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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2023

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  • In large cities, sure, but mostly out of necessity. Historically, the communist regimes there sort of forced industrialization on people. Workforce was needed so they moved people from the countryside into flats, close to the workplace. As the change was mostly sudden, it was a bit of a culture shock due to people suddenly moving from their own house with a yard into a wee matchbox and not really adjusting behaviour to the new circumstances. So the apartment building culture in such places is quite different from the western one (in terms, for instance, of being respectful of your neighbour - like not drilling on Sunday at 8 am because that’s when the quiet time - according to the law - ends).

    So the drive there is to get your own house away from hundreds of neighbours as soon as you have the means, even if it implies commuting in hellish traffic.

    Coincidentally, also why you might see some pushback from those places when people suggest walkable cities with apartment blocks. Because when suggesting that, everyone thinks Sweden or Denmark, not Eastern Europe.




  • Condensation shouldn’t be an issue as long as you’re not cooling below the current dew point.

    However, after experiencing one of these underfloor cooling systems once, I can say that the biggest issue is that cold air tends to be heavier and thus stay down. So in order to cool the entire room, not just the layer of air right above the floor, you need something to move the air, which is probably why they’re providing fans. Either that or you can just lie on the floor all the time…

    Floor heating works because warm air rises. I never understood why ‘floor’ cooling wasn’t piped through the ceiling, instead. There are probably some engineering or heat transfer issues there, though.









  • The software calculated efficiency for the Braumeister is spot on for me if just using it like set it and forget it, so about 65%. I can up that with stopping the pump during mashing, opening the thing and stirring the mash about once every 30 minutes in my 90 min mash. Also by milling the malt a bit finer. But too fine, and I get a stuck mash. With this, I managed around 75, or how much the software sets as standard for pot and cooler method, so I’m happy with that.

    I also start the brew with 23ish liters of strike water, dump 6 kg of malt in there and sparge with 5-6 liters at 80C. Boil 1 hr and end up with 18-19 liters in the fermenter with the rest full of trub in the Braumeister (2-3 liters maybe?) I never measured how much is left and I can sparge with 4 or 6L. I just eyeball it according to how much wort is in when I lift the malt pipe.

    In your case, I’d say maybe the mash did not go very well.

    I wouldn’t be too worried about the body. It could be that your fermentation just stopped a bit higher because all that’s left is longer sugars, unfermentable, but good for the body. One way to find out…


  • What is your brewing setup? I’ve used your grain quantities in BeerSmith with a Braumeister 20L setup for the out of the box efficiency (without stirring the malt during mashing or a finer grind or extra boiling) and it gave me a post-boil of 1.042, which seems to fit with your result so I’d guess you had an efficiency issue. How did the mashing go?

    I’ve noticed that when boiling for the standard 1 hour, I get about a 10% increase in gravity (for the digits after the 1 - that is, pre-boil of 1.064 leads to post-boil of 1.070 ish), so in your case 1.037 to 1.041 would check out for me.

    For my brewing setup, 30 minutes at 63C doesn’t really cut it, I’ve tried it and noticed 60 minutes or even 90 minutes work way better. But then I mostly use kveik and the indication seems to be for longer mash times (something about it being unable to digest sugars made of 3+ units).

    I’m not sure I get your last point. If your FG is higher than expected, you should reasonably have more sugars left over from fermentation, so more residual sweetness.

    Regardless, I’d suggest RDWHAHB, and see what you get out of this. Do share your final results, I am curious what it’s like.

    Out of lazyness, I just let all my beers sit in the fermenter for 2 weeks and that seems to work out just fine. Some finish bubbling after 2 days, some after 12.

    Edited to add: just noticed from your yeast link, you also use an all-in-one system, does it suffer from the same low efficiency issues as the Braumeister, I wonder?