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This will be a hodge-podge of opinions in one post. I'm brewing and drinking at the moment. So bear with me. With electric, you can brew inside. With gas, you cannot without some pretty serious ventilation. Plenty of people sing electric's praises for good reason. It works, it's quiet...

Shop vac works well for this.

Never tried to refurb an ice cream keg. I'll take you at your word on that one.

Yes. I fire them once I start the pump to vorlauf the sparge. Timing it this way means my wort is at about 200 degrees by the time I empty and clean the mash tun so I can be there to watch for boil overs and make necessary adjustments.

Places around here have gotten better about having at least a beer or two worth ordering. But if in the OP's situation, I order water. It makes a the point a little firmer than switching to liquor that I won't be ordering swill or anything else they can make money off my ordering.

Yes, it was probably luck on your part. I've had plenty of kegs, all used, all with soda still in them. The PBW soak usually did the trick. But root beer is tougher. The posts are where it's most persistent. I got it out, and it may be that I'm sensitive enough to that smell to notice it...

Give them a sniff. If you smell root beer, you will likely be investing in extra parts. Darned near impossible to get out.

Thanks. Tippy dump is probably overkill for my little 20 gallon kettles and is more surgery than I want to perform on my stand at this point. I suppose I could probably disconnect my return pump and pump the crud out into the driveway while adding water to the kettle to pump as much out of...

It doesn't always get a lot of love, but WLP 830 is rock solid. 833 is excellent as well, but I have had more consistent results with 830.

For those doing CIP on the boil kettle, how are you disposing of the trub pile? I have used a shop vac to remove most of it, before running a PBW loop backward through my chiller. But often times, its easier just to dump the trub and hops in the side yard, clean/rinse the kettle, and, then...

Excellent point. I lumped that under my "know your system" comment, but what a vague thing to say on my part.

Edit. Whoops. Didn't realize someone else had posted a walkthrough above. Hopefully, we don't contradict one another too much (room full of brewers, different opinions, etc.) Since you already have the false bottom, just do all grain with batch sparge. For a 5 gallon batch, 1. Add hot...

near boiling PBW run in a loop the opposite way through your CFC for 20 minutes will get a lot of it out.

Welcome from an intrastate transfer 80 miles to your east.

No creep intended, but Texas isn't like some of the more eastward states---kind of a large landmass. So, generally, in what part of the state are you "stuck"? Austin area, Houston area, San Antonio area, or Dallas area (staying metro with those options since most people don't relocate to...

This is my guess. I brew a lot of helles, and they generally require a little more time to shed the yeast flavor so to speak.

Maybe I missed it, but from where are you reading the temperature? I have a direct fired RIMS with a false bottom and take the temperature after the pump (so basically just after the point where heat is being applied). I have a lot of room under my false bottom. So my liquor to grist ratio is...

No matter the Shiner beer, I can always taste that minerally water. Practically grew up on the stuff. Still enjoy it from time to time, but I can almost smell that central Texas water from across the room. Drop a half pound chunk of limestone in the boil and you're good. ;)

Okay, just some semi scientific testing. My eyeballs have had my flowrate at approximately 1.5 gallons per minute. I usually run the flame pretty wide open since my burner lines are choked down. But this evening, I ran it at about 1/4 open on the MLT. During my ramp to mash out at these...

Good to know. Again, even with the expected, as-designed overshoot, the mash bed has never gone over target for me in two years of brewing with it. Just get that flame turned up to where it lights consistently and adjust your flow rate to get that 1.5 F/min. average.