hello and thank you

Hi -

Joined homebrewtalk almost a year ago, and I've been using mostly to inspire recipes and get tips on my operation -- a small, 5-gal setup in my apartment. I feel like this site is a gold mine of great ideas.

Things that I've discovered work well with my setup:

It's Seattle, and almost always 64-68 degrees. Great ale brewing conditions.

It takes a long time to bring the wort up to a boil on an electric range, so I split my batch onto 2 burners, and that seems to work well to save some time.

Investing in a kegging system was great because I love the act of dispensing beer from my own tap. It costs more, with all of the CO2 and cleaning etc, and requires a bit more work, but I love the payoffs.


Things I'm working on with my setup:

It takes a while to cool my wort, although I've learned the fastest way is to submerge the pot in the ice-water filled sink (doesn't stay icy for long) while running ice water through my wort chiller, pumped from a separate 'holding tank' by an aquarium pump. The faucet from the sink is diverted to keep the holding tank full. Takes 30min from boil to room temp, and from what I've read on here, that's pretty slow, but never had issues with spoilage.

I have terrible horrible conversion rates. I almost always do double batch sparge with a really hot final rinse. And always my OGs come in much lower than I'm reading on the forums (unless people overstate their OGs like some overstate their....:cross. I always mash a little on the lower side -- 150-ish for most ales. I know that there could be a number of reasons for my poor conversion. I do my best to remedy by using an inordinate amount of grain and saying f**k it.

Anyway - rambling now, but that's because I'm 2 Laurelhurst IPA's down...

Hello, and thank you.

Well the first thing I would mention is to make double sure your calculating your water volume and boiloff correctly; now you seem like you've done enough batches to know your system so you probably are. I'm guessing your remember to correct your hydrometer for temperature as well? How about checking your thermometers? Your scale?

Now I say this all the time, but having a good false bottom is REALLY worth the effort to build it, or the cost of it, whichever route you take. Since you batch sparge, if you have a decent false bottom maybe you should try fly sparging, not because it's better but just to try something different if everything else fails. If you do not have a very good false bottom, I would keep batch sparging for sure though.

30 mins isn't all that bad, besides if your like me your built for time not speed.

Sure am glad to see you posted and hope to hear form you a lot more. Seeing that your from Seattle is making me want to brew a Moose Drool clone again!

Thanks, etricklin, for these suggestions. I have not corrected my hydrometer for temp...didn't even know this was a thing!

My thermometer is calibrated as far as I can tell.

I did try fly sparging once using a colander... I have a simple draining system in a rectangular cooler, made from dishwasher cord adapted with wire to keep it stable. It looks like hell after all of the abuse it's taken during mashing. SO - I will start there and invest (one of these days) in a false bottom.

Thanks!

Anytime!

Might want to check out this old thread:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f257/5-00-false-bottom-plan-340130/