ALVAmeister

[Haydnexport]

very smart , mind if i ask how much the controller cost along with the malt tube assembly and the element ?

[cqout]

€300 for the controller
£160 for the genuine malt tube, filters and center rod
£34 for the element and compression mounts

The cost soon mounts!!

[Fil]

and the value of the justified smug pride you feel suppin the beer out of it is priceless

[Haydnexport]

im going to be building a 100l 3v setup this summer , it was going to be sooner but a bigger project has interrupted. I'd be very interested in building something like this to do the smaller batches , stout , new beers etc , so ill be following this thread with interest !

[cqout]

Well i have a brew on and will update as I go

The water is warming up



The mash is going well

[cqout]

Wow - nice clear wort



Nice strong boil

[cqout]

Ok so my findings from today:

My plate chiller got blocked even though it has 2 fine mesh filters and I put my hops in a spider so I need to find a way to filter before it or change to a different chiller
ANY SUGGESTIONS

It was a dream to use and an even better dream to clean

I was done in about 6 hours (that 2 hours less than my brutus set up)

The 3 Kw element is more than man enough to brew with and kept a boil even though it was freezing outside today

I love the ALVA controller although I need to spend some time learning how to use it fully

I need to work on my starting amount because I only ended up with 15l in the fermenter which was about 10l short of what I wanted
I started with 28l and so have lost 13l in total

All in all a good day with some minor things to sort out

I am well chuffed with it and cant wait to brew again - just have to wait for this one to ferment lol

[barneey]

1st, if you are using BeerSmith check if the liquor retained ratio is still set to something like 0.7l / kg of grist, if so change it to 1l /1kg. Although you mentioned you had a good boil have you worked out the % lost? I would go for approx. 10% so if its higher either turn down the element or boil without jacket on. Was the run off into FV pump or gravity, a pump should suck the copper drier.

[Fil]

sounds like a great 'getting to know the brewery brew' if the OG of the brew is high enough you could liquor back upto your target volume?

sounds like just a few teething issues, and judging by your brew build ability, nothing you cant whip into shape over the next brew or 2

i went for a tube cfc and have no clogging issues, no filters personally i just didnt like the idea of all those closed off hidden plates in a plate chiller and my brewbudget wont stretch to a stripable plate chiller. a simple approach that could solve the problem is to wedge a stainless steel or copper pan scrubby in your drain port, with a little patience the scrubbies can be teased apart so threading into a drain tube is also doable, you just need a wire hook to extract it

Perhaps you didnt let the kettle sit long enough before you started the chill, my experience with a hop spider is that the kettle residue is little more than break material which falls out pretty quickly with kettle finnings (20-30 mins sat still), the initial opening of the drain should suck all the sediment in the drains vicinity, so perhaps a quick drain off 1/4 of a pint before you hook up the pump/chiller may just do it? and you can probably tip that back into the back of the kettle with no ill effect