Jim's Beer Kit

Heh, I have lots of reasons to want to brew again so soon. :lol: Testing my tweaks to the boiler, getting more in before Severn Trent drop the hose pipe ban hammer, trying to get through the hop stocks in the freezer, getting through all the brews that need warm fermentation whilst the weather is so...

Why shouldn't we? Just because we are brewing at home doesn't mean we can't seek to craft the best beer we can. Plus less trub into the FV means less waste when it comes time to package, and an easier time of it.

Why be in a race for the bottom just because of the home brewer tag?

I don't agree at all. If you get your filtration right, whole hops give you much clearer wort in transfer. They form a good filter bed that really help to filter out the trub, keeping more of it in the kettle. Also, whole hops give a slightly different flavour, slightly more herbal than pellets. Som...

I'll be honest, every time I start out intending to brew one, I end up tweaking them. This time for example I was just going to switch out the Amarillo for Mosaic... Then I massively increased the quantities used at flameout, ooh and added a dry hop... Then just a little tweak to the grist to a) use...

Brewed a Mosaic single hop IPA myself recently (meh to all this using Magnum to bitter business) with 150g of Mosaic in there (50g of that been the dry hop, 53.4g at flame out) and it's absolutely delicious. Me, I say don't be scared to go single hop. There's a reason the Greg Hughes book has a whol...

Right, as mentioned in my brew day thread I needed to make some alterations after doing my first brew with this build. The pump rather obviously got clogged when I tried to whirlpool (although this turned out to mainly be thanks to a massive lump of kitchen roll that had found it's way in there some...

You think that's low? I had a Saison go down to 0.998 once with Belle Saison yeast. Lol. 1.000 is the prediction from Beersmith 3 believe it or not, BE-134 is rated for 90% attenuation by the manufacturer. Talking of mishaps, I took my pump apart last night to unblock it. There was a big lump of kit...

Tweaks to the boiler now made, I'll add more detail at some point in my boiler build thread, here's a quick pic of the inside for now though.

This is where things really got messy to be honest. Boiler managed a decent rolling boil, so that was a plus. Somewhere between the overly vigorous one I used to get using both elements on my old boiler, and the wussy one I used to get with just the 1600 watt element. I guess this is a product of th...

Recirculation worked well, with such a small grain bill I was able to run the pump pretty much at full whack. RecirculatingMash.jpg Estimate for post mash SG (SG into the boil) was for 1.027. Missed this slightly, only hitting 1.024, but could be my refractometer reading been naff (it's a naff refra...

First time brewing with my DIY built system. Also my first time with water treatment, and my first time using ONLY Beersmith 3 (usually used BIABacus to build the recipe and work out volumes). It didn't going smoothly, that's for sure.... lol POTUS 45 Grisette Thing (AKA Trump Grisette....)... Water...

The new false bottom arrived. Switched out the "legs" though as they didn't even give me 4cm of clearance beneath the false bottom. No problem though, 5 x 70mm M8 316 hex head stainless bolts and job done (bit of an upgrade even, as ones supplied were only 304). Now sits nicely just on top of the ta...

I used it without the desktop version for a while. However I'd build my recipe in BIABacus first, then manually transfer it to BS2 on my phone and tweak it a bit. This worked really well for quite some time, allowing me to iron out niggles with both BIABacus and BS2. These days I have BS2 and BS3 de...

Yeah sure: eBay Link

It's not hose bud, I used a pressure cooker gasket ordered from China via eBay. I couldn't find a hose that would do the job properly.