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I had a freezer accident, it died and lost 2 beers, then my pale ale took an about face over night, 3 down the drain, eek time to brew
What are you doing with homebrew today?
- Thread starter BOB357
- Start date
Hard to "like" that.
Thanks for the flowers. For now, think I'm gonna hold off on insulation to see how well it works and then add some to hopefully prolong the ice life a little. , Looks like I can still add 1/2" (13mm) foam board if I want. The chamber is 3/4" thick (19mm) thick plywood, so shouldn't need a lot of insulation anyway since I'm only going down around 65F for now. When I know more, I'll go colder, or bite the bullet and buy an upright freezer. Gonna have to be a tall bugger to put the FF7.9 in.
Onward in my forays into temperature-controlled fermentation.
Mash done. Bringing it up to boil. Gotta be careful I don't scorch it with the dragon. I usually keep a lid on it until I get to boil, then remove it and boil open top. The only objective is to get it to boil quicker without scorching. Any thoughts? Gotta go find my Whirlfloc, too.
Doing FWH on this, which is yet another tweak to the recipe. VERY full kettle with the double batch sparge. Gonna take a while to boil this down and cool it. I'd do no chill (something else new to me), but I'd be waiting til next week for it to cool down here.
Doing FWH on this, which is yet another tweak to the recipe. VERY full kettle with the double batch sparge. Gonna take a while to boil this down and cool it. I'd do no chill (something else new to me), but I'd be waiting til next week for it to cool down here.
Kegged part of my batch of Vienna lager. The very small sample was tasty.
I think mines on the blink too
Sorry for your loss Ozarks.
I'll kick off a thread soon to find a solution.
Mines got a collar stuck to it so wanna try and find a work around before giving up on it and buying a new one.
All done except clean-up. In the fermenter and pitched. Decided to give the new chamber a spin tonight. Gonna need more ice for certain, though. Now to figure out how to use loose (crushed) ice without flooding the silly thing with melt and condensate.
Keg it they said. It'll be better they said.
Hate to hear you guys are having freezer troubles. actually, especially if they take out a batch (or three) in the process of laying down. Just poking a little fun and would never be hateful to anyone that had a loss, no matter the significance. Gotta laugh at others before they laugh at us or we got no business laughing at ourselves. (Ain't that the Aussie way, Ben?) Humor keeps us from losin' it when bad stuff happens.
Hope neither of 'em is compressor problems. That's usually a jack-it-up-and-drive-a-new-one-under-it problem.
Symptoms? Just not cooling? Is the compressor running, or just buzzing? 40 years in heavy industry as an Electrical Service Engineer. If it's electrical, I can probably help.
I think mines on the blink too
Sorry for your loss Ozarks.
I'll kick off a thread soon to find a solution.
Mines got a collar stuck to it so wanna try and find a work around before giving up on it and buying a new one.
Keg it they said. It'll be better they said.
Hate to hear you guys are having freezer troubles. actually, especially if they take out a batch (or three) in the process of laying down. Just poking a little fun and would never be hateful to anyone that had a loss, no matter the significance. Gotta laugh at others before they laugh at us or we got no business laughing at ourselves. (Ain't that the Aussie way, Ben?) Humor keeps us from losin' it when bad stuff happens.
Hope neither of 'em is compressor problems. That's usually a jack-it-up-and-drive-a-new-one-under-it problem.
Symptoms? Just not cooling? Is the compressor running, or just buzzing? 40 years in heavy industry as an Electrical Service Engineer. If it's electrical, I can probably help.
Just entrusted my experimental Frankenbeer to the Inkbird. Should certainly be OK tonight, but tomorrow it'll probably get quite warm out here in the tractor shed. But, I gotta know if it works, and learn more about how to set it up. Currently have it set for 63F with a 2 degree tolerance, i.e., temperature can range between 61 and 65, turning off whatever was going on at 63. If I have ice supply problems or it doesn't do what I expect overnight, I'll drag the fermenter back inside to it's normal hiding place. Time to wheel this thing back to it's resting spot and get stuff cleaned up so I can put the Kubota to bed.
Vienna lager sample. Filled up one 2.5 gallon keg. Left rest to continue to crash. I’ll put it in a smaller keg.
Yeah had my little freezer since 2017 it's controlled and crashed easily over 100 brews for me so seeing I paid 50$ for it I think I'm ahead.
I'll start a thread later cus I rekon it cab probably be resurrected I just need a little direction as to which wire to cut before she blows type thing.
Na the thermistor must be playing up it turns on when it wants to instead of my stc1000 controlling temp it's turning on when temp is around 0c not -5 which is where it'd set.
Simply I wanna bypass the freezers temperature controller and controll everything via my stc.
Can you not just turn the thermostat in the freezer all the way down and switch the power to the freezer with the STC? Basically, switch the two hot legs of an outlet (I know it's two because I know you have 240V 50Hz distribution). Similar to the way the switches on all the outlets in your country work? Run an extension cord through a control box and mount a relay in it to switch both hot legs on/off, and use the STC to control that with the freezer plugged in downstream of the relays. Didja show your wiring and stuff on your built thread? Might be a quick way to do this. Have you checked the freezer to see how low it will go with the t-stat turned all the way down? I take it you're controlling air temperature around your kegs like I'm trying to do with my DIY fermentation chamber. Putting some fans in to circulate the air temperature around the kegs will help too. I'd really need a better look at the electrical design of your overall system to advise you better.
Well, trying something different...brother has more apples than he knows what to do with, he sent a ton up to my parents...now I've got the liquid(6.5 gallons) left over from Mom and Dad making applesauce. Color looks like good apple juice, good taste. Gravity reads only 1.010 so I'm adding 6 pounds of sugar, a tablespoon of cinnamon and 12oz of raisins. bring to a boil, cool to 70oF and pitch it with 2 tablespoons of Mauri 497(my basic catch all yeast). I'll just call it "Apple Hooch"....
Doing a thread I'll give you a bit more details.
Been playing with aluminium tape
Line cleaning now
Line cleaning now
Last edited:
Perfect. Shoot the thread link when ya got it going.
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Dry hopped Batch #1. Why is the week so long. I have to wait until next Saturday morning for bottling. But I am excited about the fact that I get to do an early taste next week. So far my beer smells amazing. Hopefully I don't get whiplash from the beer burps.
Heading into a warm spell and kinda worried if I'll be able to keep this one cool enough in the new chamber. Taking a lotta ice out there, and I'm barely able to keep enough frozen. Probably should have changed the containers out before I went to bed last night. Temp seems to have planed out around 68-69 degrees, and I'm hoping I get through the heaviest part of the fermentation before the higher temps get here. If I can't keep it below 70 out there, I'll have to bring it inside to keep it from spiking. Not sure how I'm gonna do that with my back giving me problems. Probably shouldn't have rushed using the chamber, but I'm smarter than I once was. Ice chambers are probably OK for cooler climes, but not worth diddly in Alabama. Looks like I'm buying a freezer and turning the chamber into something else. Who knows, maybe a subwoofer for the tractor shed.
You probably NEED a subwoofer for the tractor shed anyway...
Unless you're force carbonating (using CO2), you might be disappointed in your early taste test. It's gonna be pretty flat. Even 4 days after bottling, you'll find the alcohol taste not as smooth, and perhaps even a little bitey. Don't let that put you off. Just let it age a bit more before you try to drink it for best flavor.
Homebrewing is a game of patience and hurrying. Gotta know when to do which and the best thing to teach that is experience with the whole process.
Welcome to the craft, and good luck.
