Adventures in outdoor brewing!

Here is my entry in my brewing notebook. As you can see, I had several issues. One was that I changed a lot of variables in this batch. Second, I am not used to using a turkey cooking burner. Third, I think the bazooka tube sucks, frankly. I also think the hole for the spigot that's in my keg is too high up. Anyway, who knows how this batch will come up. Usually, things work out so I'll just wait and see. Here's my entry:

"Today, I brewed Hyland Amber V4 outside in the big keg. This is a double batch with batch 30. It was a muggy warm misty day.

There were several issues. First, I measured out my own grain. I put it in three muslin bags. It steeped for 30 minutes but the temperature rose above 170 degrees (was over 180 when I pulled the keg off the burner) for quite some time (hard to regulate that large burner). Second, I used bulk Coopers Light (messy). I measured out 11 lbs of that. That equals 2 cans and 4 lbs of dry malt. I measured out the hops from a 1 lb bag of each.

In getting the pot to boil, I believe I overheated to kettle. There was a thin circle of carbonized material on the bottom of the kettle. The boiling wort smelled a little like burnt carmel.

Transferring, I had problems with the bazooka tube clogging again. I ended up having to pull the tube off and siphon and then pour contents into the two buckets. Not sure whether the contents were equally distributed or not, although I did my best.

Outdoor, using the big keg, there are not the most sanitary conditions. I need a table outside to put things on. I may look into a 40 quart pot instead of this keg. I may also look into an outdoor cooking top rather than the turkey cooker. "

Now you see why we need the turkey burners for AG batches! they get full- wort boils going nice and quick! And I would hang onto that keg if I were you- you will probably get the urge to do some 10-gallon batches pretty soon.......

I've a few problems with my bazooka clogging if I'm using a lot of bittering pellets. 90% of the time, no big deal. I suppose doing 10 gallon batches would make things more difficult.

Don't run your turkey burner wide open, except when you only have water in the kettle. The alternative is to get a difuser to put over the burner.

Every time I change equipment, I have to adjust my brewing process.

Thanks for the encouragement guys. I am sure I'll stick with it. Still hoping that beer comes out ok.

I use a long SS screen in the bottom of my keggle. I use hops bags for pellet hops and just throw the whole ones in there loose. I don't have any problem with it clogging.

How is that SS screen set up? Also, by bagging the hops, don't you lose some of the flavor?

Robbw said:

How is that SS screen set up? Also, by bagging the hops, don't you lose some of the flavor?

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I have a copper siphon tube which goes from the back of the ball valve assembly yo the bottom of the keggle. The SS screen (form a water supply line) is clamped onto the end of the copper tube with a regular old SS clamp.

Yes, you lose a little efficiency of hop utilization w/ bags. You can use recipator or (I'm sure) commercial software to account for this. I mostly use whole hops wherever possible, so bagging small amounts of pellets doesn't seem like a very big deal.

I've actually never tried not bagging the pellets, so I don't know if they'd clog the screen or not.

So let me ask this dumb question.... The spigot on my Keggle is a little higher than I want it to be, maybe 2 inches off the bottom of the keg instead of 1. This means I literally have to tilt the keg to avoid losing a significant amount of wort. IF I angle down a piece of copper tube, will it create a siphon?

I also wonder if I try using the bagged hops whether the bazooka tube would still clog (from the malts in there). I will probably try the bagged hops for the heck of it.

Robbw said:

So let me ask this dumb question.... The spigot on my Keggle is a little higher than I want it to be, maybe 2 inches off the bottom of the keg instead of 1. This means I literally have to tilt the keg to avoid losing a significant amount of wort. IF I angle down a piece of copper tube, will it create a siphon?

Click to expand...

Yes--with the siphon tube, as long as you have a hose attached to the spigot and the level of the container you are draining into is lower than the level in the keggle, it will create a siphon and drain the keggle almost completely.

I also wonder if I try using the bagged hops whether the bazooka tube would still clog (from the malts in there). I will probably try the bagged hops for the heck of it.

Click to expand...

The only thing that would clog it is whole hops or hot/cold break material. I haven't had any problem with this, though. The only problem I have is wort absorbtion by the whole hops: if I choose to hassle with it, I dump them out into a sanitized big strainer and push the fluid out with a sanitized spoon. (If it's an IPA or something with a lot of hops, this could be a considerable amount of wort.)

BINGO! I have not put a tube on my spigot to the wort buckets. THAT is why it's not siphoning. DOH!!!

What do people use, just the plastic food grade tubing connected to the spigot?

Robbw said:

BINGO! I have not put a tube on my spigot to the wort buckets. THAT is why it's not siphoning. DOH!!!

What do people use, just the plastic food grade tubing connected to the spigot?

Click to expand...

Yes: any old tubing is good for draining the wort after it is chilled.

If you want to be able to drain out (near-) boiling water or leave the tube on while the keggle's on the burner, use the silicone high-temp stuff.

Tried one of the kegs of this batch. Sure enough, a smokey carmel taste in the brew. Not carbonated enough yet so I'll have a better handle tomorrow. But definitely a totally different beer from the stuff I made before.