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I use a 7.5kW propane burner as I am cast out onto the patio by my better half who cannot stand the smell. Also the consequences of a major wort spill in my wife's pride & joy kitchen would not be survivable with all parts still attached! I had in mind that I use about 1kg of gas for a typical...

Having set up a couple of fridges like this I thought perhaps it might help to summarise: Both fridges & freesers are essentially the same but freezers are designed to sustain lower temperatures in operation. However all that is needed in this application is something that will reduce...

Unfortunately, it seems to me anyway, that the real problem is the limited size of the UK market. If you take for example the DIY brewing market in the US or equally guitar making and other crafts, the US market is so large that it can support businesses offering a fabulous range of products at...

This is a PS to my previous post. It occurs to me that it would be feasible to replace the copper pipe heat exchanger in the fridge with a reservoir of water chilled by the fridge. The problem with this method would be that the fridge would have to run continuously to ensure that a reservoir of...

ok I can understand wanting to try building something up, I too get a lot of enjoyment from building things & experimenting. Regarding the chiller please accept these are only ideas I've not tried doing this, but hopefully here is a better explanation of what I'm thinking & what I'd try if I...

I'd have to caveat this by saying it's only a gut feeling, but I would think that using plastic pipe throughout would be inefficient and your fridge would have to be kept very cold to make it work. Ideally the heat exchangers should be highly conductive e.g. copper pipe as it's readily available...

I can't see any harm in using both. Essentially if ambient temp is low you are losing more heat to ambient due to the larger than usual difference in temperature. So more heat energy in is required. Both heaters are low power so local overheating of the beer seems very unlikely.

Surely the immediate answer is to simply insulate the fermenter. Just wrap it in bubble wrap, cardboard or even newspaper and see what effect it has. When the ambient temperature is lower than your target temperature the fridge should never come on, so it's acting simply as an insulator. Your...

Having gas is one thing, far worse is the frequent next stage of the disease which is suffering from foam. If this dreaded symptom does arise then I'd strongly recommend checking that your regulator is really doing it's job at low pressures. I went through all the line balancing calcs & set up...

Romsey, Hampshire. Thanks

I had a problem with my first fermenter which was plastic. I found that it had some deep scratches on the inside I assume from the way the beer kit was packed with items inside the fermenter. I replaced it with a stainless steel fermenter & touch wood have had no TCP flavours since. Plastic is...

I used a Nespresso for several years as a quick way to have a half decent coffee before my dash to work. Long enough infact for one to break down & have to be replaced. The range of coffees is appealing but I found that I preferred to stick to one variety once I found my favourite.

Interesting thread, and 'The Treatice' definitely worth a read, thanks. I bought a dual cylinder hand pump a while ago & sometimes set it up for parties. As it's temporary I use a non return valve & a bit of positive pressure on the Corny. For general use I've built a 3 Corny 'kegerator' from...

Seems to me that is the required proof.

If anyone of a technical bent should want to take this further then the following notes from my antenna expert contact may be of help. He writes: I assume that the SG reporting device floats on top of the liquid so that its antenna is high and dry. Its antenna will be radiating into a closed...

no problem and I quite agree athumb.. Nevertheless it's an interesting problem for a nurdy engineer to get to grips with and a solution might be useful for other SS fermenter fans on the forum. (I think my beer improved dramatically when I got rid of my nasty scratched old plastic fermenter) I...

A thought wich occurred to me would be to find a local amateur radio group. They are usually a mix of professional and amateur radio engineers but a love of beer seems to be universal. They most likely would have the antenna knowledge & the equipment to do the necessary tests and bribed with a...

OK, sounds to me like someone who perhaps didn't know what they were doing hit on a method that worked, which is not at all unusual. The inner conductor of the coax would not do anything but the outer conductor would act as a probe antenna on the inside of the fermenter and the length outside...

You'd need a dipole resonant at 2.4GHz on the inside, coax feed via a grommet to a second dipole on the outside. This could certainly improve matters but the attenuation would still be high and the link may still not be reliable. Has anyone published design information and shown test results?

Speaking as a retired electronics engineer with a fair amount of experience of RF, the expectation would be that a stainless steel vessel would act as an RF shield allowing RF signals neither to enter or leave (q.v. Faraday Shield). If the lid were to make good electrical contact with the body...