paledragon

Recipes 

gearmotor:

100 RPM AC Gearmotor

i forget who it was that found these, but credit goes to them.

for the HLT i'll be moving up to the 150 rpm version. post #5 has a picture of the copper coil inside the HEX. most people just use the HLT as the HEX. i decided to build a smaller dedicated HEX to have independent temperature control.

The Pol

Recipes 

I think I am the first to use them in a build that has been detailed in a thread on this forum... Id recommend the 150 RPM motor, but 100 will work fine.

paledragon

Recipes 

i'm sure this delay is pretty par for the course. after starting the upgrade in february and thinking i'd be done in 2 months, i finally ran the first brew on the new system. flipping on the HLT to pitching yeast was about 6 hours. i'm sure that'll go down once i've got a couple batches on it, plus post boil cool down took a little longer than normal. now that i'm sure my HLT is leak free, i'm gonna try Pol's approach next time and heat the night before so i'm not starting from 60* tap water.

here's the brew kettle with aluminum anode wrapped in aluminum foil:



140* F to boiling took 20 minutes (7 gallons, 4500 watts).

holy hell did batch sparging fly on this thing compared to my old SS braid. i also hit 80% efficiency (on the higher end of normal for me), which was a big relief. although i guess the biggest unknown was whether or not i'd lose pump prime while recirculating. not having to vorlauf was nice. definitely one of least favorite parts of my prior setup.

thanks again to everyone whose ideas i borrowed putting this together.

p.d.

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keg 1: 3 hearted ale
keg 2: british strong ale
keg 3: munich helles
keg 4: empty

on deck: more IPA.