Newbie Brew Day and new Brew Rig

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carp

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Newbie Brew Day and (almost) new Brew Rig So I'm in the midst of my third brew. I leaped into all-grain with my first brew, and its getting easier. Between the first and second brew, I built the 3-tier rig in the photos. The initial inspiration was a picture of Lil'Sparky's first rig, but I borrowed liberally from others, for the keggle attachment 'mechanism' using hooks on the central column, and for the winch to allow raising the BK up high enough for gravity feed to the fermenter. For my chiller credit goes to RedIrocZ-28 for the rib cage design. I modified his idea a bit in that the two coils are plumbed in parallel rather than in series. And you'll notice that my keggles are semi-polished, courtesy of Bobby_M. On my first two brews I ended up short on wort, but with adequate gravity, so I was able to add water and maintain good OG (1.052, 1.064). On the second brew (the first with the keggle) the spigot got clogged instantly, in spite (or because?) of using a SS scrubbie as a filter, so today I'm using Lil' Sparky's suspended paint strainer bag for my hops. The first brew was an SNPA clone recipe from brew365.com. For the second I increased the grain bill by 10% and added an ounce of Centennial to the first wort (preboil). The first brew has a strong phenol defect, I think due to careless use of bleach. I think I'll be able to choke it down but I'm not sure. The second brew is only 2 weeks old but I think is going to be quite nice. Todays recipe is based roughly on BierMuncher's SNPA Light Clone, but with US-05 yeast and slight change to the hops, most notably addition of 1/2 oz Centennial as FWH. I got 82% efficiency out of the mash process, so lets hope the rest of the day goes as well. By the time I got this post together I'm all finished. Anyway its all great fun, and I can't thank enough all the contributors here who generate and document their great ideas and techniques. PS: I see that I'm not allowed to post attachments, so no photos after all. Sorry. PSS: Sorry for the long paragraph. My formatting didn't seem to 'take'.
 
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