beer =[ GM's 1st 16x Batches, and/or 10 mo. Brewing ]=
- Thread starter grantmichaels
- Start date
Ozzy2001 said:
Cleaning and sanitizing increases with the complexity of the system, certainly ...
I don't know if you've played w/ kegging, or kegging parts, but the little connector posts don't really open easily except for keg-posts ...
Pushing the little fucker open with your finger sucks ass, and ultimately leads to not getting enough contact time because it begins to hurt long before 30s (try like 10s) ...
Haha ...
A lot of the cost involved in my setup have come in order for it to be inherently less likely to injure myself.
All of the mouths at my house (7x including cats and dogs) certainly, and a lot of folks at work, depend on my being able to work ...
If you are cool w/ hoisting and pouring large amounts of water and spending the better part of an afternoon outside, it can be way simpler, certainly! ...
If you setup a sculpture to use gravity, you pay for the sculpture and at least two big containers (assuming you want to move your strike water container down to ultimately be your boil kettle after the mash) ...
Yeah, I don't know ... I think about it all of the time ... I can tell you that Wheebz thinks I'm bat-shit crazy for not sparging in a cooler ...
Like I said, I don't know ... we'll see after a while longer ...
My kettle's 24 quarts, and the boil is very 'controlled' using the electric element, so there's definitely a possibility of buying an Igloo with the capacity for grist to produce 5 gallons of wort into my kettle to boil and finish off using the rest of my apparatus (chilling, closed-system etc) ...
If I decide I want 5 gallons of something, I can either partial-mash for it using everything as-is, or I can add a cooler mash tun to the mix ...
God knows I can produce a shit-ton of temp specific strike water using what amounts to 3x sous vide devices (kettle, Sansaire, Sous Vide Surpreme) ...
So, you know, we'll see what we want to do as we go ... lots of options!
I'm not hating brotha lol. I just see more brewing components than brewing 
. I have to say that the igloo with the false bottom is super easy. The good thing is that I can pretty easily lift my kettle with the strike/sparge water to drain into it. Eventually I'll buck up and get a better kettle or at least add a spigot.
. I have to say that the igloo with the false bottom is super easy. The good thing is that I can pretty easily lift my kettle with the strike/sparge water to drain into it. Eventually I'll buck up and get a better kettle or at least add a spigot.Ozzy2001 said:I'm not hating brotha lol. I just see more brewing components than brewing
I just think about it as a matter of course ...
I don't worry about it, I'm fine w/ whatever ...
In some ways it's turned out to be a tremendous circumnavigation of pouring hot liquids, in the heat.
If I was willing to go outside for an afternoon, and was more willing to pour a shit-load of hot-ass water, it could be so easy, LOL ...
The thing is, I don't have decking or structures that would handle the weight, so it would involve building a multi-level bench etc ...
And that would involve buying tools that I don't have (no wood-working shit here) ...
So, I think it depends on what you already have, to decide which way to go ...
Believe me, because of the time it takes, I'm already pre-planning for when I can't give it this much time (Danielle's sporting-ness tends to fade), by making 2-4 beers from a 10 gal batch of wort - and brewing once a month etc etc ...
grantmichaels said:
That's what I meant
I usually do my mashin the kitchen. I put the cooler up on the counter and drain into my bucket to get the volumes. Then once I'm in my kettle I take it outside.
Lol after the boil, I put the pit up on my tailgate of my truck with the counter flow on my bumper and the ferment chamber on the ground. It's pretty white trash fabulous, but it's cheap and it works. My father in law is a hell of a welder. If I get some extra scratch, I could probably have him weld something up for me.
Lol after the boil, I put the pit up on my tailgate of my truck with the counter flow on my bumper and the ferment chamber on the ground. It's pretty white trash fabulous, but it's cheap and it works. My father in law is a hell of a welder. If I get some extra scratch, I could probably have him weld something up for me.
I have qualms about the outdoor temp here, but the mosquitos are the absolute deal-breaker for me in the Summer ...
We'll see what Fall/Winter brings in that re: ...
About up date my 4th wave thread, just transferred the two beers ...
We'll see what Fall/Winter brings in that re: ...
About up date my 4th wave thread, just transferred the two beers ...
Before I post the metrics on the two batches I just kegged, look at what looks like a crazy infection in photographs!
Crazy, right?
It's reflections, LOL ...
The Charliewine wasn't as dramatic, and didn't have krausen nearly as high-reaching as the Darkness Everybody stout ...
I have to pick and cleanup a hydrometer pics and look back for the OG's real quick ...
Can someone bump this thread ... muchas gracias!
Crazy, right?
It's reflections, LOL ...
The Charliewine wasn't as dramatic, and didn't have krausen nearly as high-reaching as the Darkness Everybody stout ...
I have to pick and cleanup a hydrometer pics and look back for the OG's real quick ...
Can someone bump this thread ... muchas gracias!
Huge caveat.
The beer for FG was from 32F cold-crashing keg, by way of a thief, in a hydrometer flask ...
While I'm sure coldness was spent on warming the plastic thpughout that chain of beer handling, the liquid might have still been a bit cool for the hydrometer reading ... I tinkered in the calc though, and the beer would take a -.001 SG reduction for a huge window of < 68F ref temp.
The Darkness Everybody stout is ~8-8.5% ABV ...
I don't really care about ABV, truth be told.
In my case, it's really only about brewing myself beer that I like to drink.
The FG doesn't really matter as much if you are kegging, LOL ...
Well, it does ... but it's not a safety issue ...
Let's see that second attempted high-gravity, the barleywine ...
The Charliewine's ~10-11% ABV ...
So ...
The smell of the stout was delicious, and it tasted pretty good ...
The smell of the barleywine was good, but not as good ... and the taste was a bit thin, and strong ...
#kegged
I punted on closed-system transfer because the snorkel's weren't trimmed in these keg fermentations ...
The beer for FG was from 32F cold-crashing keg, by way of a thief, in a hydrometer flask ...
While I'm sure coldness was spent on warming the plastic thpughout that chain of beer handling, the liquid might have still been a bit cool for the hydrometer reading ... I tinkered in the calc though, and the beer would take a -.001 SG reduction for a huge window of < 68F ref temp.
The Darkness Everybody stout is ~8-8.5% ABV ...
I don't really care about ABV, truth be told.
In my case, it's really only about brewing myself beer that I like to drink.
The FG doesn't really matter as much if you are kegging, LOL ...
Well, it does ... but it's not a safety issue ...
Let's see that second attempted high-gravity, the barleywine ...
The Charliewine's ~10-11% ABV ...
So ...
The smell of the stout was delicious, and it tasted pretty good ...
The smell of the barleywine was good, but not as good ... and the taste was a bit thin, and strong ...
#kegged
I punted on closed-system transfer because the snorkel's weren't trimmed in these keg fermentations ...
Now that they are kegged, are they ready to drink?
They have to be carbonated first, still ...
I might carb them up in there using a second tank, soon, or I might just let them wait (bigger beers need the time to cleanup/age) until there's opening's in the keezer ...
Very cool. What is tht app you have?
Brewer's Friend ...
They have to be carbonated first, still ...
I might carb them up in there using a second tank, soon, or I might just let them wait (bigger beers need the time to cleanup/age) until there's opening's in the keezer ...
Very cool. What is tht app you have?
Brewer's Friend ...
BOOM.
I was hoping something like that was the reason you hadn't been around as much! ...
Happy for you, dude ...
I was hoping something like that was the reason you hadn't been around as much! ...
Happy for you, dude ...
Since I hooked up w/ a fabricator, I added a 300 micron #10 to the 150 micron I bought from Amazon. I agreed to photograph it and provide feedback, and added it to my order for$20 off what it's going to sell for ($60) ...
I have two filter housings, and I'll be using them in series as part of my closed-system.
The bad news is that I don't think I'll have my shit back yet this weekend to brew, but I need to tackle the BeerGun yet, and I can work on the recipes for the upcoming batches.
CHEERS!
I have two filter housings, and I'll be using them in series as part of my closed-system.
The bad news is that I don't think I'll have my shit back yet this weekend to brew, but I need to tackle the BeerGun yet, and I can work on the recipes for the upcoming batches.
CHEERS!
wheebz said:
there's only two filters, and two housings ...
one #10 is high temp (red), the other is whatever temp is normal - maybe hot tub hot, 120F?, or something ...
i plan to use the 300 micron filter in the red housing w/ the inline O2 on the way to the keg (fermenter) to keep hop and grist degree and break material from making it to the fermenter ... it's setup w/ male and female SS quick-disconnect fittings so that it can be added and subtracted, just like the inline O2 ...
i plan to use the 150 micron filter in the blue housing housing on the transfer from the primary (keg) to the service keg, to filter anything that made it to the primary except the yeast ... that housing is fitted w/ black liquid post connections on each side, since it's designed to be used for keg-to-keg filtration in my arrangement ...
i also have a couple of smaller micron paper filters around, but no plans for them at this time ...
i'm pretty much already backed up on cold storage, so this room-temp lagering is going to commence in a matter of weeks, and i've got it all worked out to where once I put the lid on the kettle of boiling wort to start whirlpool/chilling, that beer will never see "air" again, basically ... that's why I have those spunding valves built on the grey gas connection posts.
i wanted to do a closed system transfer of the kegs last night, but the spears in those two that were already fermenting weren't trimmed, and i didn't want to risk plugging up the 150 micron filter mid-transfer so i just poured them delicately and then purged the headspace of the destination kegs w/ CO2 ...
i need to fire up the dremel and cut off some length from the two alternate spears i purchased, for the next batches ...
i had a keg lid modified to have a thermowell in it, so i can place the probe for my temp-controller in it ...
a lot of this has been just decided to sack up on kegs and use them ... they block light, the ability to move the liquids using gas will be nice, and they are safe and durable and inherently cleanable/sanitizable/servicable/reconfiguarable/hackable ...
because i can generate gallons upon gallons of precise temp strike water using any or all of the 3x sous vide devices here, i am adding a cooler-based mash tun in the near future to be able to sparge (just for you) and run-off a 5 gallon batch into my kettle (6 gallon) for the boil and the rest of my pipeline ...
the electric boiling doesn't really catch you off guard and boil-over ... a little fermcap and your set ... it's a barely adequate boil ... totally NOT rolling ... but it does well up/mound up, so I think it's able to perform it's duty given enough time ...