Tallys Brewery in progress.

[Chappie519]

Nice stuff! Insulation looks good. Any chance of a closer look at your sparge arm? Was it cheap to make?

Chappie

[Talisman]

yeah cheap as chips to make. will have to take it to bits to show how its made so will do it this weekend. (after ive brewed so it still works lol)

[Talisman]

Oh dear... The Trial run didnt go as planned yesterday.

Started ok, got the temp up and transfered to the MT, lobbed the grain in and the temp sat just under 60, so lobbed in a kettle ful and got up to mash temp. Mental note to get the HLT water warmer before doing this next time.

Did a 90min mash and then started to transfer to the boiler. I think grain is getting under the filter so i need to tweak that too. Now i know i was doing a pale ale, but i thought the wort was coming out very pale indeed, so i didnt think my mashing had gone to well. Plus the sparge arm didnt work at slow speed. I wanted to have the water going in match the water coming out speed wise, but adjusting the flow to a slow rate stopped the arm spinning, i had to give it a higher rate for it to turn. more work on that to do.

the boil went fine and dandy but did bring to light the fact i really do need an extractor fan in there.. steamy ceiling..

I havent made a CFC yet so used my old wort cooler, which again works well. brought the temp down real quick.

and then came the fubar

started to pump the wort to the FV and took a hydro readin... 1022 jesus didnt think the mashing had worked out to well... only thing for it i thought was to chuck in some sugar to give it something to ferment out.. which i did.

went to take another reading and... looked at the sight tube..... nearly 50 ltrs.... now i knew that was wrong.. and bugger me that little light went off in my head.

oh dear god, i was pumping in water from the HLT at the same time... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

turned the lever off at the HLT and took another hydro reading of the wort coming from the boiler. 1048.. ok so my mashing had worked out ok.

so now i had a FV with a mother load of watered down wort.. i drained about 30ltrs of it out and tipped it down the sink.. then carried on transfering to the FV.

got about 30 ltrs of some sort of beer now.... still tempted to bin the lot..

lesson learned though...

[adm]

ooops!

At least you figured out the problem early enough to save 30l of beer. That sounds like a good result in my book. You could have ended up with 50L of Miller Lite.

[bramswell]

What did you use for the insulation on the mash tun?
is it the foil stuff from Wickes, and does it hold temp well.

[Chappie519]

Trial runs never seem to go as planned! At least you figured the problem out as adm says! Good luck for the next brew tho!

[Talisman]

What did you use for the insulation on the mash tun?
is it the foil stuff from Wickes, and does it hold temp well.

camping mats with foil front, from fleabay. seem to hold the temp quite well so far.

bubblewrap inner followed by 3 wraps of camping matts.

well the brew is fermenting away nicely at the mo, so will see what it tastes like...

need to get more grain now for another run.

[Bru4u]

Excellent work, you must just count that as a trial run and sort the probs, then get the first brew underway asap, I think you deserve a cracking first brew, not miller lite after all that work. My first brew was a bit of a disaster aswell.

[Talisman]

yeah im not too disapointed, with all those levers i knew id cock one up at some point, and with new kit that ive put together myself you know everything aint gonna go smooth the first time.

[Talisman]

Nice stuff! Insulation looks good. Any chance of a closer look at your sparge arm? Was it cheap to make?

Chappie

posted the sparge arm build on here fella.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17383

well had a taste of the cockup beer in the FV tonight,, tasted like diluted p*ss.

opened up the taps and drained it down the sink...

all clean and ready for another stab at it on saturday again. im going to make a larger batch this time as im feeling failry confident i wont make the same mistake again. (well this time anyway)

[fivetide]

Great stuff Tally - keep your camera handy on this weekend's brewday - it's great that your setup looks that bit different (and unfairly spacious!) compared to many of us. Look forward to seeing how it goes - all the 'Best' of luck.

[Talisman]

will do fivetide, and cheers chris.

to be honeest i sort of expected a cock up as posted.... by me, in dec lol

yeah ive really enjoyed it, just cant wait to make my first brew in it as im bound to cock it up first time lol. or throw the wrong lever the wrong way....

and bugger me i did lol.

looking forward to tomorrow really really much lol

[adm]

Good luck for tomorrow!

Remember to think twice about pulling the levers though

[Chappie519]

Hope the brewing is going better today Tally! Keep an eye on that HLT level

[Talisman]

ehhh ya cheeky buggers...

Well it went fantastic really. About to make a brew day post with some piccies.