OVHA Chat

So a couple of my buddies wanted to learn to brew. I told then I needed to brew and was ready whenever they were. Their response? Ok we will be there at 5:30 tonight.

Its now 10 and I've got 30 minutes left in the boil. They have gone abd now I have to finish. I figure I should be done by midnight. Maybe I will have to take a personal day tomorrow.

At least we had fun and I'll have 10 gallons of blonde to show for it.

I did that last Thursday right after work at 5 p.m. Everything went so smooth until it was time to chill and run the whirlpool. My pump clogged, again... I forced some CO2 up through the spigot, bad idea, the boiling wort exploded. Made a nice mess and didn't unclog the clog. The chill took forever with no whirlpool action and added a good hour to the brew day. I finished up about 11:30 p.m. or so throughly exhausted.

I ran out of propain halfway through. But since we had been "sampling" it was a little late to drive. Luckily I got a ride. Plus this is my first 10 gallon batch. Its chilling now, I may well pitch dry yeast dry tonight instead of rehydra(ing this once. I'm beat now. Thank good for personal days.

Runnin out of proPAIN sucks! I've been considering building an electric heat stick.
http://www.cedarcreeknetworks.com/heatstick.htm
http://www.bodensatz.com/gallery/album12

I've read that 1 heat stick can maintain a boil. It would decrease the usage of propane, and the added benefit would be that I wouldn't be heating up the entire brewhouse (garage).

The propane was a problem but actually cooling is what hurt the most. it took over three hours to get down to pitching temp, and even then I pitched warm (80 or so).

I upgraded all my equipment to 10g and still have a 25' chiller. i think I'm going to have to upgrade that too.

An ideal situation to cool and oxygenate the boiled wort at the same time would be to bubble in some liquid oxygen.
I don't suppose anybody has some laying around that would like to try this idea???

I'm a novice brewer to say the least, but I'm having a group of friends over next Thursday to see the whole operation. I'll be bottling one and brewing another at the same time, plus throwing a few brats and burgers on, and sampling a previous brew. Of course, I brew from extract on the kitchen stove, so it's that much easier.

(Chris, I have your o-rings. Tell me how to get to your house again. I pm'd last week, but I guess you're not checking.)

Wow, that was fun! I had two friends over today for a brewing demonstration. They both ate it up, and one of them took my copy of the Complete Joy home to read. Plus, it's so much easier to bottle with more than just me doing it; it goes so fast! I need to plan another day like today. It's a real blast to share the hobby (and the beer) with friends.