Jim's Beer Kit

Cheers for all the tips, learnt a lot with this one, brew #6. Still drinkable so not a complete disaster, and the missus likes the sweetness. As an experiment tonight, i boiled up a a hop tea with some bobek and added a couple of teaspoons to the beer, Certainly sorted out the bitterness, but not th...

Cheers for all the advice fellas Ye, few points learned on this one... I think the special taste is from the brown malt. After a third of a glass, it starts to grow on you. I think the main failing here is the low ibus's. schoolboy error really ... :oops: Missing choclate doesnt help either. All is ...

so chaps, I brewed this porter about six weeks ago and bottled about a month ago. masshed at 67C for 90mins then sparged (poured water over teh BIAB) at 75C. efficiency was pretty terrible at 55%, but i didnt dilute as much to get the right gravities (OG 1.050, FG 1.013)/abv (4.9%). so drinking my s...

Went for saaz n the end, for the full 60mins with no late additions. Take the point that for bittering, not much difference which to use. As for bending the rules, did a fair bit of that with this brew. Was very last minute so didnt have the right ingredients. 4.5kg MO, 1k brown, 800g caramalt, 400g...

So chaps, water is heating up for a porter. Going to use brown, caramalt, malted oats, wheat, mo malt I thought i had some fuggles in the freezer, but seems i used them up! #-o So choice is between, Saaz Bobek and cascade.... Im thinking mainly saaz right? Others are too citrusy for a porter? Any co...

Any thoughts on the vertical immersion element, max temp and break material in FV guys? Would like to get started with the build this weekend. Cheers

Yeah, thats the idea, 'mash big' and dilute with sparge and extra water. I use a 18l stockpot at the moment and do the same, seems to work ok...

So i gave up on this idea for a while and instead tried to use my glass acid carbuoy into a conical by turning it upside down. Unfortunately it cracked before i got to use it (luckily withhout taking my arm off!). So back to the brew bucket, im now a proud owner and want to turn it into the one vess...

No-one come across this? Any tips for the clone?
Hoping to do a brewday next weekend so any thoughts would be apperciated.

Shameless 'bump'!

So final result on this one was medium. Fairly sweet and weak, not undrinkable, but not to my taste. Is very popular with the missus who thinks its great, also some friends enjoyed it on a hot summers day. Overall its more like a beer 'drink'... Good lesson, and it got the gf onside, so positive ove...

I had a great ipa last friday at a local pub watching columbia vs brasil (what a drama that was!). Was a really great pint, everything about it was spot on, to my tastes at least. Looking it up, its from a brewery called Purity in warwickshire, i found the notes below on ratebeer site. Anyone come a...

So i bottled this brew yesterday. I reduced the brew length to 18l, so OG was 1.040 with a FG of 1.020 (thAt was after i added 60g of priming sugar, so may be a touch below that). Guess the higher FG is due to the longer chain unfermentable sugars i got from the higher mash temp. May be a little wea...

Thanks for the feedback Fil. Ye- the only bit i was concerned about was having the heating element in the fv and you confirmed that. Suppose it would either reduce the life of the element if i cant get the stone off it.. Will have a look at the buffalo too, what i like about this one was the conical...

My current fv is 23l, so 26l would be an improvement, wouldn't need to up size any more than that. Is my suggestion utter bonkers??

So I'm thinking of upgrading from my current set up which consists of an 18l stock pot which i use for both mashing (biab with blankets / sleeping bag insulation) and for boiling. Then siphon into a glass carboy FV. Was looking at the ss brew tech conical bottom steel brew bucket and thought about u...