Holtzmanator
New Member
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2017
- Messages
- 3
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Hi gang! I've been brewing for 7-8 years now and though I was active on the forums I havnt been in quite some time and ended up making a new account. Anyways, here's my problem-
About a year and a half ago I moved from a house in Michigan into an apartment in Chicago. Since then my beer quality has gone completely down hill, and really does not taste that good. Most of my beer has been coming out watery, even IPA's, and some have developed off flavors. I've only done about 4-5 bathes since moving here, and all have been drinkable, but nothing I would ever write home about.
My setup is a 10 gallon aluminum pot with a valve for the boil, and a 10 gallon igloo cooler for the mash tun with a bazooka screen. I use a home made copper coil wort chiller that cools the batch in about 25 minutes. The only thing that changed since I moved here was how I do my boil; I used to do it in the yard on a propane burner, but now I am forced to brew in the kitchen on the stove. Though it looks to be gently boiling, the beer rarely goes above 206-208 degrees with two stove burners on max. I have been thinking that the temperature is too low for all of the flavors of the hops to be absorbed by the wort. My other thought on off flavors was that I havnt been using yeast starters or taking readings because my stir plate and hydrometer got lost in the move, but I have replacements on the way.
My real question is what is the cheapest way I can supplement my stove to get a stronger boil? I am a very DIY sort of guy, and built my own equipment and temp controllers for my kegerator, so DIY isn't a problem. I see 120v elements are cheap, but I'm clearly missing something because all the setups I look at are so expensive! I built my kegerator controller for $30, so in my mind I should be able to outfit my pot with a supplemental heating coil with a $150-$200 budget and still run it on the stove, but when I look up kits for RIMS or even for DIY it comes to over $300 just for the controller, and another $350 for a RIMS tube and pump, and at that price I may as well sell everything I have and get a grainfather or something similar. Any suggestions on doing 120v electric heating to supplement the stove for cheap? Also sorry for the long rambling post, I'm posting this from my phone and the formatting/search/etc aren't working very well. Thanks!
About a year and a half ago I moved from a house in Michigan into an apartment in Chicago. Since then my beer quality has gone completely down hill, and really does not taste that good. Most of my beer has been coming out watery, even IPA's, and some have developed off flavors. I've only done about 4-5 bathes since moving here, and all have been drinkable, but nothing I would ever write home about.
My setup is a 10 gallon aluminum pot with a valve for the boil, and a 10 gallon igloo cooler for the mash tun with a bazooka screen. I use a home made copper coil wort chiller that cools the batch in about 25 minutes. The only thing that changed since I moved here was how I do my boil; I used to do it in the yard on a propane burner, but now I am forced to brew in the kitchen on the stove. Though it looks to be gently boiling, the beer rarely goes above 206-208 degrees with two stove burners on max. I have been thinking that the temperature is too low for all of the flavors of the hops to be absorbed by the wort. My other thought on off flavors was that I havnt been using yeast starters or taking readings because my stir plate and hydrometer got lost in the move, but I have replacements on the way.
My real question is what is the cheapest way I can supplement my stove to get a stronger boil? I am a very DIY sort of guy, and built my own equipment and temp controllers for my kegerator, so DIY isn't a problem. I see 120v elements are cheap, but I'm clearly missing something because all the setups I look at are so expensive! I built my kegerator controller for $30, so in my mind I should be able to outfit my pot with a supplemental heating coil with a $150-$200 budget and still run it on the stove, but when I look up kits for RIMS or even for DIY it comes to over $300 just for the controller, and another $350 for a RIMS tube and pump, and at that price I may as well sell everything I have and get a grainfather or something similar. Any suggestions on doing 120v electric heating to supplement the stove for cheap? Also sorry for the long rambling post, I'm posting this from my phone and the formatting/search/etc aren't working very well. Thanks!