Update: Yeah, dang, it doesn’t work as I expected.

Observations: The lid bulges, but barely any movement of liquid happens. I had to press the lid really hard to get the slightest flow towards the can going at the beginning. It’s barely even trickling now that the line is filled with liquid. As this is going to be a rather light beer, I don’t expect much more CO2 buildup, so this really isn’t ideal.

Theory: The buffer of air is too large. The CO2 from the fermentation increases the pressure in the system, but not beyond the compressibility of the gases involved. Applying pressure to the lid took a lot of force and felt like squeezing a large half inflated ball. Also, some of the CO2 may have dissolved in the StarSan solution.

Now I hope I have not spoiled my beer by at least theoretically exposing it to all the oxygen from the headspace in the keg. I’ll probably get a bubbler ready tomorrow and just purge the keg with CO2 from a regular source.
Most of this setup sets me right on track though to do a oxygen free transfer though, so not all was in vain - in case that I haven’t spoiled my brew. /o\

The only possible fix that I can think of might be using a fermenter that is actually rated for pressure and doesn’t “inflate” like my plastic bucket, but I’m not sure how much that actually contributes. Brewing a bigger beer with more generated CO2 would probably also be advantageous.

Uh, I haven’t even thought about the possibility of reverse siphoning. Maybe better I’d better leave the can where it is? To my understanding, siphoning “uphill” is way harder (if even possible at all, given a specific liquid, height, tube diameter etc). The possible pressure oscillation sounds less “threatening” to me right now.

Thanks for the calculation! It didn’t cross my mind to roll the numbers, that’s quite reassuring.

Thinking about everything now, I think I should elevate the can to the level of the liquid post of the keg, to avoid a siphoning effect where all the sanitiser goes through the line in one go once it gets into motion. 🤔

The darker the roast, the lighter a bean should be. You could count a number of beans you have your numbers right and get decent results with, weigh them, and thus compare their roast to that of other beans. That way you‘d be able to find out if your achieved ratios are tied to the roast. Maybe you could even work out a scale telling you what to expect, a ballpark to get your ratio somewhat right when opening a new bag of beans.

That said, I’m only citing theory here, don’t take what I say as the last word on anything :)

Not meaning to sound dismissive, but to me, most “apply 3D printing to $x” pieces, this one included, sound like looking for problems for a solution, not the other way around. Just look at how many “holders” people make with 3D printers.

That said, I’m not against the technology and I’m having an eye on the market myself. Also, I enjoyed the video. Great creativity, and I like the BruShow in general: The guy seems so damned friendly and while being well produced, his videos don’t put their production value before the actual content.

It might help to know a little more about the actual beans. Depending on the roast those ratios might indeed vary greatly, I’d think.

Which clicks? I haven’t found them.

Had a coworker five years ago who wouldn’t let go of it. And he was really productive.

To my understanding, there are still some things it does better than IntelliJ, for instance being able to add all missing imports in one go instead of one by one.
I’ll admit though that this is a rather tiny advantage, and as I haven’t touched Java in quite a while, it may be even outdated.

This is what we’ve got. I have no experience regarding what the style is supposed to be like, but it’s a really great beer with a fine balance between sweet and bitter components, excellent full mouthfeel and a decent amount of carbonation. It’s somewhat close to a Märzen, with a little less body I’d say. All in all, not too shabby for my first lager ever and the less ideal temperatures. W34/70 lives up to its reputation.

The head collapses quite quickly, which makes the beer go stale rather quickly as well, but it mostly doesn’t live long enough once I have it in my glass anyway. 🤤

I had made a starter (took a mason jar of wort after the boil, chilled it and pitched my yeast into it while the rest of the wort chilled overnight) and it went off really quickly, I had the impression it was all well.

But hell, maybe it really dropped out of solution faster than I thought. It’s somewhat clear (the stuff on the glass is co2 bubbles), even though I’m neither filtering nor storing it cool and only take from the keg what I’m about to drink that evening and put that in a fridge.

So this is how we ended up. It’s a little thin as expected, but drinkable. Also it has become a little sweeter than anticipated, with some hop coming through. Had a commercial Kellerbier the other day and it was like this “done right”. Head is obviously good, its stability Ok.
All in all, it works surprisingly well as a summer beer.

The secondary fermentation stalled as well, I had to shake the keg seriously in order for the yeast to carbonate and consume the priming sugar. So maybe my yeast just was a little weak to begin with.

Yeah, constant temperature is good, but mine only went up and down like 4 °C tops. That the coldest of night vs. the hottest of day. It’s not nothing, I’m aware, but overall, I guess it’s stable enough. In my Vienna Lager, the higher temperatures made the W-34/70 eat up that diacetyl really well apparently.

I’ll aim for more stable temperatures in the future so, as already wrote somewhere here with a little enclosure I want to build for my fermenter to even out mins and maxes.

I have my fermenter exposed to rather significant temperature deltas, so airlock activity maybe is not the best indicator in my case as the air inside expands and contracts. It would suffice of course just to measure daily with the refractometer to see if there still is activity. Not having to though is a tempting idea to me. 😄

For everyone involved and/or curious: I took a regular hydrometer reading last evening, which gave me ~1.011/1.010. So while not too far off, that is still significantly lower than what the Pill sees. Also, when taking some more time to observe, I realized that there is indeed still airlock activity going on. Now that I was sure there was still CO2 being produced, I then peeked under the lid and saw that the Pill had collected quite some dried trub on its waterline. After seriously sanitizing everything, I took it out, cleaned it and pitched it back, though that didn’t result in more realistic measurements. So I guess it’s down to a calibration issue.
What a stupid situation: The only at least halfway reliable measuring instrument after fermentation start remains the saccharometer, which requires a sample of 100 - 200 ml for each measurement, so you can’t do this every day for an elongated period of time without losing significant amounts of product for a batch if this size. Only alternative would be a transparent fermenter like the FermZilla and leave the saccharometer afloat the whole time. Not sure if I like that idea.

At least I got a taste sample this way and I’m happy to report that there is nothing weird going on. It’s not the biggest beer in the world, but summer is coming anyway, so that’s only a half bad thing. I’ll report back with pictures in a few weeks after conditioning. Cheers!

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Forgot to mention my yeast, it’s Fermentis S-04.

The temperature fluctuated from 20.2 to 17.7° C in 10 hours. I don’t know, is that much? Doesn’t look too bad for me, but I’m not yeast. :D

I’ll try agitating the beer a little to see if that sets anything free. It will sit in the bucket for at at least two more days anyway, so I’m not afraid of trub. If that doesn’t help, I’ll also take a look at the hydrometer, thanks for the suggestion.

I’ve got a BrewZilla Gen 4 35L. I don’t know what you’d consider low efficiency, but the unit’s default profile in Brewfather is ~76%, whereas the software calculated roughly 65% efficiency for the batch in question. I’ve got no idea though how that compares to the Braumeister 20L other than the values in Brewfather are rather similar.
What was a first was crushing the grains myself, but mashing on itself went fine. Looking back, I might have wanted to check for starch with iodine, which I even had available. Might do next time. I also might want to add though that I used 13.5 liters of strike water and did what from my understanding is a batch sparge (raising & draining the mash tun, then adding hot water from a second vessel with a jug) with another 15 liters at 80° C. Not perfect for efficiency, I know, but as described my pre-boil gravity was fine. I must just have been to shy on the heat while boiling.

In the back of my head, I have the number of 10% boiloff being desirable, which would match with your 1 hour boil observation.

My last point is that I’m afraid the beer might be too thin as in too much liquid for too few sugars dissolved in it. I didn’t boil off enough water, so I did not concentrate the wort far enough to reach the desired post boil gravity.

Well, that or go to court for a movie collection. I’d phrase my statement differently, but I can see the appeal of the settlement.

No pressure, just a plain plastic bucket. I’d be happy enough to know if my fermentation really stopped, it just seems way too early with just roughly one day of activity.