Ready to rock...

[Andy]

Well.....

after all my recent equipment purchases and building I actually think I'm ready to brew my first all grain

Busy this w/e sooooo looks like the weekend of the 21st (my Mums birthday! makes naming the beer easy then ).


Excellent!

[Andy]

[Andy]

Hmmm, potential 'issue' with brewing up next Saturday (21st Jan)...

Am going on hols to Tenerife on 31st Jan so I'd need to have the brew in the FV by 30th Jan. That gives nine days fermentation......


Whaddya reckon ? Enough time ?



Edit: I meant *out* of the FV by 30th Jan.

[James]

Agree with DAAB on that one, youll have no worries.

If it were me, i'd go done the 'transfer to secondary' route then transfer to keg when you come back.

JC

[BlightyBrewer]

I'm new to this forum, so apologies if this questions results in you repeating previously posted info.

Andy, what AG set-up do you have?

[Andy]

Hi BB and welcome!

Firstly, I'm new to AG brewing and hope to complete my first this w/e. I've brewed a few 3kg kits before with good results.

My AG setup, as constructed over the last month or so :-

HLT - plastic fermenting bucket to which I've added a kettle heating element and a nylon drum tap
Mash tun - 30L Thermos coolbox from Argos, fitted a drum tap and built an internal manifold out of braided stainless steel hose.
Phils Sparging Arm
Copper - 27 litre burco boiler from ebay
Counterflow cooler - built using 5/8" PVC hose and 10m of 10mm copper pipe + fittings

Will use a 3 tier gravity setup when sparging.

That's about it.

[BlightyBrewer]

Thanks for the welcome andy.

Looks like a good set-up. I was thinking about the Thermos cooler from Argos for my mash tun. I think it is the same cool box (£15 from Argos) that Brupaks add a tap and manifold to and sell on for £40! <_<

I was thinking about Batch sparging to start off with.

Do you have a thermostat on your HLT?

[Andy]

Yeah, it's exactly the same coolbox! I went DIY and it's very easy + satisfying to boot.

I've put together a controller for the HLT :-

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andy.whit/ ... G_2032.jpg

It's a simmerstat as used on electric cooker.

[sagwalla]

How does that controller work? It doesn't have a thermostat, I guess.

I noticed yesterday that my sparge water lost a lot of heat during the sparge. I started the sparge with the HLT at 181F and by the time I was finished (ca. 20 mins) it was down in the 160s. I checked the grain bed and it was only at 156. I thought about just plugging the coil back in, but I reckoned it would start to overheat since there's not as much water in the HLT.

Thus my question...does the simmerstat do anything but regulate the current to the coil? I mean, even if that's all it does, that's no bad thing. Better than on/off.

[sagwalla]

Thanks for that. Interesting. What would happen if you just used a home light dimmer switch? I guess that would be more like the variac.

I really want something with a thermostat effect. I did some looking around last year - some greenhouse kit has that functionality on the cheap, but I've not got around to purchasing.

[Andy]

Doubt if a light dimmer would be too happy with 2.3kW+ going through it :blink:

[sagwalla]

I can tell you from experience what they look like if you short across them. And smell like.