We Indian's take pride in our "Jugaad way" of living - That is, dealing with problems in a quick, simple and efficient but inexpensive way. This is the place to show off your brewing tricks in dealing with everyday problems, of course in your own ingenious way.
Airlock Alternatives
Due to import restrictions, currently plastic airlocks have become either scarce or impractically costly. Use this trick, it will save you some bucks.
Trick: Poke a few holes in a surgical glove or unused(duh) condom and fix it to the mouth of your fermenter.
As the air pressure builds up inside your fermenter, poked holes will stretch and let out the gas from inside. While the fermentation is active; due to pressure difference between fermenter and the environment, outside air will not be able to get in. Once the pressure drops, holes will self-seal and keep the fermenter airlocked.
No Airlock? No sweat... Try a surgical glove or a condom maybe!
Hops keep floating when you dry hop your IPA?
If you have dry hopped before you might have encountered this problem. Hop debris keeps floating without doing anything and also develops a clarity issue in your final beer.
Trick: Pack your hops in a brew bag, throw in 5-7 marbles (or more as per need) in them, tie the string to the bottom of your keg lid or in a fermenter just throw it in without bothering yourself.
This will contain most of the hop particles in the bag and the bag will sink allowing for a better contact and extraction of flavours.
Cooling a Brew Bag & Marbles after boil
Attaching to bottom of a lid
You must boil the bag and marbles in water for 15 minutes to kill off any wild microbes attached to them prior to this. Also obviously let them cool before putting hops in them.