OVHA Chat

Well here's the new system so far. I have a ways to go. Ignore the messy garage, it's not spring clean up yet.

I also don't have the cooking set up settled yet but I'm trying to avoid too much more equipment. I just don't have the room to grow much more at the moment.

That conical is quite impressive.
Looks like you're only 1 burner and a pump away from a completing a brew sculpture.

After watching all this roll, I'm not sure the pump or another burner will do much for me. I only had to recirculate for 20 minutes before it ran clear and I started the sparge. I couldn't taste a bit of sweetness left in the grains after the runoff was complete and my gravity came out higher than I expected. The spent grains were like chewing on sawdust.

I also was surprised to find that adding the 170 sparge water to the kettle on just my work bench actually kept it at temp without needing heat. I love the thermometer on the mash pot and not having to dump it for the lauter/sparge! The outside temp was just starting to work out of the 30s at that point in the garage. I can't imagine I'll brew in much colder temps than that so I'm thinking another burner won't gain me anything.

I wasn't suggesting you needed a pump or a burner, just that all the equipment you've collected you could build a brew sculpture and save your back for the more important things like hauling your armor to the shows. Adding another burner would keep you from having to lift the heavy pots on and off the fire to sparge and boil. The pump would like wise help in lifting those volumes to and fro.

Right on!

You gotta love anyone you can say "hauling your armor to the shows" to!

That's a good looking setup you have there. I especially like the tri-clover clamps.

OK, I have a question... when your beer is done fermenting, how do you get the beer from the conical to the fermenter?

It's the 'top' valve right ?

Thanks. I assume you meant from the conical fermenter to the keg?

Yes, you are correct. There is a bent arm inside the upper valve. You can start the arm out horizontally when you assemble it, then as you drop your keg, you just continue to rotate the arm (via the valve outside the conical) to aim towards the bottom until you are either fully down or start to encounter settlement. They said you may be able to just leave it fully down after trying it once which is what I expect to see. I get very little settlement in my secondary and the conical is surprisingly a deep channel at the bottom.

I used the bottom valve already to dump the cold break, it's pretty cool. I used a squirt bottle to apply sanitizer after I was done, although it is outside of the valve area anyway. It did wash it out nicely and keep everything shiny. Then I'll do the same to dump the primary settlement. If anyone wants a free yeast starter, let me know and you can come by with a sterile mason jar Saturday.

It was wyeast London III.

If I ever think of taking up midevil fighting re-encactments, somebody smack me to my senses before I go out with Giovanni. If he hefted that full conical by himself, he certainly got a monstrous codpiece built in to his suit of armor.