Home Brew Forum

Seems like ages since I started getting all of my stuff together for an AG brewery. Well I'm finally sorted and today is the first.
Doing a Hobgoblin clone. It's been fun so far, and very much a learning curve. No matter how much reading you do it doesn't prepare you for the little quirks of your equipment.
Well I'm at the sparging stage and have been doing so for about an hour. Taking it real slow as I don't want to get it stuck.
Here's a couple of pics

oops nearly forgot the hop stopper. Had to quickly tip wort back into the Fv to attach it. Hope I don't get into trouble with hot side aeration.
Also the container with the hole that I use for fly sparging may need to be changed, as it hold the sparge water whilst it slowly drips out into the mash tun. Which all sounds good but it does allow the water to cool somewhat meaning that I have'nt raised the temp of the grain bed enough.

vanish wrote:oops nearly forgot the hop stopper. Had to quickly tip wort back into the Fv to attach it. Hope I don't get into trouble with hot side aeration.
Also the container with the hole that I use for fly sparging may need to be changed, as it hold the sparge water whilst it slowly drips out into the mash tun. Which all sounds good but it does allow the water to cool somewhat meaning that I have'nt raised the temp of the grain bed enough.

I just use the lid of an 2 litre ice cream box and jug the water slowly on to that. it takes the force and stops it breaking the bed.. i guess you could run the water from the HLT dirctly onto something like that?

yeah maybe your right. I do fancy concocting some kind of plastic manifold. I have some spray tubing that is used for tropical fish, maybe i'll use that.
Anyway nearly half way through the boil now... about to add the second lot of hops. This has taken ages, I first put the water on to boil at about 8:30am!

Have just found someone who wants my spent malt. A fiends neighbour has chickens. That's a blessing in disguise as I didn't really want that lot sitting around stinking the place up.

Well done Vanish .... nice set up.

Enjoy your day!

Well that's it all finished. As you can see it's now in the fermenting chamber. I was really surprised at how much was lost to the trub. I started the boil with 26.3L, then 25.5 after the boil. Then ended up with 21 liters in the FV. Had to top up 2L which gave me an OG of 1.057 (the estimate was 1.051 so no too bad)

Just gotta clean everything up now.

Seing as I posted a pic of my wooden fermenting chamber. I thought I'd post a pic of my new project. The fridge> Idea is that during the cooler months when only heating is necessary I can use the wooden one, which fits two FV's. Then during the summer I can use the fridge when temperatures need to be kept down, which will only hold one FV but hey you cant have it all!

What is the bottle of water in your cupboard for?

Ah thats to buffer the temperature. Basically if the temp probe was dangling in the air the it would feel the heat radiating from the hat pad and then switch the heat off regardless of the ambient temperature. With the probe in the water bottle the water will settle at the ambient temp, and the probe will get a more accurate reading. I suppose the best way to do it would be to pop the probe in the FV, but I can't be bothered to clean and streilise the thing all of the time.

Could you tape it to the side of the FV with a bit of insulation covering it maybe.

Would be better to control the fermentation temp rather than the cupboard temp (not that I do that at present, but I intend to eventually)

Ultimately the temp of the wort will be the same as that of the cupboard, providing that the cupboard stays at a constant temp'. I just find it easier to leave it set up like that. It's a matter of choice, as I said earlier the best way is to put the probe into the wort.

Here's what I was greeted with today....



It's absolutely gone off like a rocket, glad I put the tray there.

Have you sanitized a thermometer and taken the temp of the wort? Now might be a good moment (during vigorous fermentation) just to see if there is much difference between where your probe is and your wort? I'd be curious just in case there was a significant difference.

good point, I'll do that.

You were absolutely right SiHoltye. The temperature on the TC-10 read 20.2 and i got a reading of 23 on my glass thermometer. Interestingly I then placed the thermometer into the water bottle which read 22. I wonder if the wort is attracting the heat easier as it is a darker liquid? Anyway I've now dropped the set point from 20 to 17 and hopefully that should right things.