Recent content by beertastic

How do you mean you wrap the burner base with foil? Around the burner? On top? I don't follow... I feel like my kettle is pretty well insulated, but losing temps through the bottom.

Well I went with the 20 gallon Spike kettle. I was going to get a cheaper Concord, but since I already had a keggle, I really didn't want to be dissatisfied and purchase a third kettle down the line. The volume etchings on my Spike kettle are off by 0.25 gallons. They read 0.25 gallons too...

The ladder works well with a pulley. You can just tie a rope to the rungs, and use that for a center point, but it will want to pull to one side. The board with a hook gives you a nice center point so the pulley doesn't stray.

Make sure you do NOT have "Adjust Temp for Equip" checked (on the Mash tab, under your Mash Profile). You are already pre-heated, you do not want this checked (unless you are setting your Mash Tun Temperature to your strike temp, but it's easier just to leave this setting unchecked). This...

Wow, that's unfortunate. Was thinking about just biting the bullet and going Spike. But that might be a deal breaker. I'd rather not have a sight glass, just one more thing to clean. Have you tested the scale with the same temperature of water to the top? It might be they've calibrated...

Looks good. That's probably where I want to end up.

I definitely intend to (continue to use) a ladder/pulley system. What about a stainless basket? I'm worried about 25+ lbs of grain sagging and leaking down the sides of the kettle...is that an issue? Seems like pour sparging (is that what it's called) would be hard to do without containing...

Want to retire my keggle with a huge lip on it for a kettle better suited for BIAB (and boiling/cleaning in general). Also want to step up my game and do 10 gallon batches, since I don't get to brew as often as I would like. I have 2 MT/HLT coolers, from the old days, but I think I want to...

Looking at the photos in your blog post, it looks like you wrapped the reflectix tightly around your kettle, with no air space. From what I've read, that's the exact wrong way to install reflectix.

How are you guys connecting the gas tubing to the PVC? I looked around Lowes and Home Depot for a 1/2" thread to 1/4" barb and I couldn't find any.

“ferment WLP001 at 75 degrees” The back of WLP001 says no such thing. It says 65F-69F, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I guess that pint counts as clear :mug: Do you shake or stir the beer in the keg after adding the gelatin? How does it get thoroughly mixed in?

That pic is from a couple of years ago, but not much has changed since then. The pineapple plant has since died. I like the ladder because it's somewhat portable. I prefer brewing outside on my deck, weather permitting. Occasionally I brew in the garage. more pics here

Sorry to hijack this thread, but you can you tell me a little more about your 2 vessel BIAB setup? I started off with 3 vessel (1 kettle 2 cooler) setup and migrated to 1 kettle BIAB setup, but find it limiting in batch size and efficiency and would like to introduce a HLT/sparge some of the...

I've been brewing for about 5 years, but not as experienced as some people here. I started off with some random digital thermometer we had in the kitchen drawer. I never really trusted it so I moved up to the CDN thermometer people love so much. It served me well for a few years, but after...