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I mostly brew 15L batches in a 33L fermenter, doesn't seem to be an issue.

I was mostly using farmhouse strains of Voss and Saure, mostly the Voss, both produced good beer, but my Voss have a very earthy flavour, good in a dark beer but it was getting tiresome. The Saure made a kinda funky Scottish 80/- but I suspected it was due to the high propertion of crystal...

When I did a look back over 2019 I realised that most of my beers had been kinda meh, 1 got dumped, 1 had very stressed yeast and only 1 brew was actually "brew again" good. So I changed things up in 2020, went for more traditional styles and used less kveik and it's been a much better year...

Yeah, I'm getting the same figures as you, should finish closer to 1.015, and if the sugar fully ferments as it should then could go down to 1.013 fg. I'm a bit more cautious now as my most recent bottled beer seems to have attenuated an extra 0.002 after bottling and along with the priming...

Everything gets stored in the Grainfather online system as that's what I use to build my recipes. But I also keep a handwritten log in a hardback A4 notebook and there's also the "rough" brewday notes in my general purpose notebook, that one also gets the nitty gritty of gravity checks for FG.

You're at 71% apparent attenuation so you could be done. What was the grain bill, mash temp and yeast used? Then we can advice more accurately. Thanks

At that abv I'd be going with a botting yeast as most beer yeasts are going to struggle. I've been thinking this process over too as I'm going to be bottling a couple of long aged sours. I would add the yeast slurry to the beer once the transfer is going, adding it directly to the priming...

Had a quick "look inside" on amazon, seems to cover the basics although his explanation of mashing and sparging reads very confusingly as I'm sure he says to sparge with wort not water. Recipes look ok but he doesn't tell you the alpha acids of the hops nor the target IBUs of the recipe so...

What book have you gone for? Maris Otter, crystal and chocolate will let you brew a fair few different things just by altering the ratios.

Yeah, handfuls are good for a laugh. :-) Was that a 100g pack split in half-ish or a truly random handful each time? Good thing is that beer is fairly forgiving, as long as you keep things clean and ferment at a sensible temperature you'll get beer at the end and it'll be good, even if it's not...

Right so an extract kit? When you first mix up the wort it's best to stir it up and splash it about a bit to get oxygen into it for the yeast to grow healthily. Once the beer is fermenting getting air (oxygen) into it is bad as it'll mess up the flavour, essentially making it go stale. In a...

You work out the grains you need based on how much beer you want and at what strength, mash water is worked out from the grains you have, I think 3L/kg is common but I use a Grainfather which has it's own requirements. This is where brewing software is handy/vital, Brewer's Friend is a good site...

I did that with a california common, drank it anyway as an acid based sanitiser (generica starsan varient) is perfectly safe once diluted. Only issue was the hops weren't really evident and that may be a side-effect of sanitiser contamination, like when folks don't drain a keg fully. For...

You can, but it may not be a good idea since the first batch is probably almost done by now and you'd have to watch out not to oxidise the beer when mixing them. I'm assuming you have two of the same kit, what kit is it?

What honey have you got? 400g in a 23L batch isn't that much from a flavour point so you may not notice it. Unless it's something like heather honey then you should get some good aroma. Adding the boiling water should help to sanitise the honey (if it needs it) but I'd not keep it hot for long...

Well that's interesting, I put your grain bill into a recipe calculator for 24L and it came out as OG 1.032, FG 1.008. I've not entered a yeast so it's just assuming 75% attenuation but at 1.032 a few percent either way won't actually change things. 15L mash was probably a bit thin but won't...

I use the grainfather recipe builder, I tell it my batch size (vol in FV), kettle losses and mash efficiency and it takes it from there. It's working out the OG and IBU based on my batch size + losses. What kind of kettle are you using that has a 3L dead volume? Grainfather quotes 2L but I...

Only once I think it's about done so 2 or 3 to confirm FG. I figured you had a tap for all those samples.

Juniper is main historical flavouring in gin, some modern gins push it to the background with other flavours but I'd assume they all still have some in then otherwise they wouldn't really be gin. When you say a little can, is this a premixed gin and tonic? Gin itself isn't normally bitter but...

Do you always check gravity multiple times while the beer's still fermenting?