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west1m said:
So how did the test boil go? My condenser works great and boiling in the basement now is a not a rainy day. If you plan to brew in the basement, it's the only way to go.
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Had to adjust the nozzle down a bit, after everything was set right, worked like a champ. Boil off was about the same as before, nice vigorous boil(with less power). It's all assembled and ready to go "live" this morning. Doing a small batch of Irish Red.
 
Well I was playing with the forge last night and I ended up feeling the urge to throw things and swear a bunch.
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That is true.
 
Ah, but did you learn something about hammering metal too much while it is not hot enough? This is where cracks form, and they never weld themselves back...

Learning curve Sir.
 
Oh yeah. I clearly wasn't doing it right and well, live and learn.
 
Need. I like it. My buddy dropped off some 1 Ton leaf springs today for my smithing stuff, which are way the hell bigger than I expected. But so far it's coming along. I ordered PID and thermocouple to see how hot the forge actually gets.

Should brew up something this weekend too, my backlog is running low, I might actually have keezer space soon!

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Hawkbox said:
Need. I like it. My buddy dropped off some 1 Ton leaf springs today for my smithing stuff, which are way the hell bigger than I expected. But so far it's coming along. I ordered PID and thermocouple to see how hot the forge actually gets.

Should brew up something this weekend too, my backlog is running low, I might actually have keezer space soon!

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That's effing awesome, man. Good for you for trying something new and difficult, that's a badass looking knife. I hear leaf springs are good for swords if you're looking to scale up lol :)
 
Hawkbox said:
Need. I like it. My buddy dropped off some 1 Ton leaf springs today for my smithing stuff, which are way the hell bigger than I expected. But so far it's coming along. I ordered PID and thermocouple to see how hot the forge actually gets.

Should brew up something this weekend too, my backlog is running low, I might actually have keezer space soon!

View attachment 14222
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Nice!
For inspiration, a medieval mash paddle would be cool!
 
I hear they're good too, but holy hell they're heavy and thick. Going to be an experience cutting up the ones he dropped off.

I should find a medeival design sometime.
 
My tankless water heater only has a simple time of day sort of programming for its external recirculation system. I've been thinking about adding some sort of switch to recirculate hot water on demand for quite a while now. That way I don't waste so much water waiting for it to be hot.

I really didn't want to run wires for switches at all the taps and I have a few spare 2 pole line voltage coil relays left over from building my eBrew controller. So I did a little spelunking in the wiring diagram and found a way to install a relay to power up it's recirculation pump.

Added a Kasa smart plug to the Amazon Echo. Created a task in the Kasa app to turn the outlet off after N minutes. Linked that to the Echo and can now just say "Alexa, Let there be hot water" and it recirculates for N minutes. The water flow triggers the burner on the water heater, so it's piping hot after about 30 seconds. You can also tell it to turn it on or off without the timer bit.

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I did mount the relay, cable tie and clean up the wiring after proving it works.
 
Nice. Having the power cut in and out isn't a problem for it?
 
Hawkbox said:
Nice. Having the power cut in and out isn't a problem for it?
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The smart plug only triggers the relay and that energizes the pump from the power in the water heater. So it never cuts out.

It's really just a line voltage signal to power the coil in the relay < 0.1 amps
 
That's it, I'm gonna go find a drink.
 
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