Making 'dem Beers
I acquired this beauty for Christmas:  A ten gallon polar ware kettle. I was previously brewing in a five gallon kettle. While it was alright, you should really be boiling down to a final volume of five gallons and not starting with five gallons. This severely limited my all grain and sparging capacity. Because I now have added boiling capacity I also invested in a propane burner. No pics as I haven't got it from the intertubes yet, but I now have the capacity to bring nine gallons to a rolling boil in 15 minutes. I finally decided to finish my mash tun due to my new acquisitions. Basically the mash tun is where the magic happens. You mix your grain into various temperatures of hot water for various chemistry reasons to obtain wort, the water which now contains sugar from the grain. Now the problem is getting the wort (up to five gallons of water) out of the grain without making a huge mess.  This is a copper manifold. The wort flows through the slits in the pipe (Ideally facing the bottom of the cooler) and out through the barbs and tubing to the outside.  Through the drain hole in the cooler which is now ready to be hooked up to some plastic hose to go out into the brew pot for boiling. My copper pipe joints are a bit dodgy but should be serviceable. I'm really excited about how it turned out, especially since it's a five day cooler and should retain heat really well. Hopefully gonna test drive it this weekend. Anyone interested in a run down of the process when I do it? Unrelated: I got some new shades. My insurance covered new frames and lenses this year and my prescription didn't change.  YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Also Unrelated: Imgur album of mostly gaming and sciency related desktops: imgur.com/a/ZaUhM#42 |
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