Propane: Cold weather brewing

Any of you have problems with your propane tanks while brewing when it is near or below freezing out? Specifically those tanks with the stupid "safety valve" that wont let you open the tank when there is nothing connected to it (my God when I was 19 thats how we used to purge the damn things at the gas station!).

I have a couple of tanks that seem to **** up and drop my propane pressure when they get cold. One will just stop all together.

Any fixes for this??

The only problem I have had is the valve on top would do nothing. When I had a line connected to it it was pushing full pressure with the valve turned off. Thankfully we had an inline ball valve on it to control the flow and turn off the burner.

I had some issues a few weeks ago. I went and got a galvanized tub at HD, and put the tank in it with some hot water out of the HLT, and it all got worked out.

I have had the exact same trouble - and my thought was to do the same thing, just get a tub of hot water to warm up the tank. While heating up the water on the stove, I decided instead to just move indoors & did a stovetop mash, but had to cut my batch size in half to accomodate my stove.

I figured if it was too cold for the propane out on the porch, it was too cold for me.

Yep. Mine do it too. Tha bastids.

I jus' wacksem wit dah hammah!

Seriously, mine only tend to do that when I have been running off them for a while so I just swap out and let the other one re-stabilize itself.

Man. I really wanna go NG.

I had a new tank from a gas station and it did fine the other night when it was freezing outside.

I do double 10 gallon batches off of a 20# tank. I end up swapping tanks a couple times because they freeze up. I like the hot water tank idea!

i bag up my grains after the mash and set the tank on top of the hot grains. this is plenty for the 90min or so the tank is in use after the mash.

OK, thanks. The hot water bath might work for me or swap tanks.

Wish I had a waterproof carboy warmer type thing. Actually i wish there wwas a way to remove the damn safety part of the valve!

I finally figured out that if I use a long enough hose, I can put the propane tank directly into my brewpot to keep it warm.:rockin:

Ahoy hoy,
It went up to 10 above a week or so ago so i brewed outside. I had warmed the propane tank up on the porch first. After a while you could tell it wasnt giving 100%. So, about every 15 minutes, i would grab the tank, pick it up a bit and shake it, and the flame would build right back up to snuff. then about 15 minutes later, i would do it again. Since I check the pot that often anyways, it worked out well. And now the 10 gallons of elixir are in the conical fermentor, enjoying their new life.....
A great day to all....

Just this weekend I had this problem, so I kept the burner on the deck outside and the tank on the inside of the sliding door, and just kept it open a small crack to let the tubing through. Worked great! If you're worried about the cold air coming in, you can temporarily tape a bit of foam weather strip to the inside of the door to seal off most of the gap.

Mayube I need to build a heat box for the damn thing. I'm outside, way to far from a door.