re: Homebrewing Thread: Volume II

Damn, Bug! Glad to hear it's not too terrible. That used to always be a fear of mine before I adjusted my setup to eliminate lifting of hot liquid.

Get well.

Dude that’s terrible. We switching to an electric brewery mainly for that reason. We brew 10 gallon batches, shite gets heavy.

I burned the shite out of my calf carrying around the keggle when my pump was on the fritz. Integrate a pump into the mix to not be picking up heavy/hot liquids.

Damn! Sorry to hear that.

So i'm putting together a shopping list of what i need to start using pumps. Let me know if i'm thinking this through correctly. Right now, i have a 2 - 10 gallons water cooler mash tun/sparge tank setup right now. I fly sparge. And i have a 9.5 gallon brewpot which i will be looking to upgrade to 15 gallon around christmas time or sooner. My burner is the Bayou Classic Kick A Banjo Burner. I also have a 25' pre chiller, and a 50' immersion wort chiller.

So my brew process currently starts this way.

ETA: This is now a shopping list to improve my brew steps.

I will bold the steps that i see could be beneficial to have a pump and minimize injury.

1. Heat up my strike water. Shut off heat, open ball valve into 1 gallon pitcher and transfer the water over one pitcher at a time until the water is low enough to lift the pot into the mash tun.
2. Add my grains to mash tun and stir.
3. 10 minutes before end of mash, heat up my sparge water. Use same process to transfer sparge water to sparge tank, as i do the mash (1 gal pitcher).
4. Vorlauf once end of mash.
5. Setup my vessels to drain to the brewpot. Usually consists of a chair sitting on top of a fold up table, with my sparge tank on that chair. Another chair on the ground, with the mash tun on that chair. And my brewpot on the cement.
6. Begin transferring wort to brew pot, and conducting the sparge.
7. Collect 7.25 to 8 gallons of wort (depending on beer).
8. Move full pot back onto the burner.
9. Boil wort.
10. Remove pot to the cement, add immersion chiller to the pot, hook up hose to chiller. Begin chiller.
11. Once wort is cooled down to about 80, put brew pot on top of table and place the fermenter on the cement. Add my strainers and funnel, and open the valve from my brewpot to my fermenter.
12. Move fermenter to fermenting freezer, chill to yeast pitch temps and pitch yeast.
13. Shake the shite out of the fermenter and let the yeast do the work.

So after typing all this out, i realize a few things.

1. Definitely need a pump.
2. I also need a brew stand.
3. An air pump wouldn't be a bad idea for oxygenating the wort.
4. A plate chiller would be nice

So in terms of pumping:

I would need to be able to pump strike water from kettle to mash tun.
I would also need to be able to pump strike water from kettle to sparge tank.
I can gravity feed my mash/sparge process if i have an appropriate brew stand.
I would need to be able to pump from my brewpot into my fermenter.

Thoughts?

Yeah I'm looking to move from an immersion chiller to a plate... Who do you handle beers with a lot of hot side hops? A few times I have had my pump clog. So now I either add hops very slowly bro insure the pellets break up. Or I use a hop basket.

quote:

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CarRamrod

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I use a SS mesh hop spider from these guys: LINK

Got a pump ready for purchase hoping it gets a price cut when prime day starts.

I did some sour beer tasting Saturday.

Sour #1 - Bootleg biology mad fermentationist saison with Jester King dregs on French Oak - been aging for 14 months now. FG 1.010, ph 3.11 - great lemony citrus taste. A little on the acidic side but tastes great. Wish it was drier however. This one will not be fruited. I will blend this one with 1/2 to 1 gallon of new beer and let it age for an additional 2 months. Went to remove the oak spiral when i was measuring and the floss snapped, so now i have an oak spiral laying at the bottom of the fermenter. So after i rebrew my ipa that will be renamed to 2nd degree IPA, i'll have to hurry up and brew a saison for blending so i don't get too much oak flavor.

Sour #2 - Bootleg Biology Sour Solera 2016 blend on French oak - 14 months old - FG 1.012 ph 3.10 - Nice fruity taste with more of the barnyard funk. This one seems like a good candidate for Peaches or Apricots. This one will also be blended with some new beer. Don't really want to bottle either of these 2 with such high FG.

Sour #3 - Built up dregs from my very first mixed ferm farmhouse saison w/ some Crooked Stave and Jester King dregs - 5 months old - FG 1.005 3.27 ph - very nice flavor. Deeper acidity and funk than the original. This one will not be fruited. Really cool that i did not innoculate this with anything other than my reserved built up dregs and it finished so low.

Sour #4 - Built up Wicked Weed dregs - 5 months old - FG 1.006 3.17 ph - deep acidity with some barnyard funk. I may put blackberries/blueberries on this one.

My strawberry wine is moving through secondary, planning on racking it in the next week or so. I've read that I should put in a few campden tablets after doing so. My question is : Do I just crush the tablets and throw them into the carboy? or should I dissolve them into a small sample of wine, then dump that back into the carboy?