Is -15C to cold to do a allgrain outside

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clayroc

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I don't mind doing my brew outside at -15, I do snow removal and have to work in much colder then that. But my father in law who is to lend me his turkey deep frier thinks I will have temperature stability problems. Anyone have some advice or experience on cold temp brewing??
 
Extract or all grain? It would be difficult to keep mash temps stable if you had to mash outside. But doing extract or just boiling the wort shouldn't be a problem. You will use up more propane to get it to boiling and keeping it there. You may boil off more wort than normal too. Your beer clarity will be good since your going to be able to cool your wart SUPER fast.
 
It will require more energy to get yourself up to boiling, for sure. Are you using a cooler to keep your mash at temp, or constant flame? With a cooler you should be fine, if it is a good quality cooler that is.

Technically/theoretically speaking from someone who took some thermo and heat transfer classes is that you should still be able to keep a constant temp once you hone in on your flame size. I would still suggest you stay out there and watch it. If using a cooler though just leave it be, measure the temp when you are done and see how much heat you lost.

As far as sparging, if batch sparging it should be fine. Fly sparging again will require a lot of watching.

Long story short you should be fine, it just will take some more attention. Go ahead and brew.

All from someone from Cali coast where I get 45 at the very coldest ever in the morning.
 
Do It!

I do it all the time the only problem I have ever encountered is the propane bottle freezing up and not giving very much pressure.

If it's full it's not to bad and all I do is tip it on it's side or give it a shake.

I saw a thread a while back about how to keep it warm.

Cheers
 
You don't need to get cute with heating the propane bottle, just throw it into a container with standing water. As long as the water is liquid, it will donate enough energy to keep vapourizing enough propane to keep the burner at full bore. My brew day before last was approaching -30, and some cool water allowed me to completely drain my propane bottle, which is nearly impossible unassisted.
 
Well I have successfully done my first all grain. There where a lot of issues but I have wort and it will make beer. Could use some advise on this though. Few things went wrong. 1 the cold caused way more evaporation then I expected, I would say 4 times as much. 2 my lauter tun didn't work to well at all, and I didn't realize how bad it was till when I was siphoning from my pot to my Carboy. Few other mi or things but in the end I got 3 gallons of wort at 1.078 so I boiled some water and added a galon, and tasted it. Well let's just say that based on that volume and less gravity then planed it is really hoppy and way more so then I want.
The gravity now is 1.062

So my thought was to add 2 gallons of wort made from a can of LME to get the gravity and volume up to balance the hops. I have room in the Carboy for at least 2.5 more gallons so room is not an issue.

Advise would be good. If I do it it will be as soon as my LHBS opens so fermentation should just be taking hold.
 
I wouldn't mess with it. Post boil wort always tastes way more bitter than it will taste post fermentation. Something magical happens during the ferment to that bitterness, although I don't personally know what. It is fun tasting the wort, but tweaking at this point is a bad idea IMHO.
 
I'm with CK, new myself but if ya tweak it you'll never know what it would have tasted like. 1.06 is a pretty good OG in my opinion.
Rav
 
In the future, if you end up with less wort because of boil off, just add boiled/cooled water to bring you to 5 gallons, or wherever it should be at the end. There is no need to use DME or anything else as long as you began with the right amount of fermentable sugars before the boil.
 
I'm just 150 km north of you and I have no problems brew BIAB AG this winter. In fact I been brewing every single weekend since begining of this year. I decide to wait till tomorrow though, its just to cold to be outside today with windchill creeping up to -25C. I brew on a deck of my house. The biggest problem I have noticed is a wind, if its anywhere higher than 15 km/h you might have a problem with your propane burner depending on design. I heat water and boil wort outside but mash BIAB in my kitchen. I also noticed that evaporation rate is higher when its cold and it takes little longer to get to rolling boil. Bring your propane bottle inside for couple hours in advance this helps too. Other than that, no problems. I don't even bother with wort chilling, I either leave my brew kettle outside for couple hours or transfer wort to no-chill cube and leave it on a deck, works like a charm so far, will have to build IC by spring time.
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