First all grain in the fermentor :)

Longer brew day but just as enjoyable (or more so). Learned to reread the stickies before beginning as I undershot strike temp due to heating the mashtun--got that one fixed for next time will overheat strike water and dump in mashtun then mash in when temp drops to hit what I need.

Ice bath worked well (only 3 gallon batch) and dropped temp to 65 in about 25 minutes. Will be building immersion chiller as ice bath is a pain to do and I have to do it outside.

Beginning gravity 1052. Let's go!

Nice work. Yea I did the same thing with my cooler to preheat. I would go about 10 over strike and let it drop to temp.

depending on how your setup is (if you have a ball valve on your brew kettle) i would say look into a plate chiller or counterflow chiller. Some of the smaller variations can be had for about the same cost, or slightly more, than a reliable immersion chiller.

my immersion chiller used to take 40+ minutes to chill a 5 gallon batch to 75ish degrees. and it would flood my back yard

My therminator plate chiller will cool my wort about as fast as it'll drain from my kettle. (today i chilled a 5 gallon batch from boiling temperature to 58 degrees in 5-6 minutes)

however if you are brewing in your kitchen then maybe an immersion chiller flowing into the sink isn't that big of a deal to wait for it to cool

Do you just siphon thru the chiller?Plate chillers are hard to clean? For 5 gallon batches what size? I can make immersion chiller for about 30 35 bucks it looks like. Small plate runs?

When I checked the tun about half way I was at 146. I did the calc on beersmith and drained some wort and heated it and dumped it back in that got it back to 150 but wanted 152.

Should I have stirred that hot water in?

I did not want to upset grain bed so I did not.

I have 10 gallon tun and used for 3 gallon batch(I don't have brew pot capacity yet). At face value is this OK as long as I give a good preheat?

you let gravity do your siphoning for a plate chiller... you run a connection from you kettle, into the chiller, then out to the fermentor. mean while a garden hose runs in the opposite direction through alternating plates. So instead of a small copper coil touching a lot of hot wort ( a lot of heat and little cooling) you are contacting a little wort at a time with a lot of cool water.

if you are making and immersion chiller it will certainly be the most economic route, but you can get a small (20-30 plate) chiller for around $50+ but then need to buy the fittings so it would cost you a little more than just the plate chiller.

you can't see into the plate chiller so you have to be on top of your sanitization game. i soak mine in pbw for about 20 minutes, then flush thoroughly with water multiple times, then soak in star-san for about 5 minutes and let everything drip out. normally the first couple ounces that come out of my plate chiller are the residual star-san and i just drop that into a cup before putting it all into my fermentor, but that little amount of starsan inside of it wouldnt hurt anything.

ArcticBear said:

My therminator plate chiller will cool my wort about as fast as it'll drain from my kettle. (today i chilled a 5 gallon batch from boiling temperature to 58 degrees in 5-6 minutes)

Click to expand...

Do you recirculate or do one pass through?

BreezyBrew said:

Do you recirculate or do one pass through?

Click to expand...

one pass through

I probably recirculated close to a gallon. I then immediately drained again, I think I was supposed to let the grains settle for 10 minutes or so before draining. I also interpreted beersmith wrong. I added like a half gallon and recirculated and drained right away. Then did the same thing with about 2 gallons. I did not realize the first 1/2 gallon was simply to balance my water volume so I had two equal drains. Should I have dropped the hot water, stirred and then let the grains settle for 10 minutes or so?

[QUOTE="ArcticBear"

my immersion chiller used to take 40+ minutes to chill a 5 gallon batch to 75ish degrees. and it would flood my back yard

cool[/QUOTE]

40 mins? I use a 50ft immersion chiller and it usually takes 15-20 mins to get down to 65. Strange that it took yours so long.

Cracked my first bottle. It kicks ass. Very pleased.