Jim's Beer Kit

That's a lot of kit! Nice! Any reason why you went with a proper keg rather than a corny?

Get yourself some ptfe tape and re- screw in the gauge. Chances are the leak is from the screw fitting of the gauge.

I can do you 2 disconnects for £11.80 delivered. PM if you're interested. Sold quite a few to members here. Cheers, jonny.

Thanks Jonny and the madhippy - an overhead wire might be the solution - I'd never thought of that!
(Sorry rob, not trying to hijack the thread..)
Rob - you said you got the control unit made for you - looks amazing - is it from the Electric brewery in the states or something similar?

Rob - this is awesome! Love the brewery and the bar. I've got a duster house log cabin too - mine's 3x4m though so a little smaller. At present its 75% 'shed stuff'. I plan on getting another (smaller) shed for those bits and fitting out the log cabin to be a proper brewery. You've inspired me to pa...

+1 for thermapen. It's great. Best thing for brewing I ever bought.

Why not wait to see if they carb at all - if not - whip the lids off, teaspoon of sugar - recap and they should prime ok. Do you know which ones are which??! I've had bottle bombs twice - SCAREY!! And bloody dangerous!!

Looks great - I've got a bigger shed but store a whole load of other crap in there too.... I do brew in the door way though and refer to it as the brew-shed... One idea for you. I keep beer in a cupboard in the kitchen. To check it never gets too hot for the beer I keep a beer bottle (flip top) fill...

The one I have looks exactly like the first german one on that link except mine doesn't have the flame out thing. It works well. Not sure it's 9.5kw though unless there's a modification to it. Think mine was sold at 8kw. I made a heat shroud out of aluminium I got from a metal suppliers -shields the...

Do you need to do starters with dry yeast? I never do - only with liquid.
What sort of dry yeast was it? What OG was your mead?
It'll take about 12-24 for a proper starter to be fully active but it sounds like you've rehydrated and bunged in some sugar which as I said afaik you don't need to do.

I read somewhere that caster sugar is very similar / same as candy sugar - I even heard that they don't even use candi sugar in Belgian breweries. I'd use caster sugar

Are the bags airtight and is it crushed or uncrushed? Airtight and uncrushed I think you'd be fine. I'd prob bin it if it's crushed if it was me - as my time is worth more than wasting 6 hours brewing a shitty beer. Might well be fine - just a risk.

Late to the party on this -..... but I reuse dry yeast all the time. Often just pitch directly onto the yeast cake. Works fine. Never had any wierd flavours (to my palate anyway...)

I think it says 2400W on the controller - just a gap between the 2 and 400?

I've bought yeast bay saison blend yeast from malt Miller for a couple of quid as its out of date (end jan). I'm considering making a starter from it and then keeping the yeast to brew in a few months. Is this a good idea, or am I just making more work for myself? One reason I'm asking is that I'm a...