Jim's Beer Kit

Wouldn’t call it an over indulgent purchase.

Like the OP, volume calculations drive me cracked. If you can’t rely on volume calcs, your efficiency figures will be off, and from there you will struggle to hit numbers with goalposts moving all the time.

It’s a cheap price to keep the sanity

@mikemelga look out for old chest freezers on the various reseller sites. Really good at getting kegs temps down and keeping them there.

I have my current kegerator setup at 10-14 PSI for dispense ( a Lager)

Even if your personal consumption is quite modest, consider that many brews can be left down for years in bottled form. I found that by brewing large, and carefully with one fermenter, this was how I got variety into the house. It was always nice to have some of the last batch left over to sample si...

I suppose I either take a hit in buying small quantities at a high cost or try and find a few like-minded souls who'd be happy to share the cost of buying in larger quantities at hopefully, a proportionally lower outlay. There are a few home brewers who contract out their hops, and sell on what the...

Are you looking to grow a hop that has the citra character in the UK? I think you will struggle. Both the hop variety and the growing conditions combine to make the hop experience, and we don't have the weather to grow hops locally that really push out that C-hop experience. There are some UK based ...

Star San doesn't kill wild yeast. Unless you are using something more aggressive, such as bleach, iodine based sanitiser or steam pasteurising your kegs and lines, any wild yeast can survive in the kit and make its way to your kegs. It may not be noticeable post ferment but it can progressively deve...

It goes a very very long way too. At 0.5ml in a 55L batch, it took a lager stuck at 1.022 (OG 1.049) down to 1.009

https://www.nationalhomebrewclub.ie/for ... day-lager/ pitch to serve in 6 days

I would look at Mr Lards pot conversions. https://www.brewbuilder.co.uk/flat-bottom-fv-p220.html - gasketed lid with 1x tri clamp ferrule - lets you get hop ports, corny posts etc on them, and pressure transfers - TC ferrule for racking arm, and get a racking arm that can be twisted from the outside...

Kingfisher: blow off tubes are better for controlling suck back as the beer chills and contracts.

I have a pressure transfer setup on my FV, so I can easily attach a low pressure co2 source to my fv to stop suck back, or otherwise top up the headspace

Looking forward to all the pics of people’s keg cleaning setups. I recently built an unusual whirlpool arm to go through a 3/4” threaded hole on my kettle. Took 2 months for all the parts to arrive separate from the bay of evil. The water butt pump/ keg washer OTOH was just plugging together some co...

Robwalkeragain wrote:I’d strip it down, ain’t many moving parts, soak in PBW or thin bleach solution then rinse the next morning. Inspect seals (keep a pack of spares on hand anyway). Good as new.

Where do you get spares?

i did think of knocking something up with a sprayball and pump but that still wouldnt clean out the dip tubed etc. I plan to hook up the water butt pump to the coupler to get the dip tube properly clean on the inside. Actually quite happy with the pump and how versatile it is considering the price ...

Look into keg cleaner builds. water butt pumps, spray ball, old fermentation bucket.

you will probably be using multiple chemicals, but you will want to be able to clean the kegs again, not just after first use

Once the pipe (of any sort) kinks, then the kinked area becomes compromised from a strength point of view - so it becomes a site for blowouts. Not all silicone hose is the same, and I would say that once you get down to small bore tubing, it gets hard to find silicone tubing with appropriately thick...