Seeves1982
Well-Known Member
Guys this will probably be long, but I wanted to share my story. I’m not exactly a new brewer; however, I have not brewed in a long time. I wanted to get back into brewing and really all I needed to do was clean my old equipment and build a new mash tun. But I had stopped in at a local brewing supply store and this guy was boasting about his kits for $150. Said he’s been brewing all his life. Owned a micro brewery in a different state and all this stuff. Well he sells me on this kit which consisted of a mash tun of just two five gallon buckets. One with holes drilled in the bottom and the second with a spigot. The the holes drilled in the bottom act as the false bottom. I got the chinciest 4 gallon pot and the worst wort chiller I’ve ever seen oh and a glass carboy. Which I didn’t need, but was useful none the less. My intuition told me that this stuff wasn’t right. But the guy sold himself as a “life long” brewer. He only sells these kits that he makes by hand in his shop. Anyway that’s a whole different post. Here are my questions.
The wort chiller is the biggest issue. It looks like an immersion chiller. However it’s only quarter inch tubing and rather than you running water through the chiller. You run your wort through the chiller while the chiller is in a five gallon bucket with water and ice in it. You prime the chiller with sanitized water and then gravity feed out the first bit of sanitizer water into a pitcher. Dump it out and then let the rest go into the carboy. Great idea in theory; however, it doesn’t hold prime very well at all. And because the mash tuns false bottom is less than effective... there is enough sediment in the wort to easily clog the chiller. So my idea was to put the auto syphon in the pot and rack it through that way. The guy said not to do that because the autosyphon is too hart to sanitize and could contaminate the wort. I was so busy thinking about how stupid that was bc the wort had just come off of boil that I didn’t even think about if the plastic parts could handle the heat from the hot wart. So I ended up melting the auto syphon to the point that it bent and I clogged this chiller up so bad that I can’t even suck start it to get it flowing to clean it. The equipment is garbage and I will replace it before my next brew day. But my question is will the heat from the hot wort melting the plastic components affect my beer?
The wort chiller is the biggest issue. It looks like an immersion chiller. However it’s only quarter inch tubing and rather than you running water through the chiller. You run your wort through the chiller while the chiller is in a five gallon bucket with water and ice in it. You prime the chiller with sanitized water and then gravity feed out the first bit of sanitizer water into a pitcher. Dump it out and then let the rest go into the carboy. Great idea in theory; however, it doesn’t hold prime very well at all. And because the mash tuns false bottom is less than effective... there is enough sediment in the wort to easily clog the chiller. So my idea was to put the auto syphon in the pot and rack it through that way. The guy said not to do that because the autosyphon is too hart to sanitize and could contaminate the wort. I was so busy thinking about how stupid that was bc the wort had just come off of boil that I didn’t even think about if the plastic parts could handle the heat from the hot wart. So I ended up melting the auto syphon to the point that it bent and I clogged this chiller up so bad that I can’t even suck start it to get it flowing to clean it. The equipment is garbage and I will replace it before my next brew day. But my question is will the heat from the hot wort melting the plastic components affect my beer?
