Hey all, haven't been too overly active due to work changes but I am back in action, and with an upgraded system! I did a fair amount of outdoor brewing over the summer after purchasing a blichmann burner. The wife and I love to brew year round, and I've wanted an electric system for some time, so she gave me the green light to get one!
I purchased a single PID stainless enclosure panel from ebrewsupply, which I love. I ran a new 30amp GFCI breaker circuit into my kitchen, and installed a new 800 cfm (high speed) hood into the kitchen over the winter, but have yet to cut the 6" hole in the side of my house over this mild, but still cold NH winter. I got a new 16 gallon Bayou kettle with chugger pump and plumbing kit from brew hardware.
Last weekend was the maiden voyage of the new system, and boy is it great! I had a stupid moment, where I forgot to close the outlet pump valve, resulting in about a half gallon of water loss while mashing in. I ran with it, stupidly, and came up a half gallon shy at the end of my brew day. I nailed the pre boil gravity (post losing half gallon) but overshot the OG and was a half gallon low in the ending kettle volume. I opted to leave it as is, and pitched some grown up dregs from a few Heady topper cans.
I had great action after about 12 hours, and it's down from 1.062 to 1.017 this morning after 3 days. I increased my ambient temp 4 degrees this morning, and plan to add 3 oz of dry hops tonight, through the weekend. I will then cold crash and transfer to a secondary with a second dry hopping for 5 days and will then keg.
i'm looking forward to this beer, it had a nice taste this morning! Happy to be back into brewing, and I love this new setup. If interested, I can/will post pics and the video from testing out.
