Instructional and other interesting brewing related stuff

Can't think of a better title but I figured rather than having links spread throughout our posts I was thinking they could go in one thread for easy finding.

I regularly watch the CraigTube channel on YT. He tries to do a weekly Home Brew Wednesday video and he also has a lot of instructional videos. I'll post the links to his "how to use the Coppers DIY Beer kit.

There are others as well but the main thing is getting a chance to see other peoples brew setup. Some of them are damn impressive. I'll start with this video. It's mostly a chat to camera about the new year but there is a quick look at his brew setup and a brew he has underway. Haven't looked at his other videos to see if there is a real tour video there. Hopefully there is but here is a taste. He has some cool gizmos it looks like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQmPXjFhOw4

Please feel free to contribute any links that you think add to the knowledge of brewing. My brain is a sponge ready to soak up lots of beer brewing knowledge.

Review of the original Coopers DIY brew kit. This kit is the same as probably 90% of the brew kits out there today. This video gives you a good overview of what makes up a kit so when you see a kit you can recognize that it has all the parts you need to get going. It doesn't matter the brand so much and many have the same parts including the fermenter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt3IGCxu6tk

Coopers have changed their fermenter vessel and hydrometer device in their newer kit. I'll post a review link of that new kit soon. But other brand kits will basically look like the above.

So woodman says, get an old chest freezer and using an external control unit to manage internal temps you have a great way to condition your beer and also chill it to drinking temps. Bloody good idea.

I run my fridge at 5C which I think is just about perfect beer drinking temps. I still think beer is not fully chilled unless it has spent at least 24 hours on the chill. It gives that deep chill to the liquid IMO. So this setup allows you to keep kegs at the right temp without freezing. The temp controller over rides the freezers own temp control to keep the box above freezing point.

How to build a Keezer. A keezer is a freezer modified for beer kegs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHWy_Vlw3J4

These guys also have a great video on how to setup for a kegger (party). Some great ideas.

Weed Killer Party Kegs

Reading the Aussie Home Brew forum. Lot of good info. I'm keen on getting a couple of carney/soda kegs. 19L is large but plenty of used examples out there. 12L would be better for my needs. 9L would probably hit the sweet spot. A couple of those would be nice. Fit in the fridge ok so that maybe don't need a dedicated fridge (wash mouth out). There are virtually no used examples of the smaller ones available in these parts. New ones are from about $120. Of course they are new SS and have new fittings, seals etc.

So I find people using those pump up weed killer spray units as party kegs. The key here is that we are not looking for massive pressure. Only enough to hold a charge to dispense the beer on the day or store for a couple days. Some people are also using these for fermenting small batches. 5 litre or 8 litre seem to be the regular size.

For $10 to get the sprayer and then some bits and bobs. Probably all in for $20 - $25 with a few less ghetto fittings.
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i3...rtyKeg003a.jpg
This one has a lot of fruit on it including the single regulator and a Soda Stream gas canister so there is much more than $25 invested here but the reg and the soda stream stuff is reusable when moving to a corney style keg.

I got this from this thread at the AHB forum.

I downloaded some PDFs on how they do them. All credit to the authors.
How to make a killer party keg
How to use your killer party keg

This is probably going to become a thread of it's own I think. There are a few different ways to get gas into these but I can see myself doing one of these very soon as a project.

A brewer friend set one of the korny keg rigs up and maybe he was doing something wrong but I didn't really care for it. Yeah, bottling a couple hundred bottles is a bit of a chore but to me it's totally worth it. Sanitizing 200 bottles is quite another story!

I have to say I prefer bottling myself. The cleaning is a chore but I prefer the natural carbonation. Not sure how they make CO2 gas for carbonation industrially or how clean it is. If I did kegs I'd still probably try and ferment the beer naturally in there. Not with these. Its messy but can be done. Anyway I'll be going to the HWS over the weekend. I'll grab one of these and start messing about time permitting.

I'm looking forward to your delving into this and getting your first hand account of it.

I grabbed one of these sprayers today. It was not priced so I wandered around a lot and looking for a big stash of them that might be stickered. Ended up asking at a checkout. I asked the girl, an asian girl around 20 with a flawless "strain" (australian) accent if she could tell me how much it was.

"$200 hundred dollars", she said. I said "oh wow". Slapping her back side she said "$200 right in my pocket". I'm thinking oh yeah?

Anyway it turns out it was $10. So she says "oh thats $190 in my pocket and $10 for that". I'm standing there thinking, I'm having a Ponce moment.

I'm soaking this thing. It's got a lot of petro lube of some sort on it. will see what we can make of it.

I'm thinking to myself I would like some big PET bottles for brewing beer but I don't want to re-use Soda bottles. Would rather brand new 2L/66oz PET but all the soda companies make their own PET bottles, obviously with their own shapes and things molded into them.

Still looking for something I can use the small soda bulbs with. then I find a system that uses 6L/200oz PET bottles. It has some kind of special cap on the bottles that allows you to introduce CO2.

Then I'm looking on the YT and I see a thing called Tap King. So taking a look this is a system that allows you to dispense beer from 3.2L/208oz PET bottles. It appears to be adapted from the 5L party kegs you can by like the Heineken kegs and so on.

So now a light bulb has gone on. I have seen these 3.2L bottles of beer at the bottle shop and not really thought much of it. Mostly because I don't really drink the brands I have seen BUT now I get it. These bottles are for this Tap King system. When you disassemble the bottle caps you find a CO2 cartridge in side the beer bottle.

So there are videos on how to pull these bottles apart so you can change the CO2 cartridges and obviously reuse them for home brew or refill with your swill of choice. So now I have some other good info on building my own because it leads me to a new type of regulator that I haven't seen so far when looking for bits.

http://www.thebrewshop.com.au/media/...eg_charger.jpg
http://www.thebrewshop.com.au/premiu...2-charger.html

The tap king system - this is an online store link. It's the place I got my beer kit from.

http://danmurphys.com.au/tapking?utm...tapking_launch

this looks very interesting to me as an alternative to the weed sprayer but if I can come up with something using bits of both that would be cool. OR I will just go for the regulator option that I did not know about until now. I can get one with a corney gas disconnect and a few bulbs for $55. That could probably be adapted to suit the weedkiller keg which is not set up to take a corney connector but can be adapted. Hmmmm.

http://danmurphys.com.au/product/DM_...king-dispenser

Here is the videos on hacking the tap king. The guy wants to put the CO2 canister on the outside of the keg head/pouring system instead of inside the actual bottles so he can change gas bulbs more easily and they can be used for multiple bottles. As standard the bulbs are in the bottles. HE doesn't really explain the purpose of what he is doing, Just assumes you know the reason.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TapKIngHacked?feature=watch

I think the videos are a work in progress.

How to use the TapKing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bQdh6rDcGCg

Midwest Brewing Starers Kit walkthrough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QT19Z75BTo

I'm planing to use a bottling bucket from KoB #5 on.

I'm trying to make one of those bottling wands on the end of a hose. Much easier.

The spigot I have is not ideal for this. The ID is the same as the OD of the wand because wand fits in spigot. I need hose to go in spigot and in wand or over wand. Can't find hoses OD/ID combo for this. Spigot is not standard screw fitting but push in. Standard ID? I don't know.

I'd try getting the hose as hot/soft as possible by putting the end in boiling water for a couple mins, I'd also put a little vegetable oil on the end of the wand. The same would apply to the spigot.

I had a pot of boiled water and a pot of chilled water. The hose in hot and the wand in cold but it just wouldn't stretch enough. So so close. I didn't want to break it. I'll ask at the LHBS next time I'm there BUT soon I will be bottling from a 2nd bucket with a different spigot so hopefully that will work better.

The next thing I'd try is going to the hardware store, to the tubing/hoses and find a piece that acts as a coupler, stepping up or down as needed. Or a new piece of tubing that works.

yes I went on Sunday and spent some time trying to get this to fit in that. I grabbed some joiner piece and some worm clamps but I still can't get a combo that works. ID's and OD's don't line up in a way I can fit one inside the other. So for the messing about and $$ spent on bits I'm going to ask at the LHBS if they have a bottling wand on a length of hose.

I did find a whole range of PVC connectors, pipe lengths and elbows/T junctions which were pretty good pricing. I have not seen these before. Thinking the bottle sanitizer. Did not see any snap T's and they look extra useful. Good idea IMO.

Sorry to hear you're having such a hard time with the tubing, what a PITA.

When it comes to the sanitizer, I'll have a complete parts list when it's finished. 2 of these parts are special order, everything else is available at the local big box store.

Here's a link for the snap tees, just to give you a better idea. http://flexpvc.com/cart/agora.cgi?product=PVC-Tees-Snap

Here's the tubes I'm using. http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/ite...5800&catid=554

If you really want to build one I'll ship you the needed parts if you can't find them. Of course after I've tested it etc...

its no biggie on the tubing. A younger me would have forced something into something else and ended up with broken bits and a swearing session. Now days I just put it to the side. I know from experience the solution to the issue is somewhere, it just isn't with me right here, right now BUT it will be eventually if I just let it go for now.

The discovery of the pipe bits was cool, because I was digging around the gardening reticulation section and had not seen these items before. Smaller lengths of PVC that were just about the right size to fit in the crate without cutting. Joiners, reducers etc that I had not seen before. Anyway. I file that away for later.

Seems pretty straight forward process using Oxi Clean to clean and de-label glass bottles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8P7RratUq8

This brand is not available in Oz. There are a couple of equivalent cleaning products here. 1 I won't buy and the other I could not find. I did find some PBW which is Powdered Brewery Wash. This is basically Oxi Clean but much more expensive. I paid $14 for a regular size container which is probably 500gms. Maybe 1 pounds worth.

I let the bottles soak for up to 2 hours each batch. 30gms PBW per gallon of water. I did 1 case of bottles in 2.5 Gals. I have maybe 1.5 cases still to do. After soaking, the labels slide right off. Most of the bottle came out without the labels on them or glue. They were also squeaky clean. I soaked them in clean water for about the same amount of time. Dumped that water and soaked them again before storing. The cleaner gets nearly everything out. I noticed one bottle had 2 spots of mould. Bottle brush time. Otherwise all good. All bottles were rinsed right after the beer was gone so no junk in them.

I would not soak for too long in this stuff. I've heard it can etch the bottles. It does work very well. Makes easy work. Does have problems with Foil labels. Some of my bottles have this kind of label and I gave up cleaning on those. They will just go to the bin. Hopefully the other batch has none of these labels.

First meeting of the American Home Brewers union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INrh_GhL6oo

Hop Profiles.
As I mentioned in the KoB #7 thread I've been reading up on the various hops to try and get an idea of what they can do.

Here's a reference page on Beer Advocate

Here's a wiki on hop varieties

http://beerlegends.com/hops-varieties

http://homebrewmanual.com/what-are-ibus/

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter5.html

On the last link, there's more to read. Look in the upper/lower right of the page and you'll see this.

5.0	What Are They?
5.1	How Are They Used?
5.2	Hop Forms
5.3	Hop Types
5.4	Hop Measurement
5.5	Hop Bittering Calculations

I didn't want to start a new thread for this, so I'll just post it here. Brew Dog has a new show... looks good. Starts out in the best brewing town in the world, appropriately enough...

https://screen.yahoo.com/popular/bre...185450405.html

Talking with BrewTech today about the lure of All Grain brewing. I usually like to watch Home Brew Wednesday videos on YT to see what people are upto.

Have not seen his guy previous but his video today is about One year of All Grain brewing and what his experiences were. interesting to hear him describe his progression from other types of brewing to AG.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMrr1QyYGbI

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BrewTech

I didn't want to start a new thread for this, so I'll just post it here. Brew Dog has a new show... looks good. Starts out in the best brewing town in the world, appropriately enough...

https://screen.yahoo.com/popular/bre...185450405.html

---

Plzen?