Hi all,
Ive made it to the end of this thread and learned a lot of terrific information about BIAC brewing! Thanks to all for all the helpful hints and confirmation of many of the things Ive been experiencing.
Background:
I got my medium BIAC last summer (2015) and have 15 10 gallon batches through it (batch 15 is fermenting). Im in the mountains of New Mexico, so have garage brewed on 100F and 20F days. The thermal controls that come along with the system are great and the modes Ive learned from this thread - as well as a few of my own - have helped tune this system to make highly drinkable beer. Only one bad batch in the lot when I errantly left the power control on 100% after I heated my strike water that ended up scorching my grains at dough in (shall I say DOH!-in). Lesson learned. Ended up with a smokey weizen bock. If only there was a way to concentrate this valuable alcohol into some other beverage - hmmm.
Mods:
Wort chilling in the summer when my tap water temps are ~80F is a challenge. I run my tap water through an immersion chiller in a 10 gallon cooler (which doubles as my keg cooler for picnics) of iced salt water to lower the temperature of the water going into the water jacket - still takes 45-60 minutes to cool to pitch temps. Im installing a few other fixes (thanks to fathers day gifts from my kids) that will route my boiled wort through a hop rocket and therminator into a racking arm to whirlpool/hopback/filter and chill (all thanks to posts on this thread).
Ferm temp was solved with a couple of mods: I use the temp controller with the heating element on 1-2% for those cold nights - easy. For cooling, I roll my whole medium into an insulated box (2 foam) with an old window AC unit blowing into the "BIAC-erator" with the temp controller the show - heating or cooling. In the arid SW, it can be 100F in the day and in the 50s at night - BIG SWINGS. However, as most have noted, once that big thermal mass is close on temperatures, it just takes some gentle nudging and a good temp controller to keep things on track. With the AC unit, I can get the beer to ~40F in a couple days - even with its near 100F outside (about 90-95 in my insulated, but un-cooled garage). Id love a glycol system, but my kludged up AC system is holding its own for now and was a bit cheaper.
Anyway, enough for this post. Just wanted to say Hi and thanks for all the answers to my unasked questions on efficiencies, cooling, heating, grinding, dumping, hopping, whirling and everything else.
One last thing: Nathan is Awesome - no question!
Kent