TILT troubles!

[MashBag]

How on earth do I manage without one. ?

Very well I presume, but what is your point?

On a brewday I use refractometer during the mash and the boil. Once the wort is in the FV I take a sample and use a hydrometer to confirm the OG. During the fermentation I use my eyes to see how things are progressing and after 50 years of brewing I can judge pretty well how things are progressing. After the tranfer to the secondary FV I take another sample and use the hydrometer once again. Usually the gravity is one or two points above the projected FG. It usually takes a between two to four days to reach the the projected FG. I then transfer to the bottling/barreling vessel and prime with disolved cane sugar then bottle or barrel. At this stage the beer appears to the eyes to be crystal clear.
Quite simple really and it works. Without any need for electronic wizardry.
Just for the record I have more than the average amount of brewing equipment.
20 litre Braumeister + all the extas
50 litre Braumeister + all the accessories
2 SS conical fermenters
5 × 60 litre plastic FVs
4 30 litre plastic FVs
And lots more beside
My motto is spend the money on essential equipment and not on boy's toys.

that just about covers my process too..... and I have 5 x 300 litre SS tanks and a couple of 500l fermenters too, for what its worth.

[guypettigrew]

Wow! Are you a commercial brewer?

Guy

[MashBag]

Nah, just thirsty

[PeeBee]

... So stuck at 1.027. And it does taste pretty sweet. The Porter gets a bit of rousing (authentic) and half a packet of S-04 (unauthentic! But a yeast happy having a go at dextrin). The surface of the beer (and the TILT) was devoid of any floating rafts of yeast.

Patience!

WhitbreadPorter1849II.JPG (51.32 KiB) Viewed 3242 times

The erratic (day/night) temperature is due to different probe placements. The cooler is attached to the probe at the base of the fermenter.

[MashBag]

My takeaway from that graph: Get an inkbird

[PeeBee]

My takeaway from that graph: Get an inkbird

I've already got a collection of ITC-308s: Crappy things, they have an inherent fault and will suddenly read the temperature 2-3 degrees higher than it is (just for an instant, but if using as a controller it is enough to trigger what they are controlling). I've a couple of ICT-1000 that will hopefully be better when I get around to fitting them. I recommend never setting a no-trigger band less than 4C or these Inkbirds will "pulse" (rapidly switch on and off) the item it is controlling (which can damage fridges/freezers apparently). Most (all?) ITC-308s have this fault. If you reckon you have an ITC-308 immune to this fault, you are living in Narnia. (Enough ranting? You touched a raw nerve with that comment!).

But that's by-the-way. What you should have taken away is the temperature will vary within the fermenter. Whatever controller you use, if you've just got one probe you will be kidding yourself if you think the temperature actually is what it's telling you.

[MashBag]

I understood that was what the "compressor delay" was for?

I don't have that issue... Brewing in the UK, I only need to set heating.

[guypettigrew]

I understood that was what the "compressor delay" was for? Yes, it is. My Inkbird controls the temperature in my beer cupboard with three king Kegs in. The compressor delay is set for the maximum, 10 minutes.

I don't have that issue... Brewing in the UK, I only need to set heating.How do you cool at the end of fermentation? I drop the temperature of the fermenter to about 12°C, then about 4°C, using a Maxi 110 linked to the cooling coil in the fermenter. Controlled by the SS Brewtech controller, which is like an Inkbird.

Guy

[MashBag]

Cooling at the end of fermentation is easy.
Rack into jerry can, bung in fridge for 2 weeks @ 4°c.

I use my fridge as a fridge (with room for beer) and fermentation is ambient + heating.

The only compromise is that that I don't ferment in heat waves. I keep stock instead.

[PeeBee]

I understood that was what the "compressor delay" was for? …

You wouldn't be the first to think that. And Inkbird are sooooo helpful? Yeah, up to the point they find themselves in a corner! Then suddenly their grasp of spoken English deserts them.

Major discussion on it >here< (going back over two years!).

[MashBag]

Thanks for the link. Will have a read.

[PeeBee]

I understood that was what the "compressor delay" was for? Yes, it is. My Inkbird controls the temperature in my beer cupboard with three king Kegs in. The compressor delay is set for the maximum, 10 minutes. …

Guy

Let me try to describe how "compressor delay" works; or at least Inkbird's interpretation:

When the unit is first switched on, no signal is put out to the cooler until the configured delay has expired.

After the delay has expired if the temperature is above the configured temperature (+ configured margin) the cooler is switched on. The "delay" is not reset until the control unit (not the cooler) is switched off and on again.

Pretty simplistic, I was disappointed learning this too. I'd have thought the delay timer restarted whenever the cooler switched off and some controllers might do this? But that wouldn't solve the issue, as soon as the unit gets an erroneous temperature spike outside the "compressor delay" the cooler compressor switches on ... and quickly switches off again (well within a handful of seconds) as the temperature reading returns to "normal".


I was dealing with this yesterday monitoring a shelf-cooler. But I was only using the ITC-308 to monitor, not control. But the erroneous temperature spikes were occurring every 5-15 minutes (this controller - I've 4 and at least one is a warranty replacement for the issue but has the same fault - might be particularly bad).

Yours do it too! But you haven't really noticed because the fault is so transitory. I bet you are dead impressed how close to the set temperature the ITC-308 keeps things (not that it's odd you hardly ever see the upper temperatures of the set range). Who knows what damage this treatment does to the compressor? If any?

[MashBag]

Now replying on ITC thread

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=83419&p=858815#p858815

[PeeBee]

Thanks MashBag. And this thread has turned into another "stuck fermentation" thread, not "TILT troubles". Even my proclamation that I've "unstuck" my stuck fermentation was just a flash-in-the-pan …

WhitbreadPorter1849III.JPG (52.27 KiB) Viewed 3135 times

Next job is get that Porter casked/kegged. So it will be a bit sweet perhaps? But not as sweet as the "milk stouts" that have suddenly become so popular ("craft brewing" has turned the into "milk-shakes", "mocha", etc. which is far more appealing?). And perhaps abandon this thread?

[PeeBee]

Left this thread hanging a bit, so I'll tidy that up ...

A few days after my last post I was resigned to having suffered a "stuck" ferment. But FG of 1.025 isn't that bad and I could see why I'd got a "stuck" ferment (under mashing Chevallier barley malt and using a dextrin adverse yeast; S-33). So I prepared to cask it.

But the blasted stuff had different ideas and sprang back into life. After another week in the fermenter (red line is the gravity, and I've switched to Beersmith's output from imported Tilt data 'cos I lost the TiltPi output):

WhitbreadPorter1849-A.JPG (30.61 KiB) Viewed 2939 times

And this time it did get casked. The extra S-04 finally got it's act together, but FG greatly overshot expectation and I ended up at 1.011. I know it's S-04 that did this because S-33 does not do that sort of thing).

It's okay, I sneaked a taster last night (bottled spare that couldn't fit in cask/keg). But it's not as "lush" at my earlier (2017) attempt using 100% emulated brown malt(quite an improvement on last year's 1850 Whitbread London Porter though).

Note how the temperature readings stabilised when ferment restarted. The bubbles stirring up the beer (the Tilt is floating on the surface, the temperature controller has a probe lower down).

But four weeks in the fermenter. I had the impression it was doomed.