It's Alive!

wncbrewer · Jan 6, 2012

Thanks for the link,

I also checked out the wiki page at ecc, which answered a lot of my questions.

pilzner · Feb 23, 2012

Took a while, but here is a quick video of yesterday's brew day

JonW · Feb 23, 2012

Looks great! Any hiccups while brewing?

pilzner · Feb 23, 2012

Hey Jon,

I've had a few in the past.....like not watching the kettle when it's at 211 degrees, or overfilling the HLT

Overall they were my fault.

The recirculation stopped once after I stirred the mash...but I opened the valve a bit and it blasted out the little grain bit that got stuck in the auto sparge....just need to watch out for that at the beginning.

Other then that , no issues.....it really works nicely.

One wish is a float switch in the boil kettle for the sparge to let me know when it's close to being done.
Another would be nice for the HLT with a solenoid switch on the water pipe to auto fill it.
...though it's not to high on priority.

BCS has been a little bit of a pain regarding connection....but it's on a wireless system, so I think something is causing interference .... Just have to figure out what (may be a pump).

How has your BCS been treating you?

JonW · Feb 23, 2012

I have no connectivity issues with my BCS, but I have it hardwired to my router. I also never have issues with the functionality of the BCS, it works just fine.

I too would like to implement either a volume sensing system or float switches. I've overfilled my HLT, I've over sparged my MLT and I've over sparged into my BK (requiring a 2.5 hour boil). Yeah, all my issues for not paying attention.

On the mash, I stir at mash in, 15, 30 & 45 minutes. I let it run undisturbed for the last 15 minutes before I start sparging. I run pretty high flow rates during the mash recirculation and have NEVER had a stuck sparge. I'm usually hitting 80% efficiency.