Jim's Beer Kit

Be careful here. Make sure that the flange has an o ring groove otherwise you are likely to find that the ring will squash out. A Groove will trap the o ring in position. The other option, one I have done many times, is to use a Dowty seal, preferably a stainless one. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DOWT...

Guy, I do not think 16ppm vs target of 20 ppm is going to make much difference. Test kits are never super accurate so your 16 might even be 14 or 18. When you are getting to the extreme end of the range it is always a little tricky. When you get to 20 ppm alkalinity there is not much alkalinity buff...

Starsan is phosphoric acid and DDBSA. It will not have much effect on the septic tank system. If anything the phosphorous will act as a nutrient and the DDBSA will biodegrade without any adverse. I would switch the VPW to PBW, since the latter contains sodium percarbonate which will very quickly deg...

I am pretty sure that as per the other posters your scum on the surface is limescale a.k.a. calcium carbonate.Your water is hard but far from ultra hard. When you boil the water the bi-carbonate (soluble) will decompose and precipitate as calcium carbonate. I suspect that the vigorous boil is not al...

You were lucky with your cappings; they are much wetter than what my wife produces. She drains the cappings to avoid too much give-away. I have so far about 24 buckets of cappings to deal with from about 900 kg of honey produced this year. At 1.1080 I would reckon your mead will be fairly dry and yo...

I would not be too hard on Murphy not being able to determine sodium content. Sodium and Potassium are not particularly easy to determine, and require the use of a flame ionisation spectrophotometer i.e. high cost. Nitrate and sulphate are also not that simple. I would consider a fee of £26 for the ...

It's a bit of a drag but you will find apples for free in your local area if you look hard enough. Often the owner is glad to get rid of them. Ideally you need a mix of cookers and eaters. All eaters will result ins a cider without much bite. The cookers have more tartness due to malic acid and this...

The wax will not affect the fermentation but it will be a pain in the ass at racking time. I use a filter bag to wash off the honey from the cappings. These are available cheaply on eBay. A 100 micron bag works well. I add the cappings to the bag and then pass warm water through the cappings into a ...

What honey did you use? Chestnut honey can be pretty awful with off tastes. Most of my mead comes out on the dry side, but still very palatable. Newcomers to mead expect it to be sweet, but the yeast will ferment to about 16% alcohol so to achieve a sweet mead you really have to load up the sugar co...

Jeyes Fluid is based on p-chlorocresol and rar acids whilst Dettol is mainly chloroxylenol. This probably does not mean too much to most people. What these two products have in common is some chlorine and and a ring structure in the molecule, making them quite stable not not readily biodegraded . Th...

If you go the stock pot route and add the insulation then a good option is a reflective foil type which you can wrap around the pot. I did this for a wax melter and it works fine. Basically is looks like bubble wrap with foil on both sides.

Angel home brew is where I bought mine. He will customise the pot to suit your requirements, such as temperature probes and bottom draining. I use a shower rose from Toolstation ( 300 mm) for sparging held in a lab stand.

Chlorine bleach is not as bad as you might think. It is an oxidising streriliser so it will be consumed by organic matter which it will oxidise. The oxidised chlorine products can be more persistent (especially with ammonia), but unless you are using huge amounts of bleach then it should not be an i...

If I were doing this job I would put a stainless tank/bulk head connector on with a stainless ball valve and tail. You might even be able to get away with a 3/8 valve and reducer. Look on eBay. This is where you can find just about any stainless fitting going.

I suspect that the method that you are using to clean is probably removing the the protective oxide layer. I am not huge fan of Starsan mainly because all it is is a mixture of phosphoric acid and DDBSA. It is not the best biocide and is more a biostat. The phopshoric acid WILL not passivate the sta...