siucubfan
Well-Known Member
Well, I have been pieceing together my brew system since December. Finally got everything together and me and a buddy set our first brew day for yesterday. We had some very cold weather that was suppose to come in and I do not have a garage so we discussed maybe doing it another day. We decided that we were too excited and would manage to brew even though it was in the 20's and windy.
As I mentioned this is our first brew. So it took us about 3 hours to get everything set up and cleaned before we started. First issue was the water hose was frozen. No big deal, we could just run the store and get a new one. 2nd issue was we ran into a fitting that was wrong. I have 60 plate wort chiller and on the water in, I had a male water hose connector and needed a female. Once again, no problem. Could just run to the store and get a female to female water hose connector.
So everything is now cleaned up, we double check all of our fitting to make sure they are tight. Everything is good. So now me take 2 of our bucket in the house and fill them up with water and then measure out each gallon of water on my mash paddle so we have a measuring device.
14 gallons of water is now in the HLT. Time to fire up the propane burner and get started making brew. We were both over joyed that this time has finally come after a couple months of preperation. So we turn the propane on, open up the valve to let propane through to HLT burner and get a very tiny flame. Not producing very much heat at all. Plus the wind keeps blowing it out. We decide it's a wind issue. So we get some aluminum foil and wrap it around the brew stand and block the wind. I also have a sportbrella that I set up and we had most of the wind blocked. Tried to fire it up again and very little flame and heat. There was no way that we could get 14 gallons of water to boil.
To make an even longer story short. It turns out I need a High PSI regulator. Not 1 local store has one. So we spent a total of 5 hours or so outside and got nothing accomplished. We have rescheduled our brewday for the 20th since we both have the day off. That's as long as the regulator is in.
Of all the things I thought could go wrong this would be one of the last. I thought the brew system itself was ready to go. Very disappointed at this point. Hopefully on the 20th everything will go smoothly.
As I mentioned this is our first brew. So it took us about 3 hours to get everything set up and cleaned before we started. First issue was the water hose was frozen. No big deal, we could just run the store and get a new one. 2nd issue was we ran into a fitting that was wrong. I have 60 plate wort chiller and on the water in, I had a male water hose connector and needed a female. Once again, no problem. Could just run to the store and get a female to female water hose connector.
So everything is now cleaned up, we double check all of our fitting to make sure they are tight. Everything is good. So now me take 2 of our bucket in the house and fill them up with water and then measure out each gallon of water on my mash paddle so we have a measuring device.
14 gallons of water is now in the HLT. Time to fire up the propane burner and get started making brew. We were both over joyed that this time has finally come after a couple months of preperation. So we turn the propane on, open up the valve to let propane through to HLT burner and get a very tiny flame. Not producing very much heat at all. Plus the wind keeps blowing it out. We decide it's a wind issue. So we get some aluminum foil and wrap it around the brew stand and block the wind. I also have a sportbrella that I set up and we had most of the wind blocked. Tried to fire it up again and very little flame and heat. There was no way that we could get 14 gallons of water to boil.
To make an even longer story short. It turns out I need a High PSI regulator. Not 1 local store has one. So we spent a total of 5 hours or so outside and got nothing accomplished. We have rescheduled our brewday for the 20th since we both have the day off. That's as long as the regulator is in.
Of all the things I thought could go wrong this would be one of the last. I thought the brew system itself was ready to go. Very disappointed at this point. Hopefully on the 20th everything will go smoothly.
