New brewing set up

J A

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Organized the garage space better and got everything hooked up and working. Went through a simple mash and boil. Even though I had to estimate the boiloff rate and losses, I hit OG and volume nearly exactly. :) Lost my pic of the sparge, but I was able to pump out of my 4-gallon pot and throttle everything down for a 20-25 minute sparge - very clean and easy. AND...transferred the wort to the carboy that was sitting at the ready in the freezer. Only lifting I did was a few gallons of PBW and sanitizer in and out of the carboy...and next time I'll do that before hand, sanitizing the pump while I'm at it.
Tweaking is in order, but it works!:D

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Bloody oath looks the goods there JA no heat loss on transfer or recirculating. No a bad looking brew rig mate ;).
 
no heat loss on transfer or recirculating

I heated strike water to 164F for a strike temp of 161 F, figuring that the pump would take some time to heat up and rob a few degrees. By the time I bumbled around and got everything hooked up, I'd lost about 9 degrees F. Took a few minutes of heating to get back up to proper strike temp before I could drop the bag and get it stirred and settled. Once it got settled and recirculating, it was a degree over my 152F mash rest setpoint and took about 10 minutes to finish heating the grain and drop to 152. From there it spent about twice as much time at set point than it did at one degree below. Late in the 90 minute mash, the temp started to hold a degree or two high before I added a splash of water to cool it down. On average the temp was 152.5 and it held 39 percent of the time at the set point and 25 percent at 1 degree above.
Definitely as accurate as I've ever been able to hold it or track it. There's much fancier systems available, but you'd be hard pressed to get mash temp much better than that. ;)
 
Yep sweet pretty warm here in Aus ATM mashed in just before about 64c this held its temp for most of the mash but yea I'm definitely envious of your recirculating . You getting better efficiency?
 
Yep sweet pretty warm here in Aus ATM mashed in just before about 64c this held its temp for most of the mash but yea I'm definitely envious of your recirculating . You getting better efficiency?

Pretty warm here in Texas, too! Been in the upper 70's and even up to 80F. Waiting for another cool spell so I can start several batches to let ferment in my garage.
This last brew was 78%. I was getting similar efficiency before - between 78 and 82 percent - and I attribute that to (usually) using 90 minute mash time and also sparging quite a bit over as long a time as possible. The big difference is that now I don't have to dip a quart of hot water at a time and pour over the grain bed. Also, I seem to get best efficiency when I'm mashing a bigger grain bill - this last one was just 7 1/2 lbs in a 5.5 gallon batch for a 1.040 OG lager. I expect that I'll see very good efficiency when I brew up a bigger APA or IPA.
 
I just need the time to get my keggle built , all electric RIMS
Thinking of doing a 2V system to add a HLT and try my hand at double brew days
 
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try my hand at double brew days

I need to pull a double if I can. I'm just getting to the point of brewing consistently again and I need party beer in just over 4 weeks. I have 2 brews done and if I can get another couple of beers fermenting, I'd just have it covered. All small beers - around .040. So far I have an adjunct lager and an English bitter and if I can get my table Saison and Blonde Ale going, I'll be happy. ;)
 
I need a second fridge to ferment in ....in a few months when it cools down to under 35°C + I'll be able to get my AC fed cool chamber running again and ales pumping out (if I brew every weekend ) just easier to do double size batches and no chill them I think
 
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Just cooled down today from the low 80's over the last few days (that's Farenheit for too friggin' hot to brew...;))

If it holds I can proceed with my planned brewing schedule. I've got a lager in the controlled freezer running at high-mid 50's and I need my garage to stay in the low 60's so I can run my other carboys and buckets at ambient. Outlook for the next several days is pretty perfect. If we don't get a big heat wave or a hard freeze (it happened literally back to back about 2 weeks ago), I can get through a bunch of brews in the next little while to fill my party kegs and get my pipeline back in decent shape.
 
A heat belt might do the trick Ja do what Jeffpn has been doing in his shed or try sitting carboy in water bath a large volume of water always takes a lot to shift temperature
 
Five brews in 8 days. ;)
Working the kinks out of the system and starting to fill up all my fermenters. Things get a little hectic when I have a lot of buckets and carboys in play, but temps have been pretty steady and everything can just sort of sit without needing a lot of special attention.
I'll start a few more in the next week or two and start kegging the current brews for my Winter Party at the end of January. I'll have stuff in the pipeline and waiting as soon as those kegs are empty.
Nice to be brewing again. :)
 
Wow that's crazy JA Five brews in five days gee you don't muck around:p. What's your five brews if I may asko_O.
 
It's 5 brews in 8 days...but who's counting. :)
I started 4 "small" beers (low OG) to build up cake for bigger brews and have just started the second round of one of the progressive brews:
Basic adjunct (corn) lager at 1.041
Ordinary Bitter at 1.038
Table Saison at 1.039
Hoppy Blonde/Pale at 1.048

London Brown Ale (on the cake from the Bitter)

Next up:
Brandied Peach Winter Wheat
Boston Lager "clone"
Columbus/Centennial IPA

That's using 4 different yeasts (all dry Fermentis) and it fills up all my primary and secondary vessels. After those first batches get up next week and consumed (quickly, I'm sure at our party in a few weeks) and the next round gets kegged up I can get settled into a little more sane and sustainable routine. ;)
 
just curious where and how are you measuring your temperature, its very important to have it in the right spot when using a pump and pid, you can get false readings if the probe is under the mash or even on top, the best place is putting a tee on the out valve of the mash tun and measuring it as its pumping
 
Nice low gravity beers there JA good session beers that won't get you too pissed
 
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just curious where and how are you measuring your temperature, its very important to have it in the right spot when using a pump and pid, you can get false readings if the probe is under the mash or even on top, the best place is putting a tee on the out valve of the mash tun and measuring it as its pumping

Way more hillbilly than that...for now at least.;)
I've got good controller but for now I've got the PID settings bypassed and doing a straight on/off controlling a hot plate under the mash pot. I've been keeping the probe in the grain bed and stirring a time or two during the mash to be sure I'm not getting hot spots, etc. If there's a big differential, it takes too long to heat up and tends to overshoot so I've been doing water additions as needed to get the temp to target and holding it there with the hotplate system. It's been working very well but no beers are finished out so I have yet to see if my attenuation, body and residual will do what I expect based on the mash numbers.
Eventually I'll make or procure a decent RIMS tube set up with the element and thermocouple in-line. When I do that I can set up the PID and fine-tune the whole system and do temp raises without water additions.
 

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