Recent content by TimAikin1

Made this beer last week but changed it up a bit. Did dry powdered spices 5min before the end of the boil- 1tbsp orange peel, 1 tbsp ginger, 2 tsp cinnamon. So far it tastes really good. Will add the vanilla when I transfer to the keg next week. Plan to leave it to age until december, if I can...

Looks good. And there are plenty of ways to insulate the wood from the heat of the burner. Easiest and probably cheapest would be to shield it with cement board.

Update? I'm thinking of building a similar setup only with electric elements instead of gas burners, but still using gravity to transfer from BIAB kettle to chiller then to the fermenter.

So, I've been reading a lot of threads about cold crashing and I've decided I want to try it on this Dunkel I have in the conical fermenter. It's just about done with the primary fermentation. The only place I have to do the crash is to put it outside as I don't have a dedicated fridge or...

Awesome job! I have been wondering if something like this was feasible. When I make mine, I'll probably just use the heating element without the controller as I'm not good with electronics. I'll just have to manually switch on/off the element to keep the temp constant. Are you going...

It wasn't really that much work. If you don't count the time it took for the silicone to cure, it only took me like 2-2.5 hrs to assemble. The supports I just cut from a 4ft piece and bent in my bench vise with a hammer. The longest/hardest part was threading the tubing thru the holes in the...

Already built something similar to this using 25' of 3/8" copper and a home depot bucket. Drilled 2x 7/8" holes with a step bit. Support posts to keep coil spaced out under weight of ice/water for proper heat exchange. Threading the coil thru the holes in the supports. Tube ends...

I'm making my first Dunkel from a Brewer's Best partial mash kit. I'm wondering if I should just leave it in the primary for the entire time or split it into a secondary at some point? Is there any benefit/harm to leaving it in Primary longer and doing shorter Secondary? Or shorter Primary and...

Thanks for all the help! I think I have a game plan now. Spray-dried honey is dry honey in powder form- spray drying is how it is made.

I really like the sound of this recipe, but I'm new to home brewing so I have a few questions: 1) You refer to "the no-chill cube" a couple of times- is this just the vessel you allowed the wort to come down to temp in? 2) FWH = for the whole hour? 3) I'm guessing you used regular honey- Do you...

Fair enough. I just saw that some people were concerned about wasting water and thought this could be a way to do so. I guess it's just a trade off that depends on what's more of a priority to you. I don't want to waste a ton of water and don't see how running sanitizer and then wort thru the...

Instead of running your cooling water through an ice bath, why not just let the hot wort flow through the ice bath? I would think the wort would chill even faster running through the copper tubing, submerged in icy water. You could go from the ice bath straight into the fermenter. Just an idea.

I don't want to waste a ton of water either. I thought about running the wort through the immersion chiller while its sitting in a bucket or kettle loaded with ice water. Instead of connecting the chiller to the sink you'd just connect it to the valve on the kettle. The "out" port would go...