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If I were brewing lagers, I'd probably use a chest freezer, to get the temp right down for effective lagering.

Yes, you can, but if this ones on its way out, I wouldn't bother with it. You can pick up fridges and chest freezers for next to nothing. Chest freezers are mainly used for keeping kegs at serving temps.

Snap, me too.

Too much of anything is bad. The consensus among the ‘experts’ is a glass or two a day is not harmful and might actually be beneficial. For that reason, I restrict my daily intake to 1 or 2 glasses. ‘Hiccup’!

Good question. Not sure. You can autoclave them half filled with wort (without the caps on and cover the opening with tin foil). Microwaveable too. You'd have to be careful with direct heat from a flame, though. They're made of borosilicate glass but have plastic pour rings and screw caps...

Good job, HD. So refreshing to see a stir plate box that's been built to accommodate a starter vessel :thumb: I get nervous when I see the typical 'pillbox' with a 2L + starter vessel teetering on top :cool:

Throw them away? Cigar boxes show more craftsmanship than most of my furniture! That's why you can't buy cigar boxes at ikea :lol:

A. Yes, the more you add the fizzier it gets. Be careful! B. No, it would speed things up a little. C. There is a CO2 saturation point in there, but priming calculations factor that in.

With cigars!?

It's used for hydrated yeast (e.g. liquid and slopes/slants). It helps oxygenate starter wort. Yeast demand oxygen for efficient growth. Some argue against this, but ignore them. They're being too selective (biased towards fermentation) to appreciate the yeast for what it is and where it's from...

I've been routinely repitching slurry 2-3 times from the primary. I'm seriously going off the idea of doing it without knowing what else is growing in there :-? Splitting yeast cultured from a fresh vial has my vote :thumb:

:lol: You won't be buying the book then? In the last chapter, we find the wallet :razz:

I reckon you'd get away with using one of those 1L bottles for a great starter. I really like the idea of growing up a fresh vial of yeast and splitting it for a number of brews. That strategy has so much going for it. With a little effort, it's possible to culture up one of these splits and...

When this happens, things slow almost to a stop. There's a good chance the yeast'll revive themselves with a little time. Give a week or so. Then take a reading. If there's no change transfer to another vessel. This sometimes starts things off again, but leave it as it is for now.

Ah, yes, wine... I haven't got into that yet. I've got all the required stuff (mainly Youngs, it seems) for some wurzels. eBay rules! Just waiting for an offer on fruit juice :whistle: Wine yeast strains are a lot more tolerant. I'm just hoping they're as tolerant towards me after a bottle or...

A standard starter volume for ale is about 1L. I'd say 2L Duran bottles are better, as there's room for a decent krausen so no mess and they have the convenience of a screw cap for when it's stored in the fridge. Flasks cost a lot more and are surprisingly fragile; unlike Durans, which are...

I call it 'Dorothy' It hypnotised my 6 year old son. I had to slap him round face to bring him out of it :-o

Here's my recent test run:

The way to go, HD. That looks very similar to my v1. What I found was that the strong magnets interfered with the fan starting to spin. I had to manually start it off. Seemed to get worse over time. But it done the job. Still working on v2, which has a stand off (short length of 32mm plastic...

Yes, if the strain being used runs out of food before it starts getting 'tipsy'. That's more to do with sick yeast and/or less than optimal wort conditions. Complete attenuation for the strain is what we should aim for. This helps to avoid the risk of a stuck fermentation/overly sweet beer...