Messages

1

The Pub / Re: Help Save Colorado Beer Culture

« on: February 22, 2010, 08:31:33 AM »

I too live in Colorado. I also believe that this bill will not be very harmful. Grocery stores cannot sell liquor and wine. So the mom and pops will still be selling those items. When I go into the store to purchase wine for my girlfriend I will pick of my beer. I think that we might be overreacting in this situation. Sure some of the smaller places down in the front range might be hurt by this. That is just business. There were probably too many to begin with. Up here in the mountains where I live, it will not affect us. Our businesses are based on tourism. Travelers will go where they are told to go. Our concierges, bellman, and locals will point them to the stores their friends work. We will always support our local businesses if they are worthy of it. In my town particularly I could see this hurting one store. They are nothing more then a BMC shop. They sell mostly crappy beer and crappy wine. They will probably go away and I say good.

I think it has been said a few post back. Distribution laws should be our focus. Craft beer should be setting their sites on changing things in this arena to really get themselves out there. This is ultimately what is hurting the small guy brewer in Colorado.

2

Pimp My System / Re: My all electric brewing system

« on: February 19, 2010, 09:52:54 AM »

My method?  Don't look at the costs. I decided not to add it all up. I have a guess of about $1500 total. I got all the metal from the second hand store. Habitat Reuse Center. I tried my best to be fruggle on this build. I had all the stuff laying around for the circuit boards. I went with PEX and Copper for my piping which is cheaper then stainless. I did all the fabrication myself so I did not need to pay a welder.

I am actually kind of lost right now. I spent so much of my free time over the last 3-4 months on this. Now that I am done. I don't know what to do with myself. Well brew with it of course, but I only need soooo much beer I guess it is time to get the snowboard out.

3

Pimp My System / Re: My all electric brewing system

« on: February 17, 2010, 02:27:40 PM »

The heat sinks are there. You can kind of see one of them in the main picture of the rig. Look on the shelf to the right. I cut holes in the box and sealed them to the box. Two SSR's mounted to one big heatsink and the 120v ssr has its own small one. I work in IT. I used some old CPU heat sinks I found on our junk pile. drilled holes and tapped them.

4

Pimp My System / Re: My all electric brewing system

« on: February 16, 2010, 03:36:20 PM »

I have done two batches on it. First batch I had an issue with the homemade false bottom. I tossed it and bought one for sake kegs.

Second batch (yesterday) went really well. The only issue I am still having is figuring out the heat loss when going from BK to mash tun. I account for the grain temp. I think I am getting too much loss from the copper piping. So yesterday I installed thick black pipe insulation to the copper pipes going to the mash tun and going to the heat transfer coil. I think that will help a bunch. It was really cold in my garage yesterday too.

All the electronics work perfectly. The BK gets 12 gallons to a boil in about 30 minutes. I played with the heat coil a bit at mash out and it seems like I could step mash pretty easy if I want. All in all I am happy with it. As soon as I get the process down a bit more, I think the flow for brew day will be great. I don't have much to compare it too. I have been doing full boil partial mash brews until this. This is my first AG setup.

5

Pimp My System / Re: My all electric brewing system

« on: February 16, 2010, 01:15:18 PM »

I tried to link from my picasa album. Hope this sticks.

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Pimp My System / Re: My all electric brewing system

« on: February 16, 2010, 12:56:31 PM »

That is strange! I am seeing them when I look at the post. Cache maybe? I will see what I can do to link from somewhere else.

7

Pimp My System / My all electric brewing system

« on: February 16, 2010, 12:40:41 PM »

I have recently completed my brewing system. It is a single tier, three vessel system. The boil kettle is powered by a 5500 watt element, and controlled by PWM circuit with a dial that I made. The Heat exchanger is powered by a 1500 watt element and controlled by a PID controller. I have created a flow manifold on the front to control where the flow from my pump is going. I incorporated an electric ball valve on the output of the pump to control flow for recirculation. I tried to keep the profile small and compact and in doing so used a hard plumbing concept with quick release camlock fittings to make it easy to remove the vessels for cleaning. Here is my baby.








You can see my entire build thread on homebrewtalk.com

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/how-about-another-e-rig-150992/

8

Equipment and Software / Re: Giant Tea Ball instead of Hop Bag?

« on: December 02, 2009, 04:55:09 PM »

I started using one a few batches ago. For pellet hops it seems to work fine. Some of the finer stuff gets through the mesh. For leaf hops it works perfect.

The ball I am using has a 4 inch diameter. It is plenty big for most hop additions.