Well I brewed my return batch Friday night. It was a mini mash kit from AHB.
My mash tun worked very well. But, I definitely need a better way to get the water into it. Lifting 6.5 gal of 165F water and pouring it is not as easy as I thought. I think I may be adding a valve to my BK. I have a 1000w heat stick coming next week that I hope will warm water to mash temp. But I think I may need to upgrade that to 1500w:
I used a bag and no sparge. The AHB mini mash consisted of Maris Otter, Chocolate Malt, Crystal 120L, Golden Naked Oats and Flaked Oats (total ~3.5lbs):
Getting the wort to the BK was easy. I added 2lbs Ex Light DME and 2lbs Amber DME to the BK:
The burner brought the wort to a boil in no time:
I guess this is my real welcome back to brewing. Even in a 10gal BK, I still boiled over
The immersible chiller worked like a champ! The water coming out of the hose was still near 60F but I managed to get the wort down to about 74F in around 30min. I probably should have used a ladle to scoop the hot break off the surface.
I used a Wyeast smack pack and activated that 14hrs before pitching. The pack was about to pop when I pitched it.
My LP burner is a Brinkmann 100,000 BTU unit from Home Depot. I am very happy with this. It got the water up to mash and boiling temp very quickly
My mash tun worked very well. But, I definitely need a better way to get the water into it. Lifting 6.5 gal of 165F water and pouring it is not as easy as I thought. I think I may be adding a valve to my BK. I have a 1000w heat stick coming next week that I hope will warm water to mash temp. But I think I may need to upgrade that to 1500w:
I used a bag and no sparge. The AHB mini mash consisted of Maris Otter, Chocolate Malt, Crystal 120L, Golden Naked Oats and Flaked Oats (total ~3.5lbs):
Getting the wort to the BK was easy. I added 2lbs Ex Light DME and 2lbs Amber DME to the BK:
The burner brought the wort to a boil in no time:
I guess this is my real welcome back to brewing. Even in a 10gal BK, I still boiled over
The immersible chiller worked like a champ! The water coming out of the hose was still near 60F but I managed to get the wort down to about 74F in around 30min. I probably should have used a ladle to scoop the hot break off the surface.
I used a Wyeast smack pack and activated that 14hrs before pitching. The pack was about to pop when I pitched it.
My LP burner is a Brinkmann 100,000 BTU unit from Home Depot. I am very happy with this. It got the water up to mash and boiling temp very quickly