Thermometer in a BK - why?

[RoatanBill]

In a 3 kettle setup (HLT, MLT, BK), is the BK ever used at anything other than a boil?

If so, is there a name or term for what is trying to be achieved so I can look it up?

 

[jekeane]

The thermometer in a boil kettle is for letting you know when you are going to be at a boil so you don't boil over. It is also used for knowing your temperature while chilling.

Boil kettles can also be used to heat strike water so a thermometer can be beneficial in that regard.

 

[Homercidal]

A thermometer in a BK is used by truly anal people who just have to know everything that is going on, even if it doesn't help speed things up!


(And also by those who might recirculate their chill water back into the BK and want to know how cold the wort is so they can transfer to fermentor...)

 

[Yooper]

The thermometer in a boil kettle is for letting you know when you are going to be at a boil so you don't boil over. It is also used for knowing your temperature while chilling.

Boil kettles can also be used to heat strike water so a thermometer can be beneficial in that regard.

Right. I don't have one in mine, but now that I use a CFC and recirculate and often do whirlpool hops, I wish I did have one. It's not a big deal to sanitize my Thermapen and use that, but it would be nice. Otherwise, I wouldn't have any need for a temperature gauge in the BK.

 

[Sbe2]

It's also in there for those of us who BIAB. I use it to monitor my mash temp.

 

[jojacques]

How about Hops steeping?
I feel it nice to have the thermometer on the BK to know when you hit your steep temperature, drop the hops and hold that temp for as long as you want before continuing the chilling process....

 

[svt412]

And for knowing your temp while steeping specialty grains for extract brewing.

 

[RoatanBill]

Jekeane: I intend to use 20G kettles to produce 10G batches of beer for kegging. From what I've read, that means about 13-14G of strike water for the MLT and therefore more than that in the HLT to provide hot clean up water. A 20G boil kettle should be able to handle 11-12-13G of wort and not boil over, at least not so rapidly as the rise in foam to go unnoticed. At least that's my assumption.

I intend to chill via a 2 stage counter flow chiller. First stage using tap water (90 degrees where I am) and then a second stage using ice water.

Homercidal: I'm an engineer which means I'm anal by education and natural inclination. That training also makes me question everything, and I could never figure out why a 3 kettle set up needed a thermometer. Boil is boil.
I can see needing one if that kettle is also to be a chill vessel, but I believe an external heat exchanger is a better solution in a single pass from kettle to fermentation vessel.

Yooper: Although I have absolutely no brewing experience, I inherently feel that cooling and then reheating and then recooling wort, etc, by reintroducing it back into the kettle until such time as the entire mass is at a specific temperature can't benefit the beer. I have no evidence to back this up except for chemistry lab where doing that could affect a reaction.
I'll have to look up whirlpool hops. I do intend to whirlpool but only considered it as a method to try to minimize the amount of solids to reach the fermentation vessel.

Sbe2: I like the concept of BIAB. That's treating the process as though it was a giant tea bag to extract the "tea", which is valid. I checked out Grainfather, and other essentially BIAB methods using a bag of SS mesh instead of cloth, but didn't like the equipment.

JoJacques: I had to read the entirety of your post to realize you were speaking of the cooling process as I'm as yet unfamiliar with "Hops steeping". As previously mentioned, I'll use a counter flow chiller, but your post hints at a step method requirement in cooling that I'll have to check out. I was unaware of anything beneficial that would occur during cooling to get to yeast pitching temperature. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Homercidal]

Homercidal: I'm an engineer which means I'm anal by education and natural inclination. That training also makes me question everything, and I could never figure out why a 3 kettle set up needed a thermometer. Boil is boil.
I can see needing one if that kettle is also to be a chill vessel, but I believe an external heat exchanger is a better solution in a single pass from kettle to fermentation vessel.

That's a common way of doing things, but you might consider a recirculation because:

When you do a single pass chill, the wort that has not yet passed through the chiller remains at a high temperature. If your chiller is average, it might take 15-20 minutes or more.

If you recirculate, the wort from the chiller mixes back into the BK and lowers the temperature of the WHOLE VOLUME of wort. This means that none of the wort stays near boiling for more than a few minutes, even if it takes a little longer for the whole thing to reach fermentor temp.

I generally do a hybrid of this, where I start by recirculating and then when the outflow of the chiller is what I want for the fermentor I start filling the fermentor with it.

What it comes down to is whether the difference in time being hot is enough to make your beer not what you want. I have no idea if it makes a noticeable difference chilling the entire volume to 140F in 5 minutes, vs leaving some of it at 190+ for 10-20 minutes. I have not done any studies to conclude there is a difference.

But I am happy with the clarity of my beers using this process and the taste is as good or better as when I did a gravity chill through my CFC.

In any case, all methods seem to work and you should use whichever one you like the best. I don't think this kind of thing is something to be concerned with. You, as an engineer, might have stronger feelings about it. And there are other considerations that go with this as well, but I don't think any of them amount to much in the big picture compared to some other things like temp control, yeast health, post fermentation handling, recipe formulation, etc. I think those will have a more significant impact than whether you gravity chill, recirc, pass the trub into the fermentor, wear boxers instead of briefs, or whatever.

Enjoy the process and evaluate your beer and make adjustments if/or when you think you need to.

 

[beermanpete]

I suspect that jojaques is referring to a hop stand. This is a method of adding hops after flame out when the wort temperature is at or below a particular temperature. This apparently helps with retention of hop aroma.

 

[kristiismean]

I use one in mine for a few reasons:

1. When it hits 200 so i know NOT to leave the room
2. hopstand
3. Chilling

 

[mongoose33]

When I sold my 8-gallon kettle (with a thermometer) and bought a 10-gallon Spike kettle, I added the thermometer. Never even considered not doing it. Here's why:

I've usually done a two-vessel system w/ the boil kettle doubling as both HLT and BK. I get all kinds of value from that thermometer. When I'm heating strike water it's easy to monitor where I am so i don't overshoot.

Same with heating sparge water if I do that. Easy to see where I am, I don't have to keep sticking a thermometer in the water to check.

When it comes to boiling, I can keep track of how close to the boil I am. Anyone who's ever had a boilover can attest to the need to know when that wort is ready to erupt.

So if the BK reads 180 degrees I know I have a few minutes to do something like clean up, get something ready, whatever.

I even went so far as to get the thermometer with the articulated face so it can face up or partially up at some angle. It's far easier to read that way even though it costs $25 more than the thermometer with the vertical face. That's important all the time, but none more so than when I'm chilling. All I have to do is look down and see the temp. Easy Peasy.

 

[Yooper]

That's a common way of doing things, but you might consider a recirculation because:

When you do a single pass chill, the wort that has not yet passed through the chiller remains at a high temperature. If your chiller is average, it might take 15-20 minutes or more.

If you recirculate, the wort from the chiller mixes back into the BK and lowers the temperature of the WHOLE VOLUME of wort. This means that none of the wort stays near boiling for more than a few minutes, even if it takes a little longer for the whole thing to reach fermentor temp.

Correct. And it's a great technique for doing a hopstand, or a hops whirlpool because you can recirculate (with the chiller off) once you hit 180 degrees.

 

[JonW]

A thermometer in a BK is used by truly anal people who just have to know everything that is going on, even if it doesn't help speed things up!


(And also by those who might recirculate their chill water back into the BK and want to know how cold the wort is so they can transfer to fermentor...)

Ahhh....but it DOES speed things up! Well, if you use automation it does.

With my BCS controller, when the BK hits boiling, it automatically starts my boil timer and beeps at me to let me know. I put a few drops of fermcap in during the fly sparge process, so I don't babysit it for a boilover.

Additionally, when chilling, I often chill to somewhere between 160-180, then add a hop-stand addition. Again, with the BCS, the chill starts, then automatically stops when I'm at the set temp and beeps at me to add the hop addition.

 

[RoatanBill]

svt412: I have no brew equipment. I'm learning. I ask the question for the ultimate system I'm considering which is for all grain brewing.

Homercidal: I intend to pump the hot wort through the two heat exchangers at full throttle which should empty 10+G quickly.
The lag in timing things is all over this brewing hobby/business and it has caused me some concern that I haven't addressed yet in my own mind. Adding dry solids to hot water in the MLT and stirring it in takes time and causes uneven heating between first and last in. Or should I add the dry components to the MLT and only then start pumping hot water in from the bottom up? I don't know. In either case when does timing start? I don't know and I doubt there's an authoritative answer. It's definitely an issue though.

I've decided on building my copper in copper exchangers as approximately 24" diameter coils mounted under the 24" deep brew table. I'll use twin copper wires helically wound around the inside tube to provide turbulence for the water flowing between the tubes.
One of the heat exchangers will also be my HERMS coil. I see no reason a HERMS coils needs to sit inside an HLT, so I'm pulling it out. Both heat exchangers will sit inside heavily insulated containers. The HERMS coil heat exchanger will do double duty as the initial wort cooling coil connected to tap water at 90 degrees F. It's output will be input to the second exchanger running ice water through it.

Beermanpete: I've never heard of a "hop stand" so I'll look that up. One question just naturally leads to at least one other one. Thanks. If there's a good reason to implement stepped temperature wort extraction from the BK, I'll try to figure out some way to implement it. Maybe for some brews, putting the cooled wort back in to the BK is what needs to happen and in that case, a thermometer would be needed somewhere in the plumbing, but I doubt I'd add one to the BK itself.

 

[Yooper]

Homercidal: I intend to pump the hot wort through the two heat exchangers at full throttle which should empty 10+G quickly.
The lag in timing things is all over this brewing hobby/business and it has caused me some concern that I haven't addressed yet in my own mind. Adding dry solids to hot water in the MLT and stirring it in takes time and causes uneven heating between first and last in. Or should I add the dry components to the MLT and only then start pumping hot water in from the bottom up? I don't know. In either case when does timing start? I don't know and I doubt there's an authoritative answer. It's definitely an issue though.

I'm not Homer, but I wanted to mention that adding your grain to the strike water (or vice versa) doesn't really have any uneven heating. I mean, you add it and stir. It takes like 30 seconds, and if you stir thoroughly, you can grab an instant read thermometer and check it in several places. If it's different in one place than another, just stir some more. Within a minute, the temperature is equalized and you can start recirculation (if you have a HERMS). It doesn't matter if you bottom fill into the grain, or add the grain to the water. Whatever works for your system is fine, and the temperature variation isn't an issue since you stir it. You have to stir well to ensure the grain is thoroughly wetted, and that will equalize the temperature rapidly.

 

[RoatanBill]

kristiismean:
mongoose33:
Yooper:

I'm beginning to understand about a "hop stand" just from the posts I've gotten here. I'll still look it up to get a better understanding, but I believe the need for a stepped cool down has been identified. Thank You. That aids tremendously in planning.

I'm definitely looking at automation, and in a big way. Right now, the thought of purchasing gadgets I've never seen before, welding up stands, wiring up controllers and possibly writing software has more appeal to me than actually using the equipment to brew beer. That's because I'm an EE / Professional Software Developer / welder / all around do-it-yourselfer that has no beer brewing experience. I believe I'll get excited about the beer after the novelty of setting up the mini brewery has worn off.

At this point, I'm just thinking about the details as I watch videos and read threads and mentally construct the brewery. Thanks again.

 

[mongoose33]

.
I'm definitely looking at automation, and in a big way. Right now, the thought of purchasing gadgets I've never seen before, welding up stands, wiring up controllers and possibly writing software has more appeal to me than actually using the equipment to brew beer. That's because I'm an EE / Professional Software Developer / welder / all around do-it-yourselfer that has no beer brewing experience. I believe I'll get excited about the beer after the novelty of setting up the mini brewery has worn off.

May I make a suggestion? Do a few batches without all the automation so you can learn first-hand about brewing in a hands-on way.

I'm a gadget guy (sounds like you are too) so I can understand the lure of making and setting up all this stuff. One thing I learned is that what I thought made sense in the beginning didn't always, and only through doing the brewing did that become apparent.

Now, far be it from me to tell anyone how they should enjoy their life; do what makes you happy. But---there had to be a but--if you can't brew good beer, that would seem to me to negate whatever else you did. The setup, the equipment, the process, all are aimed specifically at producing good beer.

For me, the fact that there's an outcome measure makes this all very appealing. I'm trained as a scientist so when I see all these wonderful causal processes culminating in a beverage whose quality is able to be judged....well, for a scientist that's nirvana.

[It's also why learning to golf, making golf clubs, learning Poker, learning to shoot firearms, learning to cast and powdercoat my own bullets--all have very firm outcome measures by which I can gauge my progress and outcomes. Same with beer brewing.]

So--fun as this all is, and it IS fun, all the welding in the world isn't going to help if you can't get the water right, understand grain bills, what hops do and why, how to assess gravity, etc. etc. etc. So think about whether it's valuable to learn to make beer w/o all the bells and whistles so that you have something against which you can judge the beer produced by the system you're planning.

Either way, enjoy.

 

[RoatanBill]

mongoose33:

More than once, I've read "buy once, cry once" on this site, and I'm in full agreement.

I do intend to test some of my ideas, but I'm going to test them on some major parts that conform to how I discover the system should be built. We are in agreement.

It's 3 kettles up front, I'm certain. I'll forego the controller and software initially and manually use a digital thermometer, timer, etc to brew a few batches just to see what the process is like as you suggest. I just believe automation can only improve the outcome given a sequence of steps that the automation can control better than I can. Further, brewing isn't rocket science. I'm a reasonably intelligent guy and by educating myself and eventually trying different things with equipment in hand, I'm confident I can produce good beer as I've never failed at anything I set my mind to. It's the beer I'm after ultimately.

At some point, I intend to write up my design and ask people, experienced people, to shoot holes in it before I purchase anything. I don't know how well that will be received or if the effort will be worth it, so at the present I'm asking questions to try to guide some of my thoughts.

For example, I've decided to put the majority of the ports through the bottom of the kettles. Only the heating element is on the sidewall according to my thinking. I got that idea from BrunDog on this site and that one idea seriously changed my design. It opened up new possibilities and, of course, challenges even at the contemplation stage.

Ports in the bottom led me to remove the HERMS coil and just use a heat exchanger instead. The lack of side wall ports allows me to put removable insulation around the kettles easily to better control temperature. One thing leads to another. Should a show stopper come up, I'll have to back track.

 

[mongoose33]

mongoose33:

More than once, I've read "buy once, cry once" on this site, and I'm in full agreement.

I do intend to test some of my ideas, but I'm going to test them on some major parts that conform to how I discover the system should be built. We are in agreement.

It's 3 kettles up front, I'm certain. I'll forego the controller and software initially and manually use a digital thermometer, timer, etc to brew a few batches just to see what the process is like as you suggest. I just believe automation can only improve the outcome given a sequence of steps that the automation can control better than I can. Further, brewing isn't rocket science. I'm a reasonably intelligent guy and by educating myself and eventually trying different things with equipment in hand, I'm confident I can produce good beer as I've never failed at anything I set my mind to. It's the beer I'm after ultimately.

At some point, I intend to write up my design and ask people, experienced people, to shoot holes in it before I purchase anything. I don't know how well that will be received or if the effort will be worth it, so at the present I'm asking questions to try to guide some of my thoughts.

For example, I've decided to put the majority of the ports through the bottom of the kettles. Only the heating element is on the sidewall according to my thinking. I got that idea from BrunDog on this site and that one idea seriously changed my design. It opened up new possibilities and, of course, challenges even at the contemplation stage.

Ports in the bottom led me to remove the HERMS coil and just use a heat exchanger instead. The lack of side wall ports allows me to put removable insulation around the kettles easily to better control temperature. One thing leads to another. Should a show stopper come up, I'll have to back track.

Sounds like a sound plan.

While brewing isn't rocket science, there are a lot of moving parts, so to speak. Making beer is simple, making great beer not quite so much. I don't doubt you can get there, my suggestion was just to help accelerate the process.

I've done 30 batches now, 27 have been all-grain. I remember what it was like to be a newbie, but I'm also producing pretty good, very good, quite good beer. I think. People keep drinking it. I like it.

But I remember. Lotsa new terminology, like racking, sparging, wort, vorlauf, grant, HERMS, etc. etc. I think sometimes that was the hardest part, making those myriad new terms part of my working vocabulary.

Being able to buy high quality equipment at the outset can be a joy. I started with fairly good stuff, then over Christmas I upgraded the Kettle, Chiller, Burner, and Thermometer (Thermapen MK4). It might have made sense to do that at the beginning but truth be told, I didn't know enough to make that choice properly. It took nearly a year of brewing to get to the point where I knew what I wanted. I'd have gone electric but don't have good access to 220 power where I brew, and we may be moving in a year or so, thus I didn't want to sink money into something I couldn't take along.

One thing I didn't see mentioned was a fermentation chamber. It is said, and I believe it, that the single biggest improvement new brewers can make is fermentation temperature control. The fanciest brew rig in the world (and yours sounds like it will be) can't overcome lack of fermentation temperature control resulting in a too-warm fermentation. Since your tap water is 90 degrees it seems unlikely you have a cool basement, so having a way to control the temperature of the fermenting wort is crucial. I use a refrigerator, many do, some a freezer, a few make their own.

The other consideration is whether you want to bottle or keg. Don't know if you've given that much thought or not. I bottled my first three batches, then said "screw this" and went to kegs. Built a keezer and now, if I want, I can bottle off the taps.

Anyway, I hope you can take some pics and post them as you do this. Should be fun!

 

[passedpawn]

In a 3 kettle setup (HLT, MLT, BK), is the BK ever used at anything other than a boil?

If so, is there a name or term for what is trying to be achieved so I can look it up?

You need to brew some beer. I'm smelling paralysis by analysis here.

I don't think anybody, even smart guys like yourself, built the perfect system before they started. It's a nice idea to attempt that, but if you had a basic brewing system you'd already have the answers to some of your questions.

Since you say you haven't brewed before, I would like to posit this: equipment is the LEAST of your worries. At least it should be. But I'll assume that you'll handle process with the same rigor. Consistently brewing good beer is 90% muscle memory from past successes, 10% good equipment.

 

[PlexVector]

In a 3 kettle setup (HLT, MLT, BK), is the BK ever used at anything other than a boil?

If so, is there a name or term for what is trying to be achieved so I can look it up?

You need to brew some beer. I'm smelling paralysis by analysis here.

I don't think anybody, even smart guys like yourself, built the perfect system before they started. It's a nice idea to attempt that, but if you had a basic brewing system you'd already have the answers to some of your questions.

Since you say you haven't brewed before, I would like to posit this: equipment is the LEAST of your worries. At least it should be. But I'll assume that you'll handle process with the same rigor. Consistently brewing good beer is 90% muscle memory from past successes, 10% good equipment.

I agree with @passedpawn. I used to do extract back in the early 90's and quit and I said I would never brew again unless it was all-grain. Well it happened and I got back into brewing in 2014 and spent 3 months of research and buying equipment, and making process charts and flow diagrams before my first brew day. The beer was good, but I could have been brewing sooner.

Brewing is like sex: you can read about it until you're blue,
but you won't learn anything until you do!
just brew baby brew!

 

[RoatanBill]

mongoose33:
Although I haven't given any serious thought to the fermentation stage, I've watched numerous videos, read quite a bit about it and came to the conclusion I wasn't going to go with an actual conical fermenter, probably ever. I'll start with glass jugs as I hate plastic. I'm also going the keg route. Bottling is too much work with too much chance of messing up the batch. Once I discovered what corn sugar was I lost interest in it altogether.
I happen to have a walk in refrigerator that hasn't been used in over a year and I can temporarily use it to store kegs and bulk grains. Getting consumable supplies (grains, hops, etc) shipped in is another area I have to check out.

passedpawn:
PlexVector:
All engineers are well aware of analysis paralysis, including me. I am guilty of over analyzing things but only because I sometimes identify regions of concern that turn out to be unimportant. That's OK by me.

I have an issue most people don't. I'm on an island. It takes 30 to 45 days to move product here and that involves clearing customs, all sorts of fees and paperwork. There are no local brewers I can consult with. I checked with Northern Brewers and BrewHardware to see if they've ever shipped any product to Roatan and both said no. Therefore everything I do is strictly based on my own final judgement. I have to make a maximum effort to bring in as close to the ultimate system as possible, including every nut and bolt required to brew a batch. There's no Home Depot or Lowes I can rely on. There's no local brew store available to quickly pick up a chemical, a piece of hose or a repair part. I'm on my own.

 

[Homercidal]

mongoose33:
Although I haven't given any serious thought to the fermentation stage, I've watched numerous videos, read quite a bit about it and came to the conclusion I wasn't going to go with an actual conical fermenter, probably ever. I'll start with glass jugs as I hate plastic. I'm also going the keg route. Bottling is too much work with too much chance of messing up the batch. Once I discovered what corn sugar was I lost interest in it altogether.
I happen to have a walk in refrigerator that hasn't been used in over a year and I can temporarily use it to store kegs and bulk grains. Getting consumable supplies (grains, hops, etc) shipped in is another area I have to check out.

You can avoid plastic and the (Potentially) dangerous and difficult to clean glass fermentors by using Stainless. A conical doesn't hold much advantage over a bucket style fermentor unless you are harvesting yeast or bulk aging in it. I personally love my inexpensive Chapman Stainless Bucket fermentor. If sanitation is a question, it can quickly and easily be placed in an oven and sterilized. They have several sizes to choose from.

Also, you don't have to use Corn Sugar to prime with. I rarely do. I use table sugar when I bottle, and have used DME and Honey before with good results. Anything fermentable can be used.

Anyway, I think you should keg if you want to. It's generally faster and easier at packaging time, and you *can* bottle from it fairly easy if the need arises.

But most of all, I think mongoose's suggestion to think about fermentation temp is maybe the most important aspect of brewing where you are. I believe it's way more important to the final product than when you use glass or plastic, recirculate your chilled wort, or almost anything else involved in the process. A walk-in fridge would be handy if it were to be adapted to control fermentation temps somehow, say with an insulated fermentation box with a controller and maybe a heater for fermentation. The area outside might be for storing grains and packaged beer, etc. and inside the box might be a couple of carboys of fermenting beer. I don't know exactly how big it is, but that's one idea that might utilize your space to maximum effectiveness.

I hear Pacman yeast is good at higher temps, but I haven't tried it myself, having used different methods of temp control.

 

[passedpawn]

passedpawn:
PlexVector:
All engineers are well aware of analysis paralysis, including me. I am guilty of over analyzing things but only because I sometimes identify regions of concern that turn out to be unimportant.

Plex and I have no idea what you're talking about

 

[Dcpcooks]

Fermentation control is far more important that automation of the hot side. You should consider using one of your heat exchangers to cool fermentation.

As I reflect on the progression of my beers and skills I'd say that recipe development and fermentation are responsible for the biggest jumps in my beers quality

 

[jddevinn]

I think all have been mentioned before:

1. Speeds up the process. When the heating element is submerged in the BK at about 5 gallons I can start raising the temp to ~210°F and hold until my sparge is complete and then nearly instantly boil.
2. Cooling. You want to cool the entire mass of wort down at once so a single pass chiller is normally not efficient unless you have a large chilled glycol reserve.
3. Hop stands at a specified temp.
4. Whirlpool filtering. I Whirlpool while chilling then let stand for 15 minutes. I normally leave behind about 80-90% of trub in a pile in the center of the fermenter.

Notes on what I've read on your system design:
1. Fermentation control and automation is more important, both for the final product and time managing perspective, than hot side control.
2. If you are as anal as you say you are after you build your heat exchangers you may wander into a discussion on low dissolved oxygen brewing and decide that your copper heat exchangers need replaced with stainless.
3. Before you set your process in stone read up on a couple threads of others builds.... and read some of the long discussion on transferring, oxidation, yeast, ect. these will have a larger impact on your final beer than the system design will

 

[PlexVector]

mongoose33:
Although I haven't given any serious thought to the fermentation stage, I've watched numerous videos, read quite a bit about it and came to the conclusion I wasn't going to go with an actual conical fermenter, probably ever. I'll start with glass jugs as I hate plastic. I'm also going the keg route. Bottling is too much work with too much chance of messing up the batch. Once I discovered what corn sugar was I lost interest in it altogether.
I happen to have a walk in refrigerator that hasn't been used in over a year and I can temporarily use it to store kegs and bulk grains. Getting consumable supplies (grains, hops, etc) shipped in is another area I have to check out.

passedpawn:
PlexVector:
All engineers are well aware of analysis paralysis, including me. I am guilty of over analyzing things but only because I sometimes identify regions of concern that turn out to be unimportant. That's OK by me.

I have an issue most people don't. I'm on an island. It takes 30 to 45 days to move product here and that involves clearing customs, all sorts of fees and paperwork. There are no local brewers I can consult with. I checked with Northern Brewers and BrewHardware to see if they've ever shipped any product to Roatan and both said no. Therefore everything I do is strictly based on my own final judgement. I have to make a maximum effort to bring in as close to the ultimate system as possible, including every nut and bolt required to brew a batch. There's no Home Depot or Lowes I can rely on. There's no local brew store available to quickly pick up a chemical, a piece of hose or a repair part. I'm on my own.

Plex and I have no idea what you're talking about

I just looked up Roatan Island on wikipedia...@passedpawn, how big is your sailboat!? A fellow homebrewer needs our help...

 

[passedpawn]

I just looked up Roatan on wikipedia...@passedpawn, how big is your sailboat!? A fellow homebrewer needs our help...

I've got 3 kayaks... it's a direct shot from my house. Let's do it

 

[RoatanBill]

Homercidal:
I pretty much agree with everything you said. I've spent most of my research time on the "hot side" simply because that's where everything starts. I'll eventually concentrate on the cold side. I chose the glass jugs because they're cheap, chemically inert and I can have a dozen of them bubbling away at reasonable cost and it is a starting point. I bred tropical fish for decades while in NY & TX and handled the 5 gallon glass jugs without ever breaking one so I'm fairly confident I can repeat that success at least for starters.

My wife's bakery oven has twin doors and each opening is 19wx26hx30d so anything up to that large can be baked in it. Thanks for the suggestion. Her walk-in refer is 8'x8'x8' and she used it to store special Canadian flour that we brought in by the ton, literally. Then we (she) changed business direction and the refer had no defined purpose so we shut it down. The local HVAC guy can probably rig it to give me any temp I want. Eventually I'd have a dedicated chest refer for beer as the walk-in costs a small fortune to run. Electricity is $0.32/kWh here.

Dcpcooks:
In the back of my mind a question has been stirring but I haven't paid any attention to it.

I get the general impression that yeast comes in two flavors - warm and cool and depending on the beer says which is required. Winter temps here go as low as 65 degrees for a day or two. Summer temps are a steady 85-100 depending on time of day. Spring and autumn really don't exist worth mentioning. Everything I might want to brew would require refrigeration, but having multiple cooling chambers at different temperatures isn't reasonable.

I drink Guinness Foreign Extra mostly and would probably want to brew something similar. I believe that would require the higher temp yeast and fermentation. I'd also like something not quite as heavy and that wants the lower temp yeast and fermentation. I've wondered what people do that need various temperatures and maturation times that tie up a cooling resource. How do people handle this issue?

 

[Homercidal]

Guinness FES is a stronger, and IMO, thicker feeling version of their dry Irish Stout. I suspect they use the same Ale yeast strain in both. Ale yeast generally works best at 58-75F temps, but the ideal temps depends on the particular strain and the beer style you are brewing. Generally I recommend 62-68F for most of them, with exceptions in a few cases.

Lager yeasts tend to ferment best at 50-55 (Although I don't have as much experience with those strains) and lagers in general are aged several weeks down close to freezing after several weeks primary fermentation. These "rules" are still argued about, but considering where you are brewing, you might be best served not worrying too much about Lagers and focus on what will work well, especially to start with: Ales.

And if you are not versed in the very basics of yeast, I HIGHLY recommend you buy a copy of YEAST, from Brewer's Publications. It's a really good book on how to work with yeast, and goes into a lot more detail than I can here. IMO it may be the most useful specialty homebrew book out there. it's been said many times that the most important step in brewing is giving the right yeast, the right conditions to do their thing. Not only can different strains give different flavors, different conditions (Temp, pH, food supply, chemistry) can greatly impact the flavors that your yeast will give you. It's really worth some study, especially in a more challenging environment.

Depending on batch sizes, you might consider buying a chest freezer or fridge with a controller on it, rather than spend $$ on a large inefficient walk-in. Less space to chill.

 

[Dcpcooks]

Dcpcooks:
In the back of my mind a question has been stirring but I haven't paid any attention to it.


I've wondered what people do that need various temperatures and maturation times that tie up a cooling resource. How do people handle this issue?[/QUOTE]


If you have a walk-in cooler then you have a cooling water source. A 30 gallon food grade garbage can, two small pumps with solenoids, a stc switch and some form of heat exchanger either in or around your fermentors and you good to go with any beer style.

I would say that yeast is more than warm or cold. Take saison II for example. At 68 it will be spicy but subtle. At 82 it's juicy fruit and bold.

A DIPA with cali yeast may give you bliss at 66--67 and a butter bomb at 69--70.

Since fermentation is exothermic, early and consistent control is an important part of crafting good to great beers. Most of the flavor development takes place in the first three days.

Edit didn't see your electric costs. A chest freezer would be a better option for your $$$$.

 

[RoatanBill]

1. Speeds up the process.
2. Cooling.
3. Hop stands at a specified temp.
4. Whirlpool filtering.

Notes ...
2. ... low dissolved oxygen ...

#1 I got that from a few videos. Makes sense.
#2 I've got plenty of ice handy all the time. I believe I can cool to any required temp in one pass IF I can get the proper exchanger design.
#3 This I'll have to check out. Thanks.
#4 Since you brought it up - whirlpooling the wort only does a partial job. The electrical heating element involved and its placement also affects the outcome. I like Blickmann's Boil Coil because it's out of the way for whirlpooling and it is certainly low density given its surface area. Once the solids are heaped towards the center, I haven't figured out what people do with it.

If a rippled coil is in the way, there's little that can be done. Even with the perimeter coil, any attempt to isolate the mound would probably lead to disaster. I conclude that one simply accepts the inevitable solids that come out with the wort via the drain near the kettle side. I have yet to see anyone try to filter the wort once it's outside the kettle but I believe such filtering would be beneficial for clarity as well as taste.

Do people pump the wort through a counterflow exchanger after whirlpooling or do they let gravity do it more slowly? I've seen it done both ways in videos, but never knew if whirlpooling was done beforehand or not. I suspect pumping it out would draw in more solids, but I really don't know.

Filtering the COLD wort through a micron filter would do the job in a pressurized situation, but it seems to me there's no reasonable way to sanitize the filter for reuse making that an expensive proposition. I suppose filtering through a commercial coffee filter in a gravity situation could work, hot or cold, as long as there's not too much of the really fine suspended solids but I suspect that's exactly the case. What's the solution?

Notes #2: Oh oh. Now what? Thanks for the heads up, but you're making my life very difficult. Ignorance is bliss, you know. I TIG weld, and can bend and braze copper. Bending SS inside SS is another matter entirely. I can TIG SS to avoid "sugaring" but the bending is problematic. I know of no SS inside SS exchanger suitable for a food application - do you?

 

[Homercidal]

I wouldn't sweat getting perfectly clear wort going into the fermentor. Anything large enough to be caught by a filter is going to settle quickly in a fermentor. Watch what happens after a good boil. The hops debris and hot and cold break material settle quickly leaving a very clear wort floating on top. If it settles that quickly in the bk before putting in the fermentor, it will settle quickly when the yeast are done stirring up the wort in the fermentor. (It can churn pretty good while they are eating and excreting...)

 

[mongoose33]

mongoose33:
Although I haven't given any serious thought to the fermentation stage, I've watched numerous videos, read quite a bit about it and came to the conclusion I wasn't going to go with an actual conical fermenter, probably ever.

I looked at those, they seemed difficult to move, it wasn't clear they'd fit easily in my fermentation chamber, and at this point I don't harvest yeast.

I'll start with glass jugs as I hate plastic.

Me, too. Except in this case. You might take a gander at this search and see if anything changes:

https://www.google.com/search?q=site...hrome&ie=UTF-8

All I needed was to hear the horror stories about people injured by carboys breaking. My favorite--or least, actually--story involves someone carrying a carboy in their arms, squeezing it hard because it was heavy. They hit a corner on a counter, the carboy broke in their arms and because they were squeezing it so hard....you can imagine the lacerations.

They're harder to clean due to the narrow neck, heavier than plastic, dangerous if they break. Some have had them break as they added wort to them, just cracked and broke.

There are two main plastic fermenters people use. I have the BigMouth Bubbler from Northern Brewer. I love it, though it's more expensive than the Fermonster from MoreBeer.

I continue to use the BMB because I have carry straps for it, it works well, etc. etc. A sort of inertia, if you will.

But if i were starting over, I'd get the Fermonster.

Both have wide mouths which means you can reach inside to clean or to remove the spigot. You can get them without the spigot, but I've done it both ways and I like the spigot.

About the only value IMO to a glass carboy is if you're doing very long term aging; they're oxygen-impermeable. If they're all you have, they're all you have, but having worked with both, not a chance in the world I'd go back to glass.

I'm also going the keg route. Bottling is too much work with too much chance of messing up the batch. Once I discovered what corn sugar was I lost interest in it altogether.

Bottling off a keg is actually quite easy. I'm taking some of my bottled beer to a wedding reception this weekend; easy to get a variety. If I had help capping I could do two bottles a minute, maybe a bit faster. I use a growler-filler to fill bottles, also use the poor-man's beer gun attached to a picnic tap.

Of course, you can also fill growlers if you need to take your beer somewhere. I do that as well, depending.

I happen to have a walk in refrigerator that hasn't been used in over a year and I can temporarily use it to store kegs and bulk grains. Getting consumable supplies (grains, hops, etc) shipped in is another area I have to check out.

Wish I had one. But my electricity is almost 1/3 of what you pay, so I can see a desire to not run it much.

I have an issue most people don't. I'm on an island.

I suspected something like that. Maybe the 90-degree tap water had something to do with it...

It takes 30 to 45 days to move product here and that involves clearing customs, all sorts of fees and paperwork. There are no local brewers I can consult with. I checked with Northern Brewers and BrewHardware to see if they've ever shipped any product to Roatan and both said no. Therefore everything I do is strictly based on my own final judgement.

Well, not completely. You're getting a lot of advice here, and the advantage to that over videos is it's interactive. For instance, my comments about your "glass jugs" decision above.

But as always, it's your life, and you can embrace or ignore the advice here as you see fit.

I have to make a maximum effort to bring in as close to the ultimate system as possible, including every nut and bolt required to brew a batch. There's no Home Depot or Lowes I can rely on. There's no local brew store available to quickly pick up a chemical, a piece of hose or a repair part. I'm on my own.

No, you're not. You have us.

 

[RoatanBill]

Homercidal:
I added the Yeast book to my wish list on Amazon. I noticed they have Malt, Hops and Water also so I tagged them too.

Dcpcooks:
Till you mentioned it, I forgot fermentation is an exothermic reaction. I'll do some research on fermentation cooling and let my subconscious mull it over for a while.

 

[mongoose33]

Homercidal:
I added the Yeast book to my wish list on Amazon. I noticed they have Malt, Hops and Water also so I tagged them too.

I have all four of them--and I think all four are well-worth getting.

Dcpcooks:
Till you mentioned it, I forgot fermentation is an exothermic reaction. I'll do some research on fermentation cooling and let my subconscious mull it over for a while.

Depending on the kind of beer and ambient conditions, you might, early on, be able to control ferm temps with a fermenter kept in a vessel of water and kept cool using frozen water bottles that are replaced as needed. I've used a swamp cooler approach that helps. You'd need something to monitor temps to see where you're at, but it's cheaper than running a walk-in cooler w/ electric rates at 32c/KWH.

Given your background, you probably can gin up something using an air conditioner or refrigerator or whatever you have available to you.

Here's mine: I need a heat mat to raise temp when garage temps are cold, but the Inkbird 308 will control both heat and cooling. There's enough room in mine to handle two fermenters.

The temperature probe is held against the fermenter by the piece of insulating blue foam so it's picking up wort temp instead of ambient.

 

[RoatanBill]

Homercidal:
Yeah - I keep looking under the bed for the monster. I guess its my education that just naturally causes my mind to go looking for problems if there's even the slightest hint one might exist. It's a good thing to have people throw some water over my head to cool me off. Thanks.

mongoose33:
That link didn't bring up anything relevant. I'll look up those two devices.

Boy can you paint a nasty mental picture. Squeezing a 50lb load that suddenly turns into shrapnel is one ugly image. About a year ago I wasn't paying attention and cut my forearm with an angle grinder. That put me out of commission for weeks.

I was planning on cleaning the inside of the glass jugs using salt as an abrasive. That's what I did previously and never had an issue. I haven't seen a large glass jug in years, so maybe they're less robust today. The ones I had way back when were really thick glass, so thick they had a slight blue tinge to them as they bent the light.

Ok - I'll reconsider. I don't need any more down time.

I figured that bottling from a keg just to conveniently move the beer for an occasion and quickly consume it would work OK. I just wasn't interested in bottle bombs and the tedious filling as my mainstay. My wife's business has cases of brown glass empties laying around from the local Cerveceria. I could clean and "borrow" them for a while if necessary. They are sturdy.

I got to admit, you guys are great. Without this valuable input and bringing me back to earth I'd probably never get anywhere.

 

[jddevinn]

#1 I got that from a few videos. Makes sense.
#2 I've got plenty of ice handy all the time. I believe I can cool to any required temp in one pass IF I can get the proper exchanger design.
#3 This I'll have to check out. Thanks.
#4 Since you brought it up - whirlpooling the wort only does a partial job. The electrical heating element involved and its placement also affects the outcome. I like Blickmann's Boil Coil because it's out of the way for whirlpooling and it is certainly low density given its surface area. Once the solids are heaped towards the center, I haven't figured out what people do with it.

If a rippled coil is in the way, there's little that can be done. Even with the perimeter coil, any attempt to isolate the mound would probably lead to disaster. I conclude that one simply accepts the inevitable solids that come out with the wort via the drain near the kettle side. I have yet to see anyone try to filter the wort once it's outside the kettle but I believe such filtering would be beneficial for clarity as well as taste.

Do people pump the wort through a counterflow exchanger after whirlpooling or do they let gravity do it more slowly? I've seen it done both ways in videos, but never knew if whirlpooling was done beforehand or not. I suspect pumping it out would draw in more solids, but I really don't know.

Filtering the COLD wort through a micron filter would do the job in a pressurized situation, but it seems to me there's no reasonable way to sanitize the filter for reuse making that an expensive proposition. I suppose filtering through a commercial coffee filter in a gravity situation could work, hot or cold, as long as there's not too much of the really fine suspended solids but I suspect that's exactly the case. What's the solution?

Notes #2: Oh oh. Now what? Thanks for the heads up, but you're making my life very difficult. Ignorance is bliss, you know. I TIG weld, and can bend and braze copper. Bending SS inside SS is another matter entirely. I can TIG SS to avoid "sugaring" but the bending is problematic. I know of no SS inside SS exchanger suitable for a food application - do you?

While not necessary to clear the wort before transferring to the fermenter I like to do it because:

1. I have conicals and often harvest the yeast. Clear wort means "cleaner" yeast.
2. It makes cleaning the fermenter easier when I am done. Cleaning the BK is easy.

See below picture; I get good "cone-ing" in the center of the BK even with the element. I see no reason to use a micrn filter.

My cooling process is:
1. At 15 minutes before the boil ends I hook the BK discharge to the wort pump then to the hx and then to the whirlpool port and begin circulating wort and sanitize the cooling loop.
2. At flameout I keep the pump running and turn on the cooling water.
2.a I cool my conicals with a closed loop glycol system. I've taken to filling the empty conical with water when the brew day starts and using the cooling loop to create a fermenter full of nearly freezing water. I then use this to drop the last 50°F or so. Really speeds up cooling during the summer here in "hot" North Carolina.
3.Turn off cooling water and wort pump allowing for a 10-15 min rest.
4.Sanitize the fermenter and sanitize a connection piece to the bottom.
5. Disconnect the return whirlpool line and hook it to the fermenter in. Then pump the wort to the fermenter.
6. When the boil kettle reaches the point where I can get no more wort out turn off the pump close the valve and push the wort that remains in the pump, hx and lines into the fermenter with the "utility" CO2 line.

I've seen counterflow stainless and plate and frame heat exchangers for sell on brewing supply websites. Low dissolved oxygen on the hot side is not something that many people worry about (and I only do for some styles) but is is one of the things that I eventually changed with my system that "had I known" I would have done different first go around.

..... kinda like you (although I am in the US) I was full into a dedicated brewery room, Kal inspired electric system before we made our first beer. Although I did a lot of research before hand I've changed a lot of things as I learn more, and would change even more if starting from scratch. While I love designing and building I think I would have ended up with a better system design and spent WAY less money on redesigns if I had done some "old school" non automated brewing first. (although I wouldn't have had nearly as much fun)

 

[jddevinn]

Cleaning inside fermenters is really easy with a pump, clean in place spray nozzle and Oxyclean or whatever similar you have available.