Hello. I'm brewing a cider from self pressed apples. I have a 25 liter batch and took my first gravity reading yesterday which sat at 1.056. Overnight the gravity raised gradually to 1.065. I'm confused why this is. I figured it would have been by foam lifting my hydrometer but I just added some yeast nutrient and gave it a stir to get the foam back in suspension but my reading is still at 1.064. Anyone got any ideas? Attached a graph of my readings. (The sudden dip to 1.037 is a measurement taken while I was stirring and can be ignored)

Here is a new twist on "Software Geek meets Home Brewing". Like several members I have played at the intersection of home brewing, apps, calculators, and yes - Raspberry Pi. I have since gone back to a mostly manual brew day, but when local AI became practical I explored that.

The outcome is AegisBrewMaster - it runs on Linux and is on the snap store, or here: https://yourprivacysw.com/apps/aegisbrewmaster/aegisbrewmaster.html

An agent discussed your next brew adventure, and all the usual calculators and guides are built in.

I use BIAB and I have tested my app for that. Sparge and extract are also in the app - but I have not used that yet. I would love your feedback!

We were thinking Lavender, Chamomile & Hibiscus or Rosemary, Mint & Elderflower what do you think? The yeast used was SafAle BE-134.

The latest version is up with lots of fine tuning from all the suggestions I've received over the past several months.

- streamlined recipe builder with all touch entries for super fast entries with knuckles or wet hands
- all kinds of tools I've used over the years scattered across the internet - draft system calculator, brix abv converter, carbonation calculator, SRM - EBC converter, pitch rate, chaptalization, etc
- pretty much every equipment profile for systems sold to homebrewers

- brew deck - run your brew day on a second device (tablet or old phone) so you dont have to worry about it getting wet or sticky
- inventory management

& lots more!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brewhalla.beer&hl=en

Please take a moment to test it out. Try building a recipe - it's really fast and fun to hit preset keys for example 100g of hops in the whirlpool at 80C for 20 minutes. All the common amounts/times/temps are buttons.

Any suggestions for feature adds, bugs, anything at all hit me up here.

I just finished a major overhaul of a brewing data application that I have been working on including adding a simple recipe builder that helps show how ingredients can be substituted. It's more responsive, user experience is improved, and much more. I would appreciate thoughts and feedback from this group. I am really just doing this for fun as a side project, so please keep that in mind.

Brew Codes (https://www.brewcodex.com/)

I have for the past 3 months been developing a new brewing app and I would like to know if anyone is interested in helping me test the app?

Here’s the link to the site:
https://batchlogg.vercel.app/

If there’s anything not working or if there’s anything you feel is missing just let me know and I’ll look at it😁

Could you please advise me on whether this krausen is normal? This is the state of my braggot 12 days after pitching the yeast (Kveik). On the 4th day, I added a secondary batch of raspberries, blueberries, juniper, and honey. Fermentation was very vigorous and healthy, creating a thick krausen on top, but it seems it refuses to settle; now, in the final stage of fermentation, clumps of it are extending down into the liquid. Is this normal? How should I handle it when bottling? Should I wait more time? From what I've read, a braggot made with Kveik should be ready in about 14 days.

Hey everyone,

Like a lot of you, I get an absolute headache every month trying to accurately track running production totals, map out Small Producer Relief (SPR) bands, and translate everything into the exact box orders HMRC asks for.

To make my own life easier, I built a web utility called Duty Sorted to calculate the math automatically. I’ve made a standalone version of the calculator 100% free and un-gated for the community—no sign-up or card required:

👉 [Link to your free calculator page]

To show you how it breaks down messy edge cases, here is an example of it calculating a 5.5% draught beer batch (1,000 litres) for a producer nearing the threshold:

Tax Type Code: 356 (Beer from 3.5 to 8.4 percent, eligible for draught relief)

Pure Alcohol: 55.0000 litres

Full Rate: £19.45 per litre of pure alcohol

Duty Due: £1,069.75 (rounded down to the penny)

It even triggers alerts if your annual production crosses the 4,500 hl limit so you know exactly when SPR stops applying.

If you're a small cider maker, brewery, or distillery filing these monthly, I hope this saves you some spreadsheet math this month.

Check it out and let me know if you notice any weird edge cases with your specific tax codes—I want to keep updating it and making it better for the trade! 🍻

I got a Clawhammer 10 gal system and punch my recipe into Brewfather and my pre boil and OG has come out .01 low or more... I wait for the water to hit its temp then add the crushed grain and stir it in. I stir it again halfway through. Here's the recipe minus the hops...

American IPA

6.7%

ABV

Equipment & Process

Clawhammer 120V BIAB

Efficiency:

64.2%

Batch Volume:

5 gal

Boil Time:

60 min

Mash Water:

7.38 gal

Total Water:

7.38 gal

Boil Volume:

6.27 gal

Pre-Boil Gravity:

1.059

Vitals

Original Gravity:

1.067

Final Gravity:

1.016

IBU:

58

BU/GU:

0.86

Color:

6.1 SRM

Mash

Strike Temp —

157.6 °F

Temperature —

150 °F

—

60 min

Mash in with 7.38 gal @ 157.6 °F

Malts (14 lb 5 oz)

12 lb 12 oz (89.1%) — Great Western Brewer's Malt, 2-Row, Premium — Grain — 2 °L

1 lb 9 oz (10.9%) — Briess Bonlander Munich Malt 10L — Grain — 10 °L

Hi, how do i clean this messuring tube because CIP wont be able to clean it

Hi everyone I am Diego, from Foambyte brewing software

We added now manual batch tracking to our free plan. You can follow a batch from planning and brewing through primary fermentation, conditioning, and carbonation, while recording readings, ingredient additions, notes, volumes, and losses along the way.

It’s completely free, so I wanted to share it here in case it could be a useful tool for your brewing process:

https://app.foambyte.com

We’re still improving it, so any honest feedback, positive or negative

Thank you ver myuch!
Cheers!!!

Short version: Always trying to find another way to make money during slow season. Do brewers/managers actually pay for any digital products or services?

Anyone make beers, meads or wines for just quick table beverages? I’ve made a few that were undrinkable and would like to find something quick and easy.

Looking for a used canning line. Send them my way if you have one or know of one.

Wanting to make cheap booze. Anyone with experience please tell me if this recipe will work (or what modifications should be made). I'm also curious what the purpose of the lemon is.

1 liter water 

340g sugar 

1/2 lemon (juice)

2 tsp bread yeast (active dry)

I plan to freeze it afterward to separate the alcohol from the water, making it stronger hopefully.

Disclosure: I work on a gluten-free brewing site and I'll link it at the bottom, because the numbers live there and I'm not going to retype the whole table. Nothing for sale.

Background for anyone who doesn't brew gluten-free: sorghum malt doesn't self-convert, so the mash runs on added enzymes. That means we publish dose rates, the homebrew community publishes dose rates, and they don't match.

The Zero Tolerance GF Homebrew Club wiki maintains a community enzyme reference. Set our production numbers beside theirs:

Termamyl: community 0.227 to 0.363 mL/lb, us 1.0 at mash-in. Roughly 2.8x their maximum.

Ondea Pro: community 0.181 to 1.134, us 1.5. Above their maximum.

AMG 300L: community 0.227 to 1.588, us 0.75. Comfortably mid-range.

One of those is a long way out and the other two aren't, which is the part I find interesting.

It isn't a typo. The documented policy was to take the supplier's stated rate and double it, then go a little higher again on small batches, and that's written down in a 2019 methodology note. These are production numbers from a brewery that valued a guaranteed conversion over an optimised enzyme bill, where a failed mash means a lost 75-barrel batch and the extra enzyme is cheap next to that.

Here's where I need to be straight about what I don't know.

The community table lists Termamyl L. This protocol runs Termamyl SC DS. Same family, not necessarily the same activity per mL, so some meaningful share of that 2.8x could be product rather than philosophy and I can't currently tell you how much. If anyone here has datasheets for both and can put activity units side by side, I'd genuinely like to see it.

Three things I'd weigh before copying our numbers.

Product identity, per above. Check your own product's datasheet instead of assuming either number transfers to it.

Cost. A brewery dosing generously is buying insurance on a 75-barrel batch, and on 10 lb of grain the arithmetic is completely different. The downside there is one disappointing Saturday.

Overdosing isn't free either. A glucoamylase that outlives its welcome keeps working through the lauter and can quietly over-attenuate the wort, so if your beer finishes thinner than your numbers predicted, that's the first thing you need to suspect.

What I'd actually suggest, and what the page says: run the published rates once so you have a known-good reference batch, then step down deliberately and record what happens.

The honest position is that nobody has published where the floor is on sorghum malt. Not the community, not us. That's a question a homebrewer with a notebook is better placed to answer than a production brewery is, because you can run five variations in the time we'd need to justify one.

Full translation to a 5 gallon batch, with the temperature path and the parts that break at small scale:

https://glutenfreebrewer.com/docs/homebrew/the-reliable-mash-at-homebrew-scale

If anyone here has run exogenous enzymes well below supplier spec and had it work, that's the thing I most want to hear about.

I made a porter a couple months ago, a couple bottles were flat, one was just right, and now this half bottle. Why are some, but not all, flat? I always add the bottle conditioning sugar to the whole batch at a time - this was a half batch, I used 1/3 cup corn sugar in water (boiled). The beer does taste a bit on the strong side, I think I used Nottingham yeast. Thanks in advance.

As part of the brew tools suite inside BrewHalla is this super useful Brix to ABV calculator

https://ibb.co/xqVTVM1C

The tool suite is included in BrewHalla homebrewing app found here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brewhalla.beer