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Dycokac

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So broke my 6.5 carboy last night. I knew better too which is sad :( i do partial boils so i took the 2.5 gallon brew water and put it in my carboy instead of my plastic ferment pail like usual and then put it in my bath tub with ice cold water (there's snow on the ground up here and it's about 25F outside so that water was probably around 40F. and it popped the bottom out of the carboy... yikes! Atleast it was only the brew water and not the wort :) so my Hefe is doing fine in a 5gal carboy right now (def leaving the blowoff for awhile).

BUT,I do have a question about hops, i buy the 1oz packets, the id carlson ones. and i split them in half this time, and happend to weigh them before i i used them and read 2 oz total... is that usual? they do say 1oz NET...

And I used leaf plugs for the first time last night, that was cool.

Also used a starter this time with yeast i washed from the last batch! guess i washed it right cause it did take off in the starter and after pitching about 10pm last night i woke to gurgling in the blow off bucket.
 
There are many horror stories with glass carboys. I went with better bottles because, quite frankly the glass ones scare me. Any thermal shock and/or physical shock and you'll easily put microstress cracks that only become apparent when the carboy is full of wort and usually ends in a disaster where you lose your hard work and worse, get hurt. They are made of very cheap glass!

About the hops, I am not sure your question. They are usually quite accurate with the small 1 oz packets. Any small deviation in the weight won't affect your results. They most likely won't be any more than 1 gm under/over.

Cool deal with the yeast! :)
 
I just had a brilliant thought, i wasn't weighting the hops sans the packaging, one was a zip lock bag, the other was just the original pouch minus some of it... so i bet that's where the extra weight went :)

The carboy I had was very thick, nearly half an inch and was almost plate glass strength. Breaking it down to fit in a box, I had to hit it pretty hard with a claw hammer to get it to compact.
 
If I'm reading your post correctly, you put hot water off the stovetop into your carboy?

Definitely don't do that with a Better Bottle either!!!
 
Get yourself a chiller, either immersion or counter-flow...
it will be one of the best investments you can make. You not only don't
need to worry about putting hot wort into anything, carboy, better bottle, bucket,
what ever, but you also will have better cold break, less chance of infection, etc.

I built my CF chiller after brewing my very first batch, and I have never regretted it.
 
Yeah, pouring boiling water into the carboy, didn't go over too well, it did bubble back out on me.

I'm upgrading my brewpot in the next couple months and plan to put together a Counter flow chiller at that time. Hope to have 2 taps of kegging setup by end of January.
 
Dycokac said:
Yeah, pouring boiling water into the carboy, didn't go over too well, it did bubble back out on me.

I'm upgrading my brewpot in the next couple months and plan to put together a Counter flow chiller at that time. Hope to have 2 taps of kegging setup by end of January.

If you are building it yourself, and doing the "copper tubing inside of a garden hose" method, like so many of us have, I will warn you that there is NOTHING fun about trying to ram that tube through the garden hose... use lots of liquid dish soap to lubricate it, that will help. That being said, it was the best thing that I ever could have done, in my opinion. You can dial in an exact temp, and your wort comes out just how you want it, with no interaction with the outside world as it is cooling.

You will not regret building one.
 
I second the dishsoap suggestion and don't try forcing it in without straightening the copper out first. I thought I'd be able to weasel it in while it was still coiled. No way, I got maybe 4 feet in. I'd also recommend getting real rubber hose that does NOT say "do not use with hot water" on the label.
 
+1 on straightening.
I laid everything out in the driveway, so that I could get a nice long straight stretch on the hose and the tubing. Don't try to rush it... it takes time, and it is a pain in the a$$, but it is worth it.
 
I used the design from BYO that the thread you posted mentions. This one looks like it would be a little easier to put together, but also cost a couple bucks more, so, give a little, take a little...
 
it looks to me like most of the price of any chiller is in the coper tubing, I have a contact that can get me some at cost, so i'm def going to have to pull that favor :)
 
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