Wables
Well-Known Member
I started pulling water for my first 10 gallon batch at the butt crack of dawn...well...07:30. All in all it went pretty well. Total brew time was about 5 hours for my house brew- Upper Penninsula Pale Ale. Had lots of learnings today, and over the past week. Here is a re-cap.
1) My keggle strainer was a failure. I bent a 1/2" ss tube from my welded coupling to the center of the keggle. I fitted a 6" wire mesh food strainer onto the tube contacting the bottom. The rubber hose that I had pushed over the tube to secure the strainer moved, letting the strainer lift up, and I didn't tighten the compression fitting on the tube enough and must have bumped it while stirring. The darn thing turned 45 degrees. The result was 1" of hops and trub in the first fermenter. Lessons learned, it should work better next time.
2) I had a heck of a time sealing my 70 qt. Coleman X-treme. I bought a bulkhead fitting from McMaster Carr, but I couldn't get an O-ring to seal. I ended up getting some scrap 1/8" soft rubber at work, and using a gasket punch set to make a 1" ID, 1 1/2" OD gasket to fit. Finally worked.
3) I thought that my HLT could hold 38 qt. Turns out it only holds 34. Screwed up my mash schedule, but I was still able to hit 153. Filling it with the garden hose rather than hot tap water cost me a bunch of time.
4) The 70 qt. cooler is tall enough that my thermocouple can't hit the mash through a hole drilled in the top of the cooler. I gotta work on this one. I can't handle without brewing with constant temp. feedback.
5) I started the boil burner when my initial dump was complete (batch sparge). I was boiling 15 minutes after sparging. I should have figured this one out with my 5 gallon batches.
6) I should have trusted my own math instead of beer smith's. I was 1 gallon heavy on my boil.
7) I spent a bunch of time building up stands duplicating the heights that I had figured out for my future 2 tier system. My boil stand height needs to be 2" higher, and my HLT, MLT height needs to be 4" higher.
8) My supplies from AHS came in yesterday, and I got the wrong yeast. One batch got Safale S-05, and one got S-04. Should be interesting to see the difference.
9) This stuff ended up hoppier than my normal house-ale. I may be getting better hop utilization with the bigger kettle.
All in all it was a good brew day. I learned alot, and the beer tastes good. I am going to buy a March pump and steel soon for my 2-tier set-up. One more test batch and I will be ready to weld!
The one question that I have is - what do you guys use to filter the crap out of your boil kettle? I use an immersion chiller, and would like to go directly to my fermenter without all of the trub.
1) My keggle strainer was a failure. I bent a 1/2" ss tube from my welded coupling to the center of the keggle. I fitted a 6" wire mesh food strainer onto the tube contacting the bottom. The rubber hose that I had pushed over the tube to secure the strainer moved, letting the strainer lift up, and I didn't tighten the compression fitting on the tube enough and must have bumped it while stirring. The darn thing turned 45 degrees. The result was 1" of hops and trub in the first fermenter. Lessons learned, it should work better next time.
2) I had a heck of a time sealing my 70 qt. Coleman X-treme. I bought a bulkhead fitting from McMaster Carr, but I couldn't get an O-ring to seal. I ended up getting some scrap 1/8" soft rubber at work, and using a gasket punch set to make a 1" ID, 1 1/2" OD gasket to fit. Finally worked.
3) I thought that my HLT could hold 38 qt. Turns out it only holds 34. Screwed up my mash schedule, but I was still able to hit 153. Filling it with the garden hose rather than hot tap water cost me a bunch of time.
4) The 70 qt. cooler is tall enough that my thermocouple can't hit the mash through a hole drilled in the top of the cooler. I gotta work on this one. I can't handle without brewing with constant temp. feedback.
5) I started the boil burner when my initial dump was complete (batch sparge). I was boiling 15 minutes after sparging. I should have figured this one out with my 5 gallon batches.
6) I should have trusted my own math instead of beer smith's. I was 1 gallon heavy on my boil.
7) I spent a bunch of time building up stands duplicating the heights that I had figured out for my future 2 tier system. My boil stand height needs to be 2" higher, and my HLT, MLT height needs to be 4" higher.
8) My supplies from AHS came in yesterday, and I got the wrong yeast. One batch got Safale S-05, and one got S-04. Should be interesting to see the difference.
9) This stuff ended up hoppier than my normal house-ale. I may be getting better hop utilization with the bigger kettle.
All in all it was a good brew day. I learned alot, and the beer tastes good. I am going to buy a March pump and steel soon for my 2-tier set-up. One more test batch and I will be ready to weld!
The one question that I have is - what do you guys use to filter the crap out of your boil kettle? I use an immersion chiller, and would like to go directly to my fermenter without all of the trub.
