Had a brew with the G/f today, Its a 5 hour brewday from start to finish, and the start included lumping up grain scales and equipment to the brewshed and the end was after a clean down of the equipment.
Started circa 3pm and locked the shed up at 8pm..
brewed a smash apa with Crisps MO (4.5kg) and 100g of 2013 amarillo.
30g for 90 mins
25g for the last 20 mins
25g at flame out
and 20g in the FV for upto 7 days of primary with US-05
ingredients
mashed/doughed in easily enough with just under 16l of liquor - yes i had lost the 'cap' so improvised with me turkeybaster and some ptfe..
top plate on
its a much easier fit in with a hot tube,
the recirculated mash started very murky
after about 30 mins it was crystal clear...
All the liquor returned down thru the top plate the liquid level remained a good 5mm below the level of the central overflow
I found a step ladder very helpful when lifting the tube up and sitting it in place but i had sat the machine on a stand so i could plug it in into my badly positioned 13a sockets..
sparged with 16l of water. just poured it in from a bucket, keeping the level lower than the overflow height.
ended up with 28l preboil volume, tho i may have removed the malt tube a lil premature?? it drained a bit more than i expected sat in the sink..
the initial foam up approaching the boil wanted to escape, a little did I wasnt on the ball , but its easily dampened with a paddle/spoon and a stir..
might only be 2kw but it boils nicely...
no more pics sorry...
I dont like the cfc sat on the lid, makes it tricky to add hops at flame out oif you have recirculated thru the cfc to sanitise it.. the beer in feed tube is too short (currently) to sit the cfc anywhere else tho..
I also didnt like the clean up but i never do and with no method in place i made hard work of it..
a real cheap and easy addition to the package would be a digital kitchen timer to time the mash and boil with..
I didnt use the cfc as effectivly as i could not opening up the cold water feed tap enough early on so ended up with wort at 30C in the FV a lil too warm to pitch straight away, i pitched later when at 26C
the FG @30C was 1044 circa 25l final volume,..
deadspace is minimal when a wee forward tip is employed at the end of the drain to keep the hop filter submerged as long as possible.
the pump is POWERFULL, it had sucked the hop matter into a solid lump over its surface and was still sucking liquid through.. very impressive.. no lil brown solar pump fitted here..
all in all i give it 9.9 out of 10
cheers
