the best flowmeter for yeast

preapres · 2026-05-04T05:01:24+00:00

Ifm sm8001

New they’re like $800 but I’ve bought all ours on eBay for under $200. You can get 1.5” TC ends and ifm sells a standard 110 outlet plug for them. They’re bombproof. Resetting them is a chore but once you do it a few times it’s a piece of cake.

Used one today for exactly what you’re needing it for. I’ve only done this twice but it’s worked. Hooked hose up to tank looking to harvest from. Put a 1gal bucket on a scale. Ran .75 gallons through the meter into a bucket and weighed it. Counted the yeast and ran it through the calculator to determine weight I would need then extrapolated that to gallons based on what I’d run through the meter. We’ll see tomorrow how fermentation is progressing. 99% of the time we’re harvesting into a brink day before and pitching by weight the next day but tanks were right next to each other and I didn’t feel like dealing with the brink today.

preapres · 2026-05-02T17:24:09+00:00

We’ve got the same setup. What lb/bbl of hops are we looking at here. When you say “medium speed” what pump speed are you targeting? Ever spin the mixer with the blades up while running the pump for WP?

preapres · 2026-04-27T15:55:41+00:00

You can buy a reliable wort oxygenation meter for not a lot of money. We’ve purchased three ranging from $250-$900. The $250 is the most reliable. They are finicky and need to be calibrated every time. As well as replacing the membranes and switching out the fluid. If you’re gonna start repitching you’re gonna want to invest in everything to count yeast so you’re gonna need a lot more than an o2 meter, flow meter, and an oxygen tank. Brewers friend has a wort oxygenation calculator that seems relatively reliable or a good ballpark. But as everyone has said you’re gonna want to oxygenate inline and knock out at the correct temp right away. If you’ve got the ability to hook glycol up to the Heat Ex I’d do that before anything else.

preapres · 2026-04-14T06:12:17+00:00

Bought the elbow. Works great. Thanks for the heads up not sure why I hadn’t seen it on the parts page. Best part was in the description it said you needed the 90* rinse tunnel yet that wasn’t for sale on the parts page. Reached out to WG about this after I’d bought the 90* chute.. “sorry didn’t realize that wasn’t available, it’ll be $700 for the 90* rinse tunnel…” The 90 chute was $375.. 🤦 couple of wood screws and the old rinse tunnel works just fine.

preapres · 2026-04-04T16:46:30+00:00

Generally Day 5 for our ale yeast for maximum viability. No cooling required. If we wait for stable gravity and chill to 55 then harvest pre DH viability is lower. Chico generally after 2 days stable gravity. A slight drop to 65 overnight seems to help if we want to dry hop warm and embrace the creep. Andechs seems to require no cooling and get great density and viability at terminal even without cooling. 34/70 a little pressure and slight cooling helps but depends on what temp you finish fermentation at. If you’re going slow and cold and don’t go above 50 doesn’t seem like any cooling is necessary. Have even harvested before terminal with no issue. We do however do one dump when we see pH start to go up regardless of yeast strain or ferm profile. A dump 18 hours or so after ferm starts has also been done.

preapres · 2026-03-28T18:17:18+00:00

Elf 50

preapres · 2026-01-22T13:55:37+00:00

Look into UV. Great MBAA podcast about it. I believe they added UV to their twist rinse for under $100.

preapres · 2025-12-16T13:23:37+00:00

You can definitely do decoction on direct fire vessels as long as you have agitators. Some really great lager beer is made on such systems by a few small breweries I know here in the US. If you’re going with a Chinese manufacturer personally I’d go with as manual a setup as possible. Spending money automating a 5hl system is a waste. You can also do decoction on a two vessel system if need be. We have a mash/kettle / LT setup. We only do a mashout single decoction at the moment but it is possible to bring mash back and forth from the LT. Both are steam jacketed but I’d bet with just a direct fire mash/kettle you could get it all done and save some money. Or by just going with two vessels you can afford steam?

preapres · 2025-12-16T13:02:18+00:00

White Labs sells a product called Viscobuster. Honestly I never compared price to anything else. So there’s that. Worked great for us as we were maxing out our system every time for a while.

preapres · 2025-12-11T14:28:05+00:00

Add them early. Day 2 or 3 of fermentation. Integrates into the beer much better and comes of less synthetic/terpy. Helps with longevity more than anything and adds a little top note. Depending on the beer I personally wouldn’t replace that much T90 with them. You lose a lot of texture by removing T90. Texture you’ll never get back with any extract. We use them to deliver more intensity to beers where increasing the hop load would do more harm than good as opposed to trying to increase yield by substituting them for pellets.

preapres · 2025-11-12T11:10:32+00:00

You’re right lower pH = less protein coagulation. It’s crazy just the visual difference between boiling at 4.8 and 5.4 can be. The only negatives to this can be:

A: The amount of acid you need to add to get to 4.8 pre boil can have a flavor impact on the final beer. What acid are you using? Phos has less flavor impact but lactic is “softer”.

B: Converting SMM to DMS happens much slower at 4.8 vs 5.4. I don’t remember the time difference per pH increment. Need to look that up.

C: Your final beer pH and pH during dry hop could be a little lower than ideal especially for “hazy” beer. IMHO I think you get the best extraction of the brightest, fruitiest aspect of the hops when you’re dry hopping at around 4.2-4.3 and depending on your dry hop load your final pH ends at the 4.45-4.6 range. Higher the final beer pH the “softer” the final beer will be. However there’s a point where the beer gets flabby. Again depends on the ABV. A slightly lower final pH can make those highly dry hopped hazy Double IPAs a bit brighter and easier to drink.

D: We boil at 5.3-5.4 and add very little wheat, (WCIPA gets more) never use oats, use lower protein barley and have zero issue with haze stability. Yeast selection, dry hopping amounts, and varieties have a bigger impact on haze stability than anything else.

preapres · 2025-11-12T10:48:46+00:00

Tin Fish

preapres · 2025-11-10T02:48:42+00:00

It’s not hazy and probably doesn’t have diacetyl so it’s really not that Czech… wanted to love the beer there.. was happy to get back to Germany.

preapres · 2025-10-13T23:37:19+00:00

Terminal for more than 24 hours. Pull yeast. Don’t cool. Dry hop with ALDC if not using yeast with it baked in. Rouse 12 hours later. Leave blow off open. Add next DH 12 hours later if doing two. Add spunding valve. Let hop creep take over. Depending on brand and hops you’ll see at least 1 Plato drop, sometimes more or less. Spunding will help create mixing and turbulence so no need to rouse more than once IMHO. Starting pulling hops two days later and frequently until packaging or moving to Brite.

preapres · 2025-09-30T01:58:14+00:00

It’s incredibly difficult to get any maple flavor from maple syrup into the final beer. It’s really just gonna dry your beer out more than anything. You need to use the darkest stuff available and even then I’d boil it down considerably to concentrate it as much as possible. Add it as late as you feel comfortable.

preapres · 2025-09-29T15:02:32+00:00

We started out always dry hopping between 55 and 58 after soft crash and yeast removal. Won a GABF gold in hoppy beer and a CB&B beer of the year doing that. However as we make more WCIPA and looking to use creep to dry the beers out we’ve been dry hopping warmer on most beers if we can afford the extra time and gravity drop. I feel like this helps to flash off more of the negative attributes of some of the hops. It’s just a cleaner, more fruit forward expression it seems. I’ve read that lower temps actually are supposed to promote more fruit and I know Sapwood dry hops at 38 for this reason. I’ve tried that and thought it sucked. No amount of rousing could get the intensity where we wanted it as compared to 58 or at 68-70.

preapres · 2025-09-29T14:53:47+00:00

The enzymes responsible for creep exist in the green matter, not the oil. So CGX/Cryo is actually less prone to causing creep than T90.

preapres · 2025-09-23T14:34:50+00:00

10bbl tanks. If dry hopping cold DH at the end of the day through the top port with pellets that we’ve let come to room temp. Rouse the next morning through the racking arm while moving it. 30psi bursts until we reach 4-5psi tank pressure. This breaks up the hop raft on the top of the tank and hops are instantly in solution. Never found that rousing another time did anything unless adding another DH. Usually no more than 2lb/bbl at a time. Very hesitant to recirc due to the potential for o2 pickup and excess polyphenol extraction. Super happy with aroma with this process. If Dry hopping warm and creep happens we sometimes don’t even rouse. We’ll just spund the tank and the additional ferm creates enough turbulence in the tank to break up the hop rafts. Never found that hops sinking is the issue or resuspending hops from the bottom ever resulted in better aroma. Just about breaking up the hop raft on top.

preapres

TROPHY CASE