Jim's Beer Kit

The spreadsheet for calculating "historical malt" emulations has had a small sprucing up (same link to download it - Google like to display spreadsheets in their own online program if setup that way, but there is the option to download the file to open locally). The spreadsheet has only been loaded ...

I've restarted this thread >here< which is a more convenient place to post too.

I've started this thread so people can vent their spleens here instead of the less appropriate original location: https://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=83268&sid=8d0b03c5a7c5c7803d2c519ba597d36f#p857503 I have one of the 2nd generation tilt hydrometers. In the plastic fermenter (f...

My takeaway from that was "tech for tech's sake that isn't accurate". Surely after a few brews you know where it is by looking. My fermenters are stainless steel and sealed. No, I can't tell by "looking". But: Save some (a lot of) money and don't get one! If you don't know why you'd need one, you d...

Don't know if Paul at ANGELHOMEBREW sells them yet? My impatience got the better of me and I ordered direct from the States. 8) I'm finding it does tend to drift a bit, hardly surprising as it's trying to measure tenths of a gravity point! (And tenths of degrees Celsius rather than halves). It's chu...

Isn't all technology for technologies sake? Us human's just like building things that are better than current offerings. TVs; do we need them? Cars; do we need them? Hydrometers; weren't they originally just technology for technologies sake? Tilts have their issues, attaching to rafts of yeast which...

Light relief! Going back to that "Small Amber Beer" I've been making, here's the progress according to the TiltPi that's looking over it: SmallAmberBeer.JPG Very sedate, but I am holding the temperature down. I like my Tilt, so: Tomorrow a new all-singing all-dancing "Tilt Pro " turns up. If you thi...

Back to history! I was getting despondent about malt in 17th Century (Stuart era). Brown malt didn't seem to exist? What did they use? Well they did have "brown malt", but they didn't call it that. It was just malt. And very variable, each town or hamlet having at least one person who could make it....

... Meanwhile, something to listen to , should you wish. I'll get me trunks on and see what I can find in the puddle at Bala :whistle: I've been having a breather from posting 'cos I was running out of beer! Some quickie non-historic (craft-beer even?) and, because it's time I put all this waffle i...

... William Harrison wrote in 1577 " The best malt is tried by the hardness and colour; for, if it look fresh with a yellow hue, and thereto will write like a piece of chalk, after you have bitten a kernel in sunder in the midst, then you may assure yourself that it is dried down. In some places it...

Hang on, hang on! I've just noticed Ron may be contradicting his own work here? ... And I might be forgetting what Eric's been trying to teach me! ... I'm viewing things from just Ron's point of view, who is very much focused on 19/20th Century and brewery records from the larger breweries (smaller...

Yes NB, it probably was from that source. Not in any way to dispute Ron P's findings, or those by any other, I do feel there would be as much diversity of opinion on brewing in the 19th century as there is today, including how long a beer should last before it could be called "keeping". I think tha...

I've just been on a thread putting down the idea you can easily calculate weight for SG, so I reckon it's expected of me to chip in here? At this stage we should be talking Final Gravity, not Original Gravity. Say about SG 1.010? SG has no units (its a ratio) and isn't the same as Kilograms per litr...

... By the early 1600s Derby ale seems to have become quite famous (see eg Martin Cornell ) - although it needed canals etc to improve the transport routes for Derby/Burton pale beer to really take off. ... It's great where some of these posts take you. I read that bit and thought "but Derby had it...

Eric, as a bit of an interlude: ... Published in 1870 in "The English Mechanic and World of Science", a weekly periodical. IPA.jpg A problem with the above piece ... Which comes out: Capture.JPG ... is a bug in the forum software! It's been fixed apparently, but the our forum's software hasn't been ...