Jim's Beer Kit

Sorry, I should have said 'rinsing' rather than washing. Thanks for these replies. Okay, next time I'll try letting the trub settle but not the yeast, that makes sense. This time round I'll have to wing it. I went through these hoops some years ago but have since stopped washing/rinsing yeast after...

Sorry, I should have said 'rinsing' rather than washing. Thanks for these replies. Okay, next time I'll try letting the trub settle but not the yeast, that makes sense. This time round I'll have to wing it. I went through these hoops some years ago but have since stopped washing/rinsing yeast after ...

Stupid double post. Must be the rain.

Okay, I've just tried washing (EDIT: rinsing, I should have said) yeast for the first time. I collected the sediment from my five-litre fermenter, mixed it in a litre of sterile water and let it settle, and now have a neat layer of yeast and a neat layer of trub, both about a centimeter deep. The qu...

Maybe you should say 'For Decorative Purposes Only' -- like homebrew shops do with stills.

Why shouldn't external coils work around a placcie FV? Bit less efficient, but still doable I'd have thought.

I do it the other way round and have plastic coils around a SS fermenter -- that works okay.

I prefer stainless, but there's a lot to be said for plastic. You can fill a plastic fermenter with bleach and not worry you're going to start pitting the surface. You can crash cool it without sucking in oxygen -- the plastic should have enough 'bag' in it to compensate for the decrease in volume. ...

I'm up for this, on my one-gallon rig.

Thanks. In terms of mashing the systems are quite similar, so perhaps I can get away with using same parameters. Another possibility is using two pids and one ssr though I suppose you'd have to put a switch in.

I'm using the same PID/SSR set-up for both my five-gallon HERMS and my one-gallon recirculating system. Obviously each system will need a different set of parameters. I know I can autotune the PID, but I don't want to do this each time. Can I autotune it once for each system, and then manually input...

I don't mean to be a pooper on your build, (it looks very nice) but shouldn't you have a drip thingy on you steam pipe so the condensate don't run back into you kettle .?.? Actually, there are two. One’s in the box that allows the chimney to rise and fall. It’s the little pipe on the left. https://...

Jim wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 13, 2017 2:58 pm

Nice build!

And very shiny indeed.

I gave it an extra polish just for you, Jim.

Haha :) How did you engrave/mark the brass out of interest? I designed it on my computer, printed it out with a laser printer, transferred the toner onto the brass, and etched it with ferric chloride. Here's a thread I wrote about it. Unfortunately, thanks to F!$£***! photobucket, the pictures have...

chris2012 wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 13, 2017 3:00 pm

Wow, awesome

The controller especially looks 'steampunk'

Also I love the big copper pipe used for the steam extraction.

I've a bit of a brass fetish, I can't deny it.

I’ve always wanted a little one-gallon system to go alongside my main brewery, partly for more variation and partly for experiments. People always say that small-batch brewing is a lot of faff for not much beer, and they’re probably right, so I made ease of use and a quick brewday my top priorities....