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I just scoop the spent grain out of the mash tun with a plastic pitcher and dump it into a wheeled compost bin. It only takes a few minutes, and then once the mash tun is almost empty, it is easy enough to lift up and dump whatever is still left. (I am using a 25 gallon mash tun.) Not sure...

Yean, no tape on the flare connections. It was just loose, perfect seal once I tightened it.

I've been brewing with propane for four years, zero problems. Was brewing yesterday, turned on HLT burner, ran for a minute or two, then all of a sudden a fireball shot out from the stand. and a second flame appeared at the needle valve. Cut the gas before anything bad happened. I built my own...

Welcome. I'm from Blairsville PA (45 miles east of Pittsburgh on Rt 22) but I have lived in California for more than 25 years now. I'm sure that western PA water will make some great beers!

You can submerge the plate chiller in StarSan (I did that once and it was fine) or put it in the oven for awhile, which really makes sure everything in there is dead. I do also pump StarSan thru it before brewing, but that is really to sanitize the 75 feet of tubing from the chiller to the...

I switched from immersion chiller in 5 gallon batches to plate chiller (Therminator) for 20 gallon batches, and I am using a fraction of the water I did before, even though the batches are four times larger. Chugger pump taking wort at or near boiling from the kettle into the chiller, coming...

Another vote for the Blichmann Beer Gun. I bottled from a keg for the first time ever recently and it worked great. It allows you to easily flush the bottle with CO2 first. They do include 10 or 12 feet of tubing and tell you to use it all, which I did, and there was very little foam. They...

I had never used pumps before but when I moved up to larger batches I had to either pump thru 75 feet of tubing or carry four carboys that far. I chose a pump (Chugger) and I have to say if I'd tried a pump earlier, I might have gone with a side by side brewing system instead of gravity. It...

I haven't tried making banana beer but I've made banana ice cream, and I learned a few things. One thing is that a lot of people who have tried it say that most banana extract sucks, and not just the artificial kind, but also the expensive, real, organic kind. I did not try extract myself for...

I just used mine for the first time. I didn't see a lot of postings about it when I researched temp controllers, but I decided to buy one anyway. Glad I did. It worked great and was really easy to use. I ran it with two MoreBeer heating pad units attached to a 120 liter Speidel inside...

Customer service manager for start-up medical device company. Have a young female engineer here who also brews, my kinda girl.

More good ideas, thanks again to all. Another thing I'm considering is to cut the tubing into 8 foot sections that I can couple together. I have a 4 ft tube brush so I could clean each section separately from each end.

Drained via gravity - just picked it up over my head and let the tubing run through my hands as I walked toward the fermenter. I guess it might be good to dry the inside out after use but I have no idea how I would do that. I'm not even sure how to clean and sanitize it for the next use.

I went with pumping. It was the first time I'd used a pump and a Therminator, and I was amazed at how well it worked. It ended up being 75 feet of tubing. The only issue was the pump was so much faster than I expected, by the time I ran to the other end of the tubing in my garage, a few...

No, it fits, I just don't brew inside the garage for safety reasons. I guess some people do run propane burners inside their garage, but Blichmann and other burner/stand manufacturers specifically recommend against it.

Thanks again for all of the replies. I should have explained in my initial post that rolling anything I can carry is not worth it, because my fermenter sits inside my garage in a large upright freezer, and immediately outside the garage door, the driveway slopes considerably. So I can't brew...

Thanks for the input, everyone. I am at least going to try the pumping method with water to make sure it flows, measure wort loss in the tubing, etc. I will post the results.

I am going to be brewing my first large batch soon. My fermenter (30 gal Spiedel in a freezer) is 65 feet from my brewing area. I am trying to decide if it would be better to pump through 65 feet of tubing or just drain from the kettle into four 5 gallon carboys and carry them to the...

Really appreciate the info, thanks all. Steve, really appreciate your providing the model number.

Thanks all for the replies. Steve, do you have the model # for your Frigidaire 20.5? If not, can you tell me if it is frost-free or manual?