- Joined
- Jul 28, 2013
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My first TILT hydrometer. (a red one) And a few packets of assorted wine yeast; I have plenty of beer yeast already.
Rubber gloves, or rubber "jar opening grips" can get you more torque on the end caps to get them open. I saw a video a while back where Tilt actually recommends this.First impression of the TILT: what a piece of crap. It doesn't work. At all. I tried to take the end off to check the battery and I can't get it loose. Will probably have to use pliers which will chew up the plastic because there are no flats on the endcap, so I don't want to try that until I hear from customer service.
I've emailed baronbrew and Great Fermentations, but nobody responds to emails this late on a Friday, so I guess I won't be brewing this weekend after all.
I think I just threw $140 away.
Shout out to @Bobby_M. Don't want to set expectations going into the holiday/gifting season (as well as the coming "Peak Homebrewing" period), but I ordered these from brewhardware.com on Wednesday evening and they arrived today - even with Turkey Day in the middle. That's crazy!
All thumbs up!
Cheers!
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I have one I made at home that looks identical. My next basket will fit the ID of the kettle and half way down. I've found that I get better boil through when it is full size. Until I get off my, I'll keep using the one like that. I'm not sure if the extra movement would make any difference. Not like I've had any issue with hoppiness and extraction. I was only thinking of the whirlpool additions. I've thought of going naked, but the cleanup is too easy with it. Nice purchase from them. I've had good luck there too. I also thought of the HopStopper. I've read mixed reviews on it.Zach at stainlessbrewing.com helped me out with a replacement 6" spider basket to fit my 20 gallon kettle as many years ago I had trimmed the original basket by a few inches to fit my original 10 gallon kettles, and I felt I was missing an advantage with the extra depth. They haven't been making spiders for many years but he happened to remember there was one of their early baskets stashed somewhere and he managed to dig it out and ship it for a very fair price.
After a hot PBW soak I fried it in an 5% citric acid bath to solidly passivate the mesh. While I was at it I stuck in my e-flask brush which had developed some significant rusting that ran into the bristles. Bath definitely gained some color in the offing, and I wish I'd taken a "before" pic because that's an impressive "after"...
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Ironically, I'm actually hoping to come up with a "free swimming pellet" solution based on The Electric Brewery's HopStopper V2 which would obviate the need for any basket, but the price for the fall-back/alternative insurance was cheap and I like the folks at stainlessbrewing...
Cheers!
A HopStopper V2 arrived from the Electric Brewery folks. I have unconventional plans for this thing...
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Cheers!
Stay tuned. If the plan works well I will tell all. Maybe even if it doesn't...
Cheers!
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