Anyone else crazy enough to brew today...

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jrock56

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in the Delaware/Philly area. It was effin effin today!

We made a stout in the 20 degree weather with 40mph gusts.
The discharge from the wort chiller instantly froze to the driveway!

just curious:tank:
 
i woke up to -16 today while ice fishing, i would love for a twenty degree brewday!
 
Pfffft.....I run around naked when it's 20 degrees.;)

I woke up to -16 with a -35 wind chill yesterday.

But the fact that you brewed in the 20 degrees..........Props:)
 
I brewed the black pearl porter friday when it was about 15 degrees. cold enough that i had to thaw out my turkey fryer.
 
in the Delaware/Philly area. It was effin effin today!

We made a stout in the 20 degree weather with 40mph gusts.
The discharge from the wort chiller instantly froze to the driveway!

just curious:tank:

Same here outside of DC! It was so cold that after I cooled the wort to 67 or so with the IC, by the time I got it to the fermenter and into the house the wort was down into the 50s.
 
Brewed two batches in Philly this week, it's a nice 70 degrees in my kitchen on my CB20 system. No need for going outside! :D
 
I brewed an ESB on Sunday in northern NJ and it was pretty cold. Also was my first all grain batch, which forced me to be outside
 
Um, are all of you crazy enough to brew outside willingly or does SWMBO just kick you out on brewdays?

Brewed 2 batches New Years Day and it wasnt more than 10 degrees outside.....but I had sense to be inside :)
 
Got down to -4F here in balmy E Central IL last night (well, Saturday night). No brewing going on here, no way to do the chilling.....strange to say. I could always come back indoors and do extract, but I don't really need the beer, still have plenty in the pipeline from the Fall.

Anybody have any special tricks or tips to advance for brewing in these temperatures? I suppose no-chill would be the first thing to consider....
 
Brewed in Northeast PA on Sunday. Brewed inside and chilled outside. Putting some water in a wheel barrow was the better than any wort chiller money could buy. 212 to 75 in 6 minutes. I love cold weather brewing. Well except for the disposing of the water. I dumped it out on my patio and made a beautiful ice skating rink. I guess you've got to take the good with the bad.
 
I brewed a stout outside during the blizzard about 2 weeks ago. I was under my deck, which has some small barricades on either side, so there was some coverage. It was fun, though! I'm hoping the random few snowflakes that made their way into the kettle will give it that little extra something :)
 
I've got a brewday planned for Thursday (an as-yet unnamed IPA), and the forecast calls for a high o' 20*. I'll be in the (unheated) garage, so the wind shouldn't be an issue, but still damn cold. Good tunes, a couple o' homebrews, it'll all be good.
 
Got down to -4F here in balmy E Central IL last night (well, Saturday night). No brewing going on here, no way to do the chilling.....strange to say. I could always come back indoors and do extract, but I don't really need the beer, still have plenty in the pipeline from the Fall.

Anybody have any special tricks or tips to advance for brewing in these temperatures? I suppose no-chill would be the first thing to consider....

That's what I was thinking (no-chill) until I read some of the other posts about the water from the chiller freezing on the driveway. When it's that cold do you even need a chiller? I was planning on doing an extract brew tomorrow night and just sticking it out in the snow to let it cool. It's supposed to be in the single digits before the wind chill here. So I figured out there in snow with negative wind chill would do a pretty good job of cooling it down. Should I stick to the chiller or am I good with the weather?

EDIT: Nevermind, didn't see kochers reply. I'm stickin her in the snow!
 
in the Delaware/Philly area. It was effin effin today!

We made a stout in the 20 degree weather with 40mph gusts.
The discharge from the wort chiller instantly froze to the driveway!

just curious:tank:


Yes, but I'm doing it inside as a stovetop all-grain 2.5 gallon batch. ;) My condo is heated by hot wort...
 
Probably didn't need the chiller, but I am a noob, this was my 2nd batch and the first with a chiller... I was using the chiller no matter what! :ban:
 
This cold weather is killing me! I'm going to risk it and boil my next batch right by my front door with the ceiling fan on. I've gotten horrible boils for my last 2 batches.
 
When the urge to brew strikes and it's in the single digits or lower, I'll brew 1-gallon test batches on the stove top. I love to brew, but I like being warm, too...
 
I brewed saturday, when i started it was 7 or 8 above 0. Actually did two batches that day. It sucked for brewing...but i loved every minute of it.
 
in alaska if you can go outside you can brew, so if i work at temps to -50 with out wid chill then im brewing but i do everything but boil inside, no need to be a total caveman
 
I think it was about 10 degrees here when I was brewing last night.

No way to cool? I just left it on the stand until it got down to ~70.
 
in the Delaware/Philly area. It was effin effin today!

We made a stout in the 20 degree weather with 40mph gusts.
The discharge from the wort chiller instantly froze to the driveway!

just curious:tank:
I did the same thing. It was 15F here today and made a stout as well... painful but worth it!
 
i brew all grain, so have to really be outside with the keggles. I can have it in the garage for a good part of it, but when using the counterflow chiller, its just easier to be outside.

Did an IPA on Friday and a stout on Saturday
 
Ok, we were brewing in a garage, but try THIS one:
Brewing in December, I'm up the road here a bit in the mid-west of Canada, and temps outside when we turned on the brew kettles was.....

-32 Celsius. That's -25F.

Needless to say: lots of icing of garage windows and...hah...the garage door froze to the concrete, we had to chip it to let the space cool down when at the end of the HUMID brewday, we had an internal temperature of 28.9 C, or 84F.

Whee! Dress in layers!

Good beer drinker's diet plan, though. Make beer, drink beer, sweat from the enclosed garage humidity. Lose the calories. repeat.
 
One time an apartment building was on fire, so, after saving all the tenants, I just waltzed on in and set my brew kettle in the raging inferno. Really had to adjust my evaporation calcs, let me tell you!

That pot sure was hot afterwards. Thankfully, it was 20 Kelvin outside, so I just slapped on the oven mitts and hauled the kettle across the street. Best cold break ever.
 
i brewed last weekend in about 5F weather. full boil.

put the pot on my driveway at 6:15. took two hours to get down to 75.

It's a bit counter-intuitive, but, at least for me, chilling is the hardest part of winter brewing. putting it in a cold ambient environment doesn't do much for cooling 5+ gallons of boiling water.
 
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