- Joined
- Nov 4, 2008
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So I ordered AHB's PTE clone a week or so ago, and had my yeast starter going and I was ready to mash in this morning. I over-looked my mash capacities and went ahead and order the AG kit. Mashing in my 5 gallon cooler would have been tight, so I went to my old stand-by 10-gallon cooler. Let's just say they was a reason I bought a 5-gallon cooler and bothered to engineer a manifold. And it wasn't the have 1/2 the previous capacity.
So, with no real false bottom, or manifold to speak of for the 10-gallon picnic cooler I got an idea. (Note, I am in a class of my own when it comes to ghetto brewing). I would take a cookie sheet, and wrap it in some nylon screen and put it in the cooler. Well it wouldn't lay flat, so I laid it against the side with the spout. Same thing.
Someway, somehow, inside my house, my temp drop over 60 minutes was >6°F. So, in a pinch I had to re-calc my mash out temps, blah blah blah. But I managed, and now I'm ready to collect my running and sparge a 2nd time.
Naturally I waited until the last minute to rinse out my 30qt brew pot. Well, it looked like a rat had died in it. I don't know if was fleas, maggots, the plague or what but the mold layered 3inch lump of hell wasn't worth fighting. I'll just do a smaller boil and forget sparging round 2 and boil in my 5-gallon pot.
My false bottom failed, and I needed to use a screw driver to continually pry it clean of grist, and when it did it felt like Mr. North and 160° mash coming at me. Thankfully my math was wrong, or it would have been 170°F.
I filled the 5-gallon pot to the brim, I scouped some wort out to add as I boiled over the course of 90 minutes.
The boil actually went quite well, and I was able to cool quickly and pitches my yeast fine. I also hit a 1.064 which I consider a miracle considering my nightmare. It came out to a mid 50%s efficiency.
I didn't bother straining the hops, at this point I didn't care, I'll let the yeast and cold crashing take care of them.
Today was supposed to be my first parti-gyle. When I got to a boil, and to clean while I boiled I completely forgot and dumped my grains.
What's that saying? A good brewer can make a great batch once, a great brewer can do it over and over? Well, I seriously need to stop screwing around and just to my partial mashes which work!!!!
But what kind of brewer would I be if I didn't push myself to the limit and make the hobby as difficult and expensive as possible?
So, with no real false bottom, or manifold to speak of for the 10-gallon picnic cooler I got an idea. (Note, I am in a class of my own when it comes to ghetto brewing). I would take a cookie sheet, and wrap it in some nylon screen and put it in the cooler. Well it wouldn't lay flat, so I laid it against the side with the spout. Same thing.
Someway, somehow, inside my house, my temp drop over 60 minutes was >6°F. So, in a pinch I had to re-calc my mash out temps, blah blah blah. But I managed, and now I'm ready to collect my running and sparge a 2nd time.
Naturally I waited until the last minute to rinse out my 30qt brew pot. Well, it looked like a rat had died in it. I don't know if was fleas, maggots, the plague or what but the mold layered 3inch lump of hell wasn't worth fighting. I'll just do a smaller boil and forget sparging round 2 and boil in my 5-gallon pot.
My false bottom failed, and I needed to use a screw driver to continually pry it clean of grist, and when it did it felt like Mr. North and 160° mash coming at me. Thankfully my math was wrong, or it would have been 170°F.
I filled the 5-gallon pot to the brim, I scouped some wort out to add as I boiled over the course of 90 minutes.
The boil actually went quite well, and I was able to cool quickly and pitches my yeast fine. I also hit a 1.064 which I consider a miracle considering my nightmare. It came out to a mid 50%s efficiency.
I didn't bother straining the hops, at this point I didn't care, I'll let the yeast and cold crashing take care of them.
Today was supposed to be my first parti-gyle. When I got to a boil, and to clean while I boiled I completely forgot and dumped my grains.
What's that saying? A good brewer can make a great batch once, a great brewer can do it over and over? Well, I seriously need to stop screwing around and just to my partial mashes which work!!!!
But what kind of brewer would I be if I didn't push myself to the limit and make the hobby as difficult and expensive as possible?
