Section 5 – Appendices
Introduction
This final section is the garage—a place I could put extensive details and how-to’s.
This appendix discusses the use of hydrometers and refractometers. Hydrometers are an almost indispensable tool for any brewer, but they need to be corrected for temperature and this appendix contains a correction table. Refractometers are a fancy way to measure wort gravity but are very useful. I describe how to use them and convert between Brix, Plato, and Specific Gravity.
This appendix discusses how malt and beer color are measured, the concept of the malt color unit (MCU) and how to estimate your beer’s color from the malt extracts and grains in your recipe.
This appendix explains the various causes of haze in beer and how to use clarifiers and finings to achieve clearer beer and a longer shelf life.
This appendix explains how to go about building one of these things for yourself. A wort chiller is one of the most useful things ever invented by mankind. Chillers can also be purchased at most homebrewing shops if you don’t want to make your own.
This appendix presents several options for building a simple mash/lauter tun from an ice chest or picnic cooler. This is where I take a simple subject and make it complicated. Continuous sparging efficiency depends on uniform flow. This appendix attempts to take the mystery out of uniform flow to help you design the most efficient home lautering tun possible.
This appendix is everything you never wanted to know about metals cleaning, corrosion, and joining. I am a metallurgist—I like this stuff. As my wife says, “Don’t get him started!” But, a lot of homebrewers build their own equipment and this information can come in handy.
