[hopfenundmalz]

It was a fine afternoon! Mrs R could be talked into some recipe hints. She now has a spirilizer, which is a unitasker, but makes for an authentic Biergarten experience in the USA.

[CroceBrewing]

Well, our brew day went OK today, but there are still a couple of things we struggled with.

First, does anyone have suggestions for getting wort pitching temp down faster? We have a wort chiller for our 10-gallon kettle, but it still takes over an hour to get from boiling to below 80 degrees, and I'm getting concerned that we're risking our luck when it comes to infection.

Secondly, we had a lot of hop additions (including a 2 oz Mosaic addition with 1 minute left in the boil), and we clogged the filter at the bottom of our kettle. The most-frustrating part of that was the fact that we were forced to siphon, and then left a large amount of hops behind in the trub/sludge at the bottom. Does anyone have any best practices here as it relates to adding hops at the end of a boil, or even experience with large hop additions, and keeping them from causing a stuck transfer process?

Cheers!

[Jeff M]

Well, our brew day went OK today, but there are still a couple of things we struggled with.

First, does anyone have suggestions for getting wort pitching temp down faster? We have a wort chiller for our 10-gallon kettle, but it still takes over an hour to get from boiling to below 80 degrees, and I'm getting concerned that we're risking our luck when it comes to infection.

Secondly, we had a lot of hop additions (including a 2 oz Mosaic addition with 1 minute left in the boil), and we clogged the filter at the bottom of our kettle. The most-frustrating part of that was the fact that we were forced to siphon, and then left a large amount of hops behind in the trub/sludge at the bottom. Does anyone have any best practices here as it relates to adding hops at the end of a boil, or even experience with large hop additions, and keeping them from causing a stuck transfer process?

Cheers!

#1 can be a tricky problem, because if your source water is hot or you dont use a pump you are stuck at the whims of gravity.  Having water flow through the chiller faster will help but in the end with a immersion i always just chilled for about 15 minutes(which got my wort to 85-90 F, and then transferred to my bucket and pitched the next day.  As long as your sanitation practices are righteous you should have no infection issues with this method.

#2  Hop Spider.  You can make one with a PVC collar and a nylon bag, or just buy a SS one. I have http://www.stainlessbrewing.com/Hop-Spider-with-seam-welds_p_158.html this one for my 5G system.  Zachs products are awesome.  Id buy the biggest one possible.  You put the hops int he spider and when the boil is over just pull the entire spider out.  No more hops sticking up your valve!

Cheers,
Jeff 

[Stevie]

A lazier option to the nylon bag hop spider is the bag and a spring clamp on the side of the kettle. Of course the kettle dimensions and level of the liquid might cause this solution to not work.

My brew day was ok. Went with an 80/-. Didn't reduce my first runnings enough and had about a gallon more boil off in the kettle. Next time I am using a candy thermometer and making sure I get the first runnings to at least 300°.

I think I am going to keep some boiled water to the side for topping up because my evaporation rates have been all over the place with the heat and humidity.

[CroceBrewing]

Thanks Jeff and Steve!

Jeff: Next time I make it to Woburn, I'll pick your brain a little on the hop spider.

[chumley]

I brewed an English pale ale/bitter yesterday

10 gallons, OG 1.048

16 lbs. Maris Otter
1.5 lbs. torrified wheat
1 lb. Belgian light candi sugar (added to boil kettle)

Mashed at 158°F for 90 minutes

Boiled for 90 minutes

2 oz. Clusters 75 minutes
3 oz. Styrian Goldings 15 minutes
3 oz. EKGs 5 min

Split between two primaries. One was pitched with WY1968 Fuller's yeast, the other received WY1469 Tim Taylor yeast. Both had nice krausen heads this morning.

Brewing with a new cobbled together system, after my buddy came down and got most of stuff back I had been using while he was out of state for two years. The new mash tun and BK are a 55-gallon stainless steel drum, cut in half, with 1/2-inch ports welded in them. It sits kind of precariously on the brew tower, but it worked. What did not work so well was chilling. I could not get much flow out of the old counterflow chiller, it took 2 hours to collect 7 gallons of wort. I discovered that my immersion chiller ruptured after being stored in the garage when it was -20°F last winter. I am going to have to work on new chilling options.

[Titanium Brewing]

Brewed up a batch of the Bell's Two Hearted from the zymurgy recipe. Everything went "spot-on".

[snowtiger87]

I brewed my "Harvest Saison" - with 3 lbs malted oats, 3 lbs malted rye, 3 lbs malted wheat, and 3 lbs malted spelt. I was also shooting for a local angle with the rest of the grain bill being Colorado 2-row and adding 2 lbs of Colorado honey to bump up the OG to 1.066 and help dry it out.