Brewday - 10/11/06 - Bluebird

[Garth]

Found this in the recipe section, so liking the beer a lot I decided to have a go at it. Got a day off work so decided late to do a brew, already had a starter for saturday but may as well use it today,

any idea how much mash liquor I should use? the grain bill comes to 3.7 kg
Cheers
Garth

[Garth]

cheers Daab, just in time!!

looks like this could be a late one..

oh, and I bought some ph strips, to test the mash acidity, but I can't seem to get a reading, or is it because its lower than ph5 and I need the lower reading strips?

[bandit]

I have the strips that go from 3.8 to 5.5 and I cant get the reading to go lower than 5.5 I think I am going to buy an electrical PH reader to match my electrical thermometer

[Garth]

hmm, yeah I looked at them but home brew shops seem to be around the £70 mark, a bit pricey, and you need the calibration fluid also, eBay is much cheaper at about £30

[Garth]

sorry told a lie, they're even cheaper, with a thermometer built in

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PH-TEMPERATURE-DI ... dZViewItem

[Andy]

The pH sensor in those things has a limited lifespan! 12 months tops I think.

Something to bear in mind

[Garth]

bleedin' eck, only lasts a year, forget that then. I'll stick with strips

are these strips supposed to colour in at a point where you can read of the ph, if so, where?

[bandit]

Are these any good. i have a similar looking one for testing my TDS in RO water

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PH-METER-Test-PH- ... dZViewItem

[Garth]

well, the bluebird is in the bucket,

much more enjoyable brew session than my first, I was more prepared, knew what to expect and made changes to some things, like collecting and transferring wort for example.

managed to put 20Litres in the bin at 1040 which is only 3 away from target, therefore didn't have to dilute at all.

checked the gravity after the wort came out of the cfc and this is what happened in the trial jar. is this the cold break but its happening here because I use a cfc rather than a immersion jobbie? obviously I didn't see this on my first all grain as it was a nice black stout.

[Andy]

I guess it must be the break material....

Re: pH meters, some have replaceable sensors/probes and some don't. After a period of time (12 months?) then the probe may degrade and produce erroneous readings. You can get calibration solutions to check the probe reading against the given pH of the solutions.

[Kev.]

is this the cold break but its happening here because I use a cfc rather than a immersion jobbie?

Yep that's cold break. What copper finings did you use?

I found when I changed to using protofloc the cold break produced was far more dramatic than with standard irish moss.

[eskimobob]

I guess it must be the break material....

Re: pH meters, some have replaceable sensors/probes and some don't. After a period of time (12 months?) then the probe may degrade and produce erroneous readings. You can get calibration solutions to check the probe reading against the given pH of the solutions.

Andy's spot on. If you do buy a pH probe then be sure to keep it wet; if you let the electro-chemical cell dry out, it will bugger it up for good. Good meters will allow you to calibrate by entering corrections factors that you determine by using the pH buffer solutions. They will also come with temperature compensation built in as otherwise they will not be much use at elevated temperatures...

[Andy]

Andy's spot on.....

That's handy 'cos I guessed most of that

[Scooby]

Are these any good. i have a similar looking one for testing my TDS in RO water

I know it's going to be really obvious but what is RO water
and why would you want to test a Telephone Data System in it

[Andy]

http://www.google.com/search?lr=&ie=UTF ... RO%20water