Search results

I buy beers from the Badger brewery form Aldi. Decent beer, free bottle and all the same shape (some clear, some brown), so ideal for the bench capper. Best of all worlds.

Might be alright for a Saison. I wouldn't want to run any kind of heating without some sort of thermostatic control.

As above, buy them full, drink and refill. I did buy a job lot of 100 I think, when I first started, which I split with a friend to keep the cost down. You will tend to find unsurprisingly the more you buy the cheaper they are. The best think is to do some Googling.

That's about it. You can build the STC-1000 into a plastic box with plugs built in, or you can wire the belt directly into the heating side. I used a small ice cream tub for mine with 2 single sockets in the lid (I use cooling and heating, so 1 sockets for each).

Do they still exist?

I've also got a million year old Boots twin handle capper and it works great. A little rusty, but perfectly functional. That is until I had a bench capper bought for me for Christmas, the Boots torture machine will now go back into the museum.

It will be ok for brewing and conditioning, just won’t be able to cold crash with it. If you don’t cold crash, don’t tip it.

They don’t have to lick the labels off the bottles!

https://www.beerlabelizer.com/ offer free templates or you can upgrade for a wider selection. And yes, milk works fine.

first.....

Ditto with leaving the lid cracked open, which then means the airlock is useless anyway. I don't bother with them anymore, preferring to go by FG readings to know when a brew is ready.

A lot of my equipment is Boots brand, dusted off when I restarted brewing a couple of years ago. Barrel, hydrometer, thermometer, capper and bottles. I've even got some bottle labels (although I might have binned them recently).

Depends how much you are going to be brewing. I have one fridge in the garage which doubles as brew and conditioning. It just means I can't do a brew for a couple of weeks while the initial conditioning is happening, but that suits me.

Agree with the above on the premium kits. Have made a few of the Young's and they are a very nice beer, plenty of hoppy flavour and some are over 6% without any tweaking.

Put the lid on but don't clip it tight all the way round. The pressure will find its way out without you having to leave a huge gap. I gave up on airlocks as unless the FV is airtight it won't work. Fine for demijohns, but not a bucket. If you haven't got a tap then a ladle or turkey...

In the garage, either in a cardboard box, or some of the slightly bigger stuff in an empty FV.

later .....

Why don't you batch prime the whole lot, then put half into the barrel and the rest in bottles? Assuming you are going to add the same amount of primer for both.

Only time I've had problems with bottles breaking was way back when I used to use a hammer on crown capper (they were such a bad idea) when I was skint and couple afford a level capper. Never had one break from internal pressure.

I started using muslin bags to contain the hops after my first brew with them.