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Channeling isn't really an issue with batch sparging. If you add your sparge water and stir, the sugars are in solution. It's not like fly sparging where you have fresh water running through the grain and the potential for channeling. Lots of people on here are using braids for batch sparging...

Just throwing that our there. Not sure if that would cause a sour smell or not but I suppose it's possible.

Have you brewed a smoke beer before? You could be picking up a strange smell from the smoked malt?

I would agree that this could be a water chemistry issue. Perhaps your mash pH is off and you're getting astringency from that.

Agree with the above. I've used grains that were 2+ years old with no issues. Taste the grains and as long as they don't taste stale, you should be fine. Another tip is to stick smaller bags of grains in the freezer for a couple of days. This will kill any weevil eggs so you don't have them...

Don't forget to "soap" the weep hole in the regulator. I had a heck of a time finding a leak in my system. Turned out to be a problem inside the regulator itself. The seat in the regulator was leaking. CO2 was leaking out through the weep hole in the regulator body.

I would think you'll be fine with the 11"x24" heater. That's the one I ordered from them and I've been fermenting in my unheated garage this winter. The garage is in the 40s and I've been fermenting between 63 and 68 without problems. The 11" flex watt stuff is 20 watts per foot so a 24"...

So you're wondering if you can take the factory thermostat from the fridge and put that on the freezer? Boy, I have no idea - that's beyond my knowledge of freezers. I do know there is a thread here about adjusting the factory thermostat on a freezer to temperatures above freezing. I believe...

You shouldn't need to make any modifications whatsoever to the freezer. Not sure what you mean by the part that's connected to the condenser. Are you talking about the thermostat built in to the freezer? No need to change or mess with that. Just plug the freezer in to your temp controller.

Dual scale or single scale refractometer? I went with the one with brix / Plato only. Not too bad. The ones with the SG scale looked almost unreadable!

"better than I believe can be achieved."? So you're doing the impossible? :)

[Edit]: Whatever...

As long as he puts one of these on each bottle, it's all good!

[Edit]: Nevermind...

You can just get one on the pilot burners that you would use with the Honeywell valve and eliminate the thermocouple. Put in a tee with two gas ball valves, one feeding the pilot and one feeding the burner. Open the valve for the pilot and light that manually when you're lighting the pilots...

Iron Man?

Yep, since the Honeywell valves are on / off valves, not modulating, it's really just on / off control. I'm just thinking for the BK, your set point is "boiling" so the burner is always on.

Just wondering if there was some thought behind having a PID controller on the BK. I'm planning my stand / control panel as well and will probably use a controller to display the temp in the BK but will likely just have the burner on / off since I'm not sure there's any value in PID controlling...

Will you have lights for the pumps or have you thought about lighted switches? I get the hand/off/auto switch for the HLT and Mash Burner, but will there really be a PID controller on the boil burner? Isn't that burner just going to be on or off? Have you thought about a timer? Maybe an...

Overall shot of the latest design.