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Alexius_II

New Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2016
Messages
4
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Location
Izola
Hello fellow brewers! :)

I have been reading your forum for a year and a half now, and brewing for almost a year. The amount of useful information on these pages is truly incredible... in fact I owe most of my brewing knowledge to well documented and commented triumphs (and failures) of the many members here.

You posts really were my inspiration, I would not be brewing otherwise.


Why didn't I join the forum sooner?
Well, I had nothing useful to contribute until now.

I have been putting my new system together for a month or so, and it is now ready to be used. It is quite simple and I believe somewhat unique, as I have not found a similar approach on this (or other) forums. I can write about it in the DIY section with photos, if anyone is interested. It is a small (10L / 2.6gal) recirculating mash tun, made from a beer keg, insulated with 10 cm (4") wire-cut EPS. It is by definition a RIMS system, but the heat is not applied via AC heater directly in contact with the wort, but instead by applying a DC current through nichrome wire, wrapped around the outside of a (insulated) copper tube. The pump, heaters and three temperature sensors are controlled by an arduino "control box".

Fun fact: The system uses two of those copper tube heaters, with combined power of only 150W. 10cm (4") insulation and very short tube segments keep things from cooling too fast.

As soon as I bottle my current (biab) batch and free the space in chest freezer / fermentation chamber, I will use it to make beer for the first time. I will be making a very simple single hop (Amarillo) APA/IPA.


So, if there is interest, I can document this next session with all the details about my system (with lots of photos). Hopefully someone will learn something (good or bad) from this, as I have learned from countless posts before.


Attached is a photo of my system in action, during testing (water only), just to give you an impression of this simple and weird looking contraption :)


Stay cool and keep brewing, cheers!

Alexius

testing.jpg
 
I brewed a light (A)PA today and took some photos. It went pretty good.
I used BeerSmith with estimated 80% efficiency, turns out it was around 84%.

I am going away for a week, I will describe the whole process in the DIY section, when I return.
 
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