Well, Saturday i got to test out a number of new toys i purchased during the day and all i've got to say is that if you don't have these things you are seriously lacking some enjoyment.
This was my 5th batch but i already knew i wanted a propane burner, wort chiller and to rig up a simple swamp cooler.
I'll get to the swamp cooler in a moment but i want to talk about the propane burner and the chiller really quickly. The propane burner was incredible, i was boiling water in about 5 minutes, and the whole rolling boil process after the LME addition got up and running in just under 6 minutes. I made a pre and a standard chiller, with the pre-chiller being submerged in super cold ice water and being attached to the primary chiller which by this point was in the BK getting sanitized with heat.
It was roughly 100 degrees out when i turned off the fire and started the chilling process. I filled the pre-chiller bucket up with as much ice as i had in the freezer and turned the water on. The first thing i noticed was how quickly the wort went from 212 to about 150 (literally 2 minutes), then how quickly from that point down to about 80 for pitching temperature (maybe another 10 minutes). It was freaking fantastic! So then i shook the vial up real well, pitched the yeast and covered the fermenter placing it and a blowoff tube terminating in a half filled Jim Beam handle i'd recently finished and washed into my spare bathroom tub.
Now comes the great swamp cooler setup i devised. I filled the tub with about 2 inches of water while soaking a towel from the downspout, wrapped that towel around the fermenter with just a tiny bit touching the water in the tub. I stuck a space fan on the counter and set it up to fire right above the fermenting bucket so that i wouldn't have direct wind drying out the very top of the towell and i left everything alone for a few hours. Last night when i checked the temps it was holding steady around 65.
Now, here's the real kicker about why they are so cool. The outside temperature is over 100 during the day, my inside temp swings from 76-80 depending on if im home or not (i have a programmable thermostat). I've now checked at four different intervals that have been set at the three ambient temp schedules i have programmed and i've got a consistent 65 degrees throughout. Swamp coolers are AWESOME!
This was my 5th batch but i already knew i wanted a propane burner, wort chiller and to rig up a simple swamp cooler.
I'll get to the swamp cooler in a moment but i want to talk about the propane burner and the chiller really quickly. The propane burner was incredible, i was boiling water in about 5 minutes, and the whole rolling boil process after the LME addition got up and running in just under 6 minutes. I made a pre and a standard chiller, with the pre-chiller being submerged in super cold ice water and being attached to the primary chiller which by this point was in the BK getting sanitized with heat.
It was roughly 100 degrees out when i turned off the fire and started the chilling process. I filled the pre-chiller bucket up with as much ice as i had in the freezer and turned the water on. The first thing i noticed was how quickly the wort went from 212 to about 150 (literally 2 minutes), then how quickly from that point down to about 80 for pitching temperature (maybe another 10 minutes). It was freaking fantastic! So then i shook the vial up real well, pitched the yeast and covered the fermenter placing it and a blowoff tube terminating in a half filled Jim Beam handle i'd recently finished and washed into my spare bathroom tub.
Now comes the great swamp cooler setup i devised. I filled the tub with about 2 inches of water while soaking a towel from the downspout, wrapped that towel around the fermenter with just a tiny bit touching the water in the tub. I stuck a space fan on the counter and set it up to fire right above the fermenting bucket so that i wouldn't have direct wind drying out the very top of the towell and i left everything alone for a few hours. Last night when i checked the temps it was holding steady around 65.
Now, here's the real kicker about why they are so cool. The outside temperature is over 100 during the day, my inside temp swings from 76-80 depending on if im home or not (i have a programmable thermostat). I've now checked at four different intervals that have been set at the three ambient temp schedules i have programmed and i've got a consistent 65 degrees throughout. Swamp coolers are AWESOME!
