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My Son In Law started working in a brewery (lucky lad), and he brought me home a couple of kegs of beer (lucky father in law). Anyhow, it transpires that these kegs are from the Philps 'Perfect Draft' System, which I don't own. And to be honest at £250, I've no intention of owning. He brought...

I can't work this out, so maybe someone has a simple formula. 5kg of grain + 15litres of strike water = how many litres (approx)

I've a horrbile mark appear on my kitchen worktop, looks like a chemical spill. The only thing I could attribute this to would be Starsan from 10 days ago. Is Starsan corrosive, and if so, is it so much more than bleach etc. Bleach would never do, whatever this is.

I've not considered Brew in a Bag, but would like to give it a go. How does this compare to using a mash tun. I assume, I drop my bag of malt in to my boiler, allow it to mash, lift it out and boil whats left ? If thats's the case how do you sparge.

In almost 40 years of home brewing in one form or another, i'v e never cold crashed. I currently work on the basis that if I keg, the keg will be transferred to the garage (or garage fridge in the summer), and if I bottle, I can watch the sediment creep up the neck when pouring and stop before...

In the early 80's when we were making wine, me and a mate decided to have a go at dandelion wine. The recipe called for pulling the yellow petals out of the flowers. Considering how many dandelion heads we'd have to deflower just to make 1 gallon, we decided to take a short cut, and use whole...

I did an Old Peculiar clone at the weekend, came to pull out my hops from the freezer and found that I was out of Challenger. A quick google search revealed that Pearle was a close alternative, which I had a bag of. Considering it was for the bittering, I figured it probably wouldn't make much...

I had a brew day on Saturday, pitched the yeast about 2pm. Had a listen for signs of fermentation on Sunday afternoon and could see the airlock had moved, but no physical bubbles as of yet. Came home from work on monday evening and found the airlock bone dry. Blown the lot out.

I half built a wort chiller a year ago with microbore copper pipe. It's been sat in my garage ever since, incomplete. Today I've had a brew day and thought, I ought to finish the wort cooler and give it a try. I can't believe the speed the wort is cooling., Normally my fermenter will be in a...

This week I've had a bunch of hops given, I've pulled the heads and am leaving to dry for a few days. I'm hoping to utilise some in a brew this weekend, and will probably freeze the rest. However, I've absolutely no idea what hop variety this is. The chap who gave them wouldn't know either...

I work colleague has a hop plant on his allotment, and is bringing me a bag of hops in to work. What's the best way to store these. Dry or freeze ?

I bought a pack of humulus lupus seeds a while back and now have about half a dozen young plants. Has anyone grown these from seed. I'm wondering if it's possible to identify the female from young plants. I'd hate to wait 3 years for them all to be male. At this stage, most of them look like...

I'm doing an IPA tomorrow, and for a change decided that I'm going to use gypsum. Any thougts as to how much and when ?

Does anyone use the tecnique 'Burtonising' by adding Calcium Suplhate ?

I've completed about 8 or 10 AG brews, and only one of which I wasn't fond of. It had a home brew twang to it. It was a Boddingtons Bitter clone. Then in November, i made another bitter and guess what, this one also has a home brew twang to it. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but...

Last week, we jumped on a plane and zoomed down to Lanzarote for a long weekend and a bit of winter sun, prior to leaving the house, I turned the heating down, totally forgetting that I had a pale ale brewing in the back bedroom. 4 days later, when we returned it dawned on me... Fortuntely, it...

As a brew day takes about 6 hours, and makes Saturday a write off, I recently employed a different tactic. My last two brews, I've done my mash on Friday evening while the wife is getting her TV soap fill. Transferring the wort to the boiler and setting the temperature to 90 degrees, and then...

This week, I added a hop tea to a brew at kegging time, which was lacking in hoppiness. Which now has me thinking, is there any advantage or detriment to doing this with all brews at kegging time rather than post boil ? Do the hops lose any flavour when subjected to the two week long initial...

Having done a number of dark ales recently, and a chocolate porter only this week, of of my FV's is looking rather sorry for it's self. Pretty much stained brown internally. I don't want to use bleach to clean it, is there anything available or do I just accept it.

I've recently tried to brew a chocolate orange porter, only there's no reference to any orange in the final result. It finished brewing around Thuesday last week, and it's still sat in the FV ready for racking off in to a keg, but before I do this I want to try and pep up the orange flavour by...