Few questions about my setup.

Ok I am a brew-noob and just got done with my first beer yesterday.

I have Ed-worts old 10gal polarware pot as my kettle. I am running thermo tubing off of the kettle valve to a march food pump. From there I am going into my shirron plate chiller and then I have the output hose coming out wherever I put it.

On the water side of my chiller I have a maxi jet 1200 aquarium pump(in a cooler of course) on the input, and then the output comes back into the cooler.

Ok so after flame out I started up the system. I noticed the temp dropping but not really that fast ( I live in Houston, so water is somewhat warm). It took me a very long time to chill, even with using ice after it got down from 100f.

I was recirculating the wort back into the kettle and it was basically a closed loop system until i reached around 76F.

Ok so no big deal I figured that I would mess up in some way, with my first batch.

When filling up the carboy using the output of the chiller, I noticed the flow was really slow. About half of what it should have been. After cleaning up some I took the march pump apart and noticed trub and hop residue. (used pellet hops)

Is this normal? I have a false bottom for my kettle, but did not use it this time because I did partial mash. (It was to prevent schoorching, but wound up scoorching some of the extract anyways)


So can anybody help me improve this setup, and or help me correct what I am doing wrong. :cross:

Pictures might help your cause.

G-E-R-M-A-N said:

Is this normal? I have a false bottom for my kettle, but did not use it this time because I did partial mash. (It was to prevent schoorching, but wound up scoorching some of the extract anyways)


So can anybody help me improve this setup, and or help me correct what I am doing wrong. :cross:

Click to expand...

Ditto - Pictures would help a bunch.

Whenever you add extract you need to shut off the gas so it doesn't scorch. Then stir really well. Scrape the bottom (w/o the false bottom) with your spoon and look for extract on the spoon tip. If you see any stir more. The water has to be very hot, near boiling is best. It needs the heat so it can go into solution with the water.

I made this mistake only once.... .... on batch #1.

Schlenkerla said:

Ditto - Pictures would help a bunch.

Whenever you add extract you need to shut off the gas so it doesn't scorch. Then stir really well. Scrape the bottom (w/o the false bottom) with your spoon and look for extract on the spoon tip. If you see any stir more. The water has to be very hot, near boiling is best. It needs the heat so it can go into solution with the water.

I made this mistake only once.... .... on batch #1.

Click to expand...

Ok I will be taking pics soon. I know it is hard to follow stuff like this typed out in words.

Ok so does anybody have their pump flow slow down from the debris in the boil?

Yeah I will most likley not be doing a partial mash next time,but all grain. But for the future I know that the extract needs a hot boil (with the burner off) and very close attention. It seems it only took a matter of seconds to burn. (this was from a brief pause in stirring.)

edit: totally misunderstood the setup, doh

Try making one of these too. This should help keep back the sediment.

yes, yes, I know ... old thread ...

Nice design and video Schlenkerla; very simple.