I am a maniacal optimizer ... I can't stop crunching on stuff ...
I'm sitting here thinking about brewing, and what's going well and what's not fun ...
Top of my list for not-fun is wort chilling ... my brew day gets hectic and stops being fun when it comes time to sanitize the fermenter and accessory gear, and setup and run the equipment for the wort chilling ...
In the end, I've come to use my tandem exactly the way I thought I would. The immersion chiller is repurposed as an inline prechiller for the plate chiller that's added in the wort recirc whirlpool loop if you will. The plate chiller alone is more effective than the immersion chiller alone, and I like not putting objects into my post-boil wort/beer as a general principle.
I think though, that I need to try a new method next all-grain brew, since I have multiple pumps around - and that is using the tap water from 212F down to like 100F as I've done, but then switching the plate chillers water source to pumped ice water, and skipping the immersion chiller altogether. RM has said he thought I'd end up not using the immersion chiller, and I think it might be true.
Here's why - been doing it wrong. Mixing 32F ice and groundwater is not nearly as effective as pulling a five gallon deer park container of 38F water out of the keezer and pumping it through the plate chiller. FiVe gallons of 38F water has much better cooling potential than five gallons of ice-slurry water, for all reasonably amounts of ice.
So, I think the immersion chiller will be relegated to only seeing use on test batches and perhaps for any extract brews where I'm working on the stove without a spigot.
Test batches are coming back real soon, and I'm absolutely not using the automated rig for them - the ceremony and CIP is far too extensive.
My mash in one sous vide, sparge from the other plans from way back are going to come roaring back in the near future, along with making pressure canned starters in bulk. Once I brew this five gallon batch of stout (partial grain), I'll be crossing the twenty-gallon mark in total batches, and I'm ready to implement pre-made starters and yeast harvesting etc before the next twenty are brewed.
So, I think we'll wrap up this wave and enter a fourth here pretty soon - where I do some alternating five (partial) and single gallon brew sessions to do some side-by-side hops and yeast comparison experiments.
I think at just about any point in time, I'll decide to deep-dive on saison and stout only, and not brew anything else. If I had unlimited cold storage, I'd just brew stouts.
Every beer I drink that isn't stout, serves only to keep my wonting for stout burning strong - I'll by those. I'm going to specialize sooner than later, and drill-down into stouts - water, which brand grain, whether yeast suits them better after successive harvesting's etc.
In other related news, the kit I didn't brew seems mad decent, with ingredients from BSG, Munton's, and Fermentis ...
For coming from Amazon, and being a partial-grain ditty, it seems like it should make a decent beer - and five gallons of it - using just a stock pot.
Here's to hoping it gets me some stout, because there's exceedingly little available for purchase right now - middle of summer and all.
It's summer 45-50 weeks of the year here - I want stout full-time. Fuck these 'stout is a winter seasonal' assholes, wherever they are ...
CHEERS!
