Oh yes! Everything you ever wanted to know about equipment or ask about equipment, this is the place to be! Share photos or ideas about equipment here.
I wonder if I can get my brewday under 4 hours with a 90 minute boil, if I continue my current path of using hot tap water for strike/HLT and improve my cooling time...
Including setup / cleanup / teardown??? You're dreaming unless you hire extra hands ... oh but I forgot that you'll have an inline thermometer ...
Great thing to aspire to though ... I can see 4 hours without setup / cleanup / teardown.
I wonder if I can get my brewday under 4 hours with a 90 minute boil, if I continue my current path of using hot tap water for strike/HLT and improve my cooling time...
Including setup / cleanup / teardown??? You're dreaming unless you hire extra hands ... oh but I forgot that you'll have an inline thermometer ...
Great thing to aspire to though ... I can see 4 hours without setup / cleanup / teardown.
I'm currently under 5 hours, including setup/teardown/cleanup. And I *just* made the change earlier this week to start using hot water for mash tun & HLT rather than hose water.
Prior to the hot water change, I was typically in the 4:15 range for a 60 minute boil, and maybe 4:45 for a 90 minute boil. Going to hot strike water will take at least 10 minutes off. Right now my cooling process takes >25-30 minutes, but a lot of that is that I have *zero* visibility into my wort outflow temp, so if I can actually see that I'm reaching pitchable temps without recirculating all the way down to 120 deg F, I might be able to *significantly* cut that time.
dhempy wrote:Most of my system has tri-clover fittings ... is there room on the Therminator to put TC fittings and still get the hose attached? .... maybe if I dropped a 45" elbow pointing away from the garden hose fittings? Does the orientation of the chiller matter?
Dan
Yes, orientation matters...place all inlets and outlets at top. Not sure about using tri-clover and spacing, but using s/s 45 deg fittings will work nicely.
I have also placed a ball valve on inlet water side so tap water flow can be controlled easily. Also made a fitting to attach hose from cooling water outlet to wort outlet. This allows back flushing using city pressure. Once everything is clean, chiller is drained and placed in oven at 400 for one hour. Let it stay in oven over night to cool
Hope this helps
If anyone is interested (Brad), I will be brewing labor day weekend. PM me for details
Chris
Some plate chilers have the water side & wort side ports on opposite sides of the chiller to facilitate various fittings. Mine does not, so I ended up just using 1/2" hose barb fittings, and i made a hose with a single tri-clover on one end to attach to the pump outlet.
At the end of the brew day, I put some PBW through the whole rig & chiller (backwards) and then flush with water. Haven't tried the oven trick yet, but will probably do that soon. I hear it helps!
--LexusChris
"A woman drove me to drink, and I hadn't even the courtesy to thank her." – W.C. Fields
I average 4.5 hour brew days and sometimes 4. Over a year ago, I had mapped out my process timeline to see where I could overlap for back to back brew sessions. Being conservative, this put me at 5 hours for a single brew day and 7.75 hours for a double. I usually finish much quicker than that (it all depends on mash & boil schedules though).
At the end of the day, my kettles are scrubbed and I use line pressure to force tap water through all my plumbing. I only do a PBW recirc about every 3-5 brew sessions. I look at it this way... after thoroughly flushing the system, there is minimal wort left that could harbor bacteria. On the next brew day, everything is going to get boiled for 60-90 minutes anyways, so any bacteria wouldn't survive.
lexuschris wrote:Some plate chilers have the water side & wort side ports on opposite sides of the chiller to facilitate various fittings. Mine does not, so I ended up just using 1/2" hose barb fittings, and i made a hose with a single tri-clover on one end to attach to the pump outlet.
At the end of the brew day, I put some PBW through the whole rig & chiller (backwards) and then flush with water. Haven't tried the oven trick yet, but will probably do that soon. I hear it helps!
--LexusChris
After cleaning chiller, placing in oven forces any moisture to evaporate and also kills anything that may be lurking in dark places
bwarbiany wrote:Dammit, people. Now I'm gonna have to buy a thermometer to go inline on the output of my CFC. It's something I've probably needed for a long time, but I can see this being very useful to actually hitting target pitch temps and reducing brewday time.
I wonder if I can get my brewday under 4 hours with a 90 minute boil, if I continue my current path of using hot tap water for strike/HLT and improve my cooling time...
Do you have an in-line hot water heater, or are you using the hot water that has been sitting in your hot water tank? I have always used cold tap water for cooking to avoid this water, but I don't remember why... Mineral content or something...
Marotte Brewery wrote:
Do you have an in-line hot water heater, or are you using the hot water that has been sitting in your hot water tank? I have always used cold tap water for cooking to avoid this water, but I don't remember why... Mineral content or something...
Before lead was banned for use in copper plumbing, it was thought that heat would possibly leech lead into water. Not a problem if you are using a carbon block water filter...but watch temp in filter and housing. Heat may also cause solvents in plastic to taint beer
I would prefer to use cold water then wait the extra 10-15 minutes to reach temp opposed to lead or solvents in kettle.
Just my .02
Loving the pictures of Dan's rig! Definitely some cool tinkering went on here! Sweet!
On the cold vs. hot tap water discussion, my mom's house had a soft water system, and using the 'cold' tap was the only way to ensure that you weren't going to kill your plants by watering them. When I was using tap water, I would always run the cold tap for a minute or so, and then collect my beer water. Just an old habit I guess.. Now, I use a carbon filter on the outside yard spigot.
--LexusChris
"A woman drove me to drink, and I hadn't even the courtesy to thank her." – W.C. Fields
Marotte Brewery wrote:
Do you have an in-line hot water heater, or are you using the hot water that has been sitting in your hot water tank? I have always used cold tap water for cooking to avoid this water, but I don't remember why... Mineral content or something...
Before lead was banned for use in copper plumbing, it was thought that heat would possibly leech lead into water. Not a problem if you are using a carbon block water filter...but watch temp in filter and housing. Heat may also cause solvents in plastic to taint beer
I would prefer to use cold water then wait the extra 10-15 minutes to reach temp opposed to lead or solvents in kettle.
Just my .02
Well, I guess *luckily* our water heater failed last fall (actually it was lucky that we still had a home warranty as we'd owned the house <1yr), so we've got a new one. So the water tank shouldn't have any issues with lead.
