Very Green Brewday

[barneey]

I was given a couple of plants last year by another member, then bought a few more then a few more etc. ended up with 10 plants, I wrote in permanent marker what there were on the side of the pot - which rubbed off over the Winter period so the 4 plants I have (the rest are at my parents but haven't faired well) I don't know what they are + lost a load of emails 6 months back, they will definitely be an English variety, probably Fuggle, Northdown, Target and maybe a P. Donna.

I working on the assumption of just chucking everything in and see what happens + its given me an insight of the new brewery operation.

[fego]

Sod's law says it will be your best ever beer and you wont possibly be able to reproduce it....

[FUBAR]

How did the steam vent cope with the new boiler Clive ?

[barneey]

I write the rest of the day up over the weekend, but yep the vent did get rid of the steam without too much trouble BUT I had to turn down one of the elements to prevent boil over, 2 elements with a lid on was a little to much. My boil loss wasn't that great either.

The external filter works fine except it did get stuck, 2 reasons why this might have happened , firstly the shear volume of hops OR more than likely I left the very fine mesh filter sock on, this clogged up. A little bit messy taking the filter off half way during the run off but very easy to fix the blockage being an external filter - I replaced the filter minus the sock and everything continued as normal.

Slight issue with the plate as well only getting the wort down to the high 20`s so currently running the cooling coil to get things to a pitching temp.

So all in all a successful day with a few things to tweak here and there and the new brewery should be running great. The control panel did take most of the pain out of the day which was the biggest bonus.

Cheers

[JammyBStard]

Wow, I've got like Two pans, a cool-box and a gas ring

I always envy you guys with your perminant settups, but how do you clean out that Mash-Tun?

[SiHoltye]

Sounds like great fun, less so for the beasties! I like seeing them escape as the hops lay drying and having seen the exodus am not rushing to do a green hop beer. That's just me for now, good luck to you.
Do you plan to hose clip those barbed fittings? Wouldn't trust them hot then cold lots of times.

[barneey]

Wow, I've got like Two pans, a cool-box and a gas ring

I always envy you guys with your perminant settups, but how do you clean out that Mash-Tun?

The Mash Tun is easy just discounted the clamps and lift the thing to the bin, one of the reasons why i`ve still got the silicone hoses.

The boiler is the PITA, that is either scoop and clean or I`ve got a wet and dry vac to trial (cheers greenxp for the idea).

But being able to brew a 4x batch inlieu of a single batch in one go doesnt really mean 4 x the amount of cleaning

[barneey]

Sounds like great fun, less so for the beasties! I like seeing them escape as the hops lay drying and having seen the exodus am not rushing to do a green hop beer. That's just me for now, good luck to you.
Do you plan to hose clip those barbed fittings? Wouldn't trust them hot then cold lots of times.

The ladybird was rehomed on my other hop plant, the caterpiller went for an early butterfly flying lesson, as for anything else they are all happy fermenting away

As for the barbs all are a very very tight fit you cant pull them apart to release them they need to be cut, so shoule be a problem, the only clips I`ve used are on the 15mm to 1/2 silicone hose - I dont trust those.

[SiHoltye]

Cool

[barneey]

The last few pictures I took, just encase anyone is interested.,,,












Finally the MrLard element, no signs of wear and tear after the Rims tube not like those bloody santon things

[Trefoyl]

The hop back filter is very nice but I have to admit for a lot of it I don't even know what I'm looking at
I really like the metal ruler for measuring the level, I never thought of that, instead I put notches in my wooden brew spoon which is pretty crude. I'll be adding one to my shopping list
edit: I think I'd prefer a stainless steel one and they are hard to find.

[barneey]

The ruler is my back up device nice and simple if you have a volume calculator to hand, the scales worked fine - pressing the tare button before boil gave a constant evaporation rate + told me exactly the waste left after the run off.

The filter is great as a hop filter, if you could work out a way of getting fresh hops in there it would also make quite a good hop back.

The ruler does say its stainless although its magnetic, a stainless steel rod also works well

Cheers

[Hogarth]

Nice work, Barneey. You're brewery looks superb. With a set-up like that you needn't even restrict yourself to beer-making -- I bet you could use it to enrich plutonium, perform alien autopsies, etc.

It's probably a daft question, but If you're using scales to measure volume do you adjust for gravity?

[barneey]

Nope they are just a quick method of getting an approx. measurement from the initial wort in to end of boil to run off / waste.

There are so many variables from different temps, the scales are only to 50g accuracy and so on.........

[Belter]

That hop filter clearly works doesn't it. Nice to know that none of that crap gets into your plate chiller.
Didn't you decide to ditch the plate chiller and go with a coil a few months back?