Bittersweet day in this brewer's life

The Bitter:

Ordered these stir bars on Amazon. This is what I got in the mail today:



It's 10 mm long and 6 mm at its widest point. I am so freaking pissed right now. They're lucky I'm not planning on doing a big beer this weekend. I was so excited to test out my new stir plate.

The Sweet:

Found out today that I'm getting a nice chunk of change from the government for a change of duty station I just did. Most of it is going into savings, but SWMBO gave me $500 to spend on brewing stuff. Decided to get a 5 cu. ft. chest freezer, a Johnson digital temp controller and a Barley Crusher grain mill. I was going to go DIY on the grain mill, but this was just too good an opportunity to get a quality grain mill. Looks like everything is on track for me to brew this weekend that vanilla pumpkin lager that ghpeel recommended to me in my other thread about brewing lagers since this will be my first. I'm actually doing a double brew this weekend. Friday night is the vanilla pumpkin lager followed by bottling my brown that's in the primary now. Saturday I'll be brewing up an amber, but I want to something different than just a regular old amber. We'll see what I can come up with during the week.

Got to rambling a bit there, sorry. Thanks for putting with my new toy excitement. Cheers!

-AJ

Sucks about the stir bars. I hope they make it right.

Congrats on the windfall, and thank you for your service. Good luck with your keezer build.

Are you just arriving to Hickam, or somewhere else and have not changed your profile yet? Anyhow, that stir *pill* sucks, I laughed a little. Not at ya, just laughed. I could imagine the look on your face like What. The. F@#$. If you are at Hickam you need to look for Kona Fire Rock pale ale. I love that stuff. That and coconut porter. Forget who makes it.

It's an honor to serve. I won't be making a keezer with the freezer. I'll be using it do lagering. I don't really have room to conveniently place a keezer unless I want to go outside and into the cellar every time I want a pint. The only access to the cellar is from outside. I think bottling is better for variety and portability anyway, so I guess it works out.

Unfortunately, this might be partially your error as well. Note that the product description states "Available length: 10mm, 15mm, 20mm, 25mm, 30mm, 35mm, 40mm, 50mm Price starts from $1.00 please contact us for the quotation". Looking up the specifications, "Brand Name:Azzota Mfr Part#:SB-H", you did receive that particular type (Type-H, as listed in the title: "Magnetic stirring Bars - H type") of stir bar. The product photo is obviously misleading though.

You might want to look at a 7 cu ft freezer this will allow you to have 2 carboys in it at one time. The cost is not much more than a 5 cu ft.

Gixxer said:

Are you just arriving to Hickam, or somewhere else and have not changed your profile yet? Anyhow, that stir *pill* sucks, I laughed a little. Not at ya, just laughed. I could imagine the look on your face like What. The. F@#$. If you are at Hickam you need to look for Kona Fire Rock pale ale. I love that stuff. That and coconut porter. Forget who makes it.

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Actually, I just moved to Connecticut from Hawaii. I had a lot of the Kona brews and the coconut porter you speak of is, I believe, from the Maui Brewing Co. I changed my profile to my new location and if I go to my profile it's correct, but on the boards it still says Hawaii. Still trying to figure it out.

Yeah, that's about exactly what I said when I opened the package. Haha. I doubt they'll do anything to fix it and even if they do it'll cost more to ship it back than to just order new ones. We'll see.

Whereabouts in CT are you? I grew up in Ellington, and there's an awesome homebrew shop in East Hartford.

GNBrews said:

Unfortunately, this might be partially your error as well. Note that the product description states "Available length: 10mm, 15mm, 20mm, 25mm, 30mm, 35mm, 40mm, 50mm Price starts from $1.00 please contact us for the quotation". Looking up the specifications, "Brand Name:Azzota Mfr Part#:SB-H", you did receive that particular type (Type-H, as listed in the title: "Magnetic stirring Bars - H type") of stir bar. The product photo is obviously misleading though.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I see that now. It's not even the right shape, though. I'll try again and not order from that company. I'll still try to recoup my money from them, but I'll be getting the correct bars from another company.

Waynep005 said:

You might want to look at a 7 cu ft freezer this will allow you to have 2 carboys in it at one time. The cost is not much more than a 5 cu ft.

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I did have a long internal debate about this, but I decided that I'll probably never have two lagers on the same fermentation and lagering schedule at the same time, so I only got the 5 cu. ft. Made SWMBO happy to spend $30 less on it, especially considering I was also spending about $250 on the other things.

thisgoestoeleven said:

Whereabouts in CT are you? I grew up in Ellington, and there's an awesome homebrew shop in East Hartford.

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I am in Groton stationed at the sub base. I know the brew shop you're speaking of, but I can't remember what it is called. My in-laws live in Vernon, so if I ever need anything while I am in the area, I will check it out.

nukebrewer said:

It's an honor to serve. I won't be making a keezer with the freezer. I'll be using it do lagering. I don't really have room to conveniently place a keezer unless I want to go outside and into the cellar every time I want a pint. The only access to the cellar is from outside. I think bottling is better for variety and portability anyway, so I guess it works out.

Click to expand...

Ah. then i agree with the suggestion to shoot for 7cf. You can generally only fit 1 carboy in a 5cf.