New brewer

[Techbrau]

There's nothing special or magical about antiox sbt, and it takes away any control you may want to have over your water treatment. Fundamentally what you're looking for is a metal chelating agent and an oxygen scavenger. Using about 30 mg/l gallovin, Brewtan, or similar tannin in your strike water will take care of the metal chelating, and 30 mg/l sodium metabisulfite will take care of the oxygen scavenging.

Depending on your water source, you may want to increase or decrease the amount of tannin you use. Similarly, depending on how rough your system is on the wort, you may want to increase or decrease the amount of SMB you use. The two chemicals address two different problems, and it's good to be able to fine tune them individually rather than being stuck with a suboptimal blend fixed by a manufacturer (one that contains ascorbic acid at that, which I would strongly recommend against using)

[Crunk]

I can use my well water, ro water or distilled water, either of the 3 are readily available to me.

[Weizenberg]

Just make sure it's clean and consistent. Well water can have many problems unless you can run permanent analysis. RO is almost distilled and should be cheaper. I'd settle for that.

[Crunk]

Local grocery store sells distilled for .85 cents per gallon in plastic 1 gallon jugs, the ro water is .63 cents per gallon at the other local grocery store.

I test all my water before brewing religiously, I purchased the lamotte water test kit with ph meter, it's second nature as I work for a plumbing materials Supply house.

The chemistry testing portion and water additions just makes sense to me when building for a water profile.

On another note I just tested my latest lager fermenting.
It's down to 1.014 smells bready, has that small acid bite in the beginning, very smooth mouth feel, and pleasantly dry, time to rack to secondary (keg this time) instead of second fermentor, it still is very hazy, it's been at 52° for 9 days in the primary, I might actually be able to drink this one until my alterations to my system are complete, tested, and I brew again this weekend, and get the next beer ready.

[Weizenberg]

Fermentation tastings can be a bit of a roller coaster. Beware before passing judgement Give it the time it deserves.

[Brandon]

[Crunk]

Been doing a lot of reading

[Crunk]

I decided to look into using plexiglass 4 a mash cap and another piece of plexiglass for a countersink lid to go over the wort in the boil kettle I can get rubber seals to go on the outer edges of the plexiglass to keep it in place at whatever Heights I want similar to The False bottoms and if I really wanted to get technical I could put on quick disconnects so that I can Purge any Oxygen out from in between using a purge valve that will allow me to still have some kind of visual

My fast form enters both have sample valves on them which will allow me to pump the water into them from the bottom up I can also purge them with nitrogen and push the O2 that is in there out of the airlock I tested them last night I was able to hold 25 pounds of pressure in them I did not test any higher than that I didn't want to ruin anything I think 25 pounds of air is plenty the test was done without the airlock in I capped the airlock holes off with a grommet nut bolt and two washers.

[Futur]

[Crunk]

I still have not received any further emails on kunze book that I ordered, I got the order confirmation email, that email said I would be receiving another email covering shipping etc... it's been 2 weeks.