. Alkaline cleaners will not be very e...

This is a pretty good kit and one that I would use. It is good for learning the how to make a pilsner. I tend to make my pilsners in the winter months and age them for months stored in a cold shed. To get it going I made a strong starter with 220g honey and 2.5 g Fermaid K using the yeast sachet, 24...

Chastuck, Thanks for the info. I delved a little deeper. https://www.fishkeeping.co.uk/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=317939 Quite a few water co's are now using chloramination and worst of all now my own supplier but I have yet to see any evidence in my supply. It looks as if this could become...

Pee Bee, the fact that you can freely buy oxi cleaners should tell you something. It is not that scary by any means. If it was you certainly would not be able to buy it at Tescos et al. It is a convenient way of handling hydrogen peroxide, generating it in situ rather than having a liquid, that in h...

Dave, Thanks for clairifying whay you used a campden tablet. Like Eric, I do not bother with sulphites but I can fully understand why Americans are a little paranoid as their municipal water reeks of chlorine, possibly chloramines as tmany utilities in the US use chloramines instead of chlorine. You...

I do not wish to get into a slanging match but here is pertinent information of the relative safety of Chemsan and a caustic food cleanser such as Amphoclen S, which is used in dairies, breweries and cellars. This is a product that I use. I would stress, as Mr McM does, that nothing betters good man...

Here we go again. It is perhaps worth discussing sterilastion, disinfection/ sanitisation and the so called no-rinse cleaners. At our level we cannot achieve sterilisation but we can disinfect, the best products, in my humble opinion being oxidising materials such as chlorine and chlorine release ag...

I am a little intrigued by this post. Firstly I would agree with Eric, very sound advice. But, what are you brewing? All grain, brew in a bag(BIB), kit? I am not quite sure. Why do you think that you need a campden tablet (sodium metabisulphite - which is an oxygen scavenger). If you are all grain o...

I think that you will find some useful charts on carbonation at the top of the post for dispensing from Jim which gives some details on the concentration of carbon dioxide in g/L. You will not only need to replace the volume of liquid drawn off with carbon dioxide but also provide a driving force to...

Eric, I would agree that the other anions (chloride and sulpahte) will influence the tolerable alkalinity of the water. I was surprised by the concentration of nitrate and sulphate in the analysis of Matt's water. Nitrate is not that common and is often indicative of agricultural run -off. It tends ...

Matt, I follow Eric's observation in that you calcium is high, or even super high. Are you reporting as Ca mg/L or CaCO3 mg/L. The hardest water I ever came across was in Swindon where it came in at 120 mg/L as Ca. I sold a water softener to the sports centre and they had avalanche of foam coming ou...