Back in the Saddle!
Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2014 7:05 am
As I have kept everyone up to date about my exciting return to brewing, you all know today was that day!
Here are MANY pictures of the day. As everyone knows, a brew day never goes as planned. I had a few quick events I had to deal with throughout the process. Read to see what!
Yesterday I went out and bought a 5' folding plastic table to put half of my gear on. Here is some of that, Including the borg!
Mashing In. My first issue arose. Couldnt find my digital thermometer! Had to use a dial thermometer and it wasn't going about 140-145 degrees no matter what I measured. I added a little extra water to make sure it was at or above my mash temp as this is a full body beer and I would rather it be fuller body than thinner.
Transferring Wort to Keg
Sparging
Sparging 2. Issue 2. As I was running my sparge water from my mash tun to the BK I noticed I was no where near where I wanted to be for volume. Apparently I need to mess with my settings on beersmith. Either way I would have been lucky to have 5 gallons pre-boil in the BK so I added another 3 gallons of water to the water keg and brought it up to 175 and dumped that in to the mash tun. I just did a semi fly sparge with it which seemed to work really well. My pre-boil SG was at 15 brix, which comes out to be 1.060 on the hydro scale, which is right in line with where i needed to be.
Got everything transferred to the BK with my hop spider still on the keg. Realized soon enough that it wasn't going to work with the break so I had to dismount the hop spider until the break was done and than put back in.
At this point it was about 1030 am and I was parched
. I actually really enjoy there pumpkin beer this year. It is much better than years past.
Transfer from BK to chugger pump, chugger pump to plate chiller, plate chiller to carboy. This was a minor issue as I was trying to get everything flowing correctly and recirculating the wort back to the BK to try and get it cooled down and while increasing the water pressure from the garden hose the damn chiller fell from the ladder it was sitting on and the hose came out of the BK. Lost a couple cups of wort but nothing huge. At that point I said screw it and decreased my wort pressure and just went straight in to the carboy. Took a little longer than anticipated and only brought the temp down to about 76.
Here is the fermenter sitting in my fermentation chamber, AKA lower level bathroom. I usually have the AC vent closed and it is a constant 68 degrees. I let the carboy sit in there for a few hours prior to pitching the yeast in order to let the temp drop a little more. It was down to 72 when I pitched the yeast and I am expect it to drop a little more before fermentation begins.
Here is a picture of the temp after I opened the AC vent to the bathroom. Needless to say I am happy with the temperature in that room for fermenting.... for now. That might change when the cold season hits. At that point I will ferment in the garage.
Edit:
Here is the carboy after sitting for the night. Temp change was fantastic!!
All in all the day was good. Relaxing for the most part. I was able to enjoy some football afterwards too. Was done around 230-3pm from clean up. About a 6-7 hour brew day from start to final clean up. Now its time to dial in my beersmith so I don't have to correct things on the fly.
Here are MANY pictures of the day. As everyone knows, a brew day never goes as planned. I had a few quick events I had to deal with throughout the process. Read to see what!
Yesterday I went out and bought a 5' folding plastic table to put half of my gear on. Here is some of that, Including the borg!
Mashing In. My first issue arose. Couldnt find my digital thermometer! Had to use a dial thermometer and it wasn't going about 140-145 degrees no matter what I measured. I added a little extra water to make sure it was at or above my mash temp as this is a full body beer and I would rather it be fuller body than thinner.
Transferring Wort to Keg
Sparging
Sparging 2. Issue 2. As I was running my sparge water from my mash tun to the BK I noticed I was no where near where I wanted to be for volume. Apparently I need to mess with my settings on beersmith. Either way I would have been lucky to have 5 gallons pre-boil in the BK so I added another 3 gallons of water to the water keg and brought it up to 175 and dumped that in to the mash tun. I just did a semi fly sparge with it which seemed to work really well. My pre-boil SG was at 15 brix, which comes out to be 1.060 on the hydro scale, which is right in line with where i needed to be.
Got everything transferred to the BK with my hop spider still on the keg. Realized soon enough that it wasn't going to work with the break so I had to dismount the hop spider until the break was done and than put back in.
At this point it was about 1030 am and I was parched
. I actually really enjoy there pumpkin beer this year. It is much better than years past.Transfer from BK to chugger pump, chugger pump to plate chiller, plate chiller to carboy. This was a minor issue as I was trying to get everything flowing correctly and recirculating the wort back to the BK to try and get it cooled down and while increasing the water pressure from the garden hose the damn chiller fell from the ladder it was sitting on and the hose came out of the BK. Lost a couple cups of wort but nothing huge. At that point I said screw it and decreased my wort pressure and just went straight in to the carboy. Took a little longer than anticipated and only brought the temp down to about 76.
Here is the fermenter sitting in my fermentation chamber, AKA lower level bathroom. I usually have the AC vent closed and it is a constant 68 degrees. I let the carboy sit in there for a few hours prior to pitching the yeast in order to let the temp drop a little more. It was down to 72 when I pitched the yeast and I am expect it to drop a little more before fermentation begins.
Here is a picture of the temp after I opened the AC vent to the bathroom. Needless to say I am happy with the temperature in that room for fermenting.... for now. That might change when the cold season hits. At that point I will ferment in the garage.
Edit:
Here is the carboy after sitting for the night. Temp change was fantastic!!
All in all the day was good. Relaxing for the most part. I was able to enjoy some football afterwards too. Was done around 230-3pm from clean up. About a 6-7 hour brew day from start to final clean up. Now its time to dial in my beersmith so I don't have to correct things on the fly.
