it's friday man!

took the afternoon off to get a brew in. did BM's blue balls blue moon clone. everything went great, my dip tube left a bit more than i'd like in the boil kettle, but it's all good. hit 1.043, a little lower than i planned, but that's OK too.

here's some random pics of the brew day and some others from my brewin' garage.

mash


here's what happens when you use a racking cane piece for a sight glass without a heat shield. this is on it's 3rd brew and it looks like i'm gonna have to upgrade to glass or just plug the weld.


gettin ready to cool


aerating the wort

my kegerator, a work in progress. don't have much left to do except get a few more kegs, brew some more beer and turn some wooden handles on the lathe.


and the dry erase board i replaced the door panel with.


the guts


thanks for lookin!

Sweet pix!

Very nice, thanks for sharing.

Ah, brewday--I really should get around to having one myself!
I'm curious about your aerator, what is it & how does it work? Is that a port I see in the pic that you connect an O2 tank to?

it's just a plastic 'T' (obviously) that sucks air in through the open part of the 'T'. it's been tricky to get it to suck air in... i'm sure it always does, but i like to be able to hear it and a few times, i've had to move it around, pinch the hose, etc. to make sure it's definitely sucking air in... it uses the venturi principle, as the wort travels from the tube to the 'T', it reduces the diameter, speeds up, and is mixed with the air being sucked in from the open part. it has worked great, very short lag times and great fermentation when coupled with a proper starter. the idea came up in this thread:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/cheap-easy-aeration-gadget-68218/

the one thing I might change about it is to reduce the air intake hole size. i might try and heat up that end of the 'T' and stretch it out, or put a short length of smaller diameter hose off that area... possibly insert a cotton swab soaked in starsan too, but i'm not very worried about an air infection.

thanks for the comments.

this beer turned out awesome by the way, a little green yet but hard to resist.

here's a few pics of the beer and another of the kegerator progress (got the CO2 outside now, a new floor installed, and gas lines for 4 kegs, workin on gettin those filled!).