ok so i chucked a brew through on the shiny stuff and the gas burners, but without the benefit of a stand or use of the pumps
no major incidents though!
camden tablets for 100l litres of water heated to 80c.(then had a friend come over and help me lift it up onto a frame) and about 35 litres dropped into the second pot/tun with the false bottom from vossy. (after drilling some extra holes in the pick up tube under the mesh)
left it to settle down to 76c and chucked in 1kg crystal, 1kg torr wheat and 12kg pale. settled at 65.7c. (you're right about the increased temp stability of the bigger mash phil) stayed there for an hour then gradually dropped to 65.2 in the last half hour. (another call to my mate across the way for the next lifting feat to get this up to a frame and the hlt even higher) sparge started with a hastily thrown together sparge manifold blatantly ripping off phil's design. water refused to run through at any more than a trickle till problem traced to the tap to hose joint on the hlt outlet.(i had already completely disassembled the sparge manifold by then
). managed to end up with about 80+litres in the kettle. wind seriously slowed the progress of the climb to boil temp (definitely going to be wind shields on the stand when i get to it.) kept the lid on till the temp got to 80c just to speed things up a bit. when it got there easy enough to keep a steady rolling boil going. 75g goldings in at start of boil. 100g more at 45 mins and another 100g in at 15mins from end. while the boil was ongoing i finally got round to turning the full coil of 10mm copper pipe into a chiller. (a corny seemed too small a dia so i went for a 25l winemakers fermenter as the guide). this worked brilliantly bringing the 65-70l left (thought i'd have lost more over 90min) down to 20c in about twenty min.(just as quick as the old coil took for 25l! ) all about getting as much surface in there as possible i suppose. one more lifting achievement later and drain off through the same hop straining manifold i used for the small burco type boiler. first use of one of the 65l+ stainless fermenters i bought. pitched with 6 teaspoons of nottingham staright into the vessel dry. (1.043 og post boil before i forget). and into the fridge. switched it on to keep the temp from going to high, sitting at 20c this morning with a good healthy calm yeast head. a few grainy pics taken on the phone camera. will post them later when i'm at home.
remember these