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Other Brewing Gadgets I start my brew day by measuring out the grains
using my digital grain scale. Then, I mill the grain using my adjustable grain
mill. When I brew a 6 gallon batch of beer I can use my
stove top to boil the wort; however, when I brew an 11.5 gallon batch of beer I
have to use a my 60,000 BTU hurricane burner from Northern
Brewer. To make a yeast starter I use a 1,000ml Pyrex
Flask. I have two wort pumps: one to pump the wort out of the lauter grant (also the bottling bucket), and one to pump the water from the HLT to the sparge manifold. Both of these are magnetic drive, and they work great. I adapted a fly sparge manifold to operate with an adjustable height float switch in order to have a more automated sparge. The float switch plugs into a broken circuit that is connected to a relay. This works great, and saves me a lot of time. Here is my 60' wort chiller; during the winter
when my tap water is 35°F I can cool a 10 gallon batch in under 8 minutes! After the wort boils I aerate it with a deep water aquarium air pump, which pumps air through a .2u sterile air filter, then through a 2u stainless diffusion stone. I purchased this setup from morebeer. After the beer has cold conditioned for at least two weeks (for clarity), I push the beer from the carboy, through a 1u (nominal) pleated whole house sediment filter, then into the keg. I have adapted a carboy cap with a barbed fitting with a push connect gas fitting for the gas inside, then I ran a racking cane with a quick disconnect for the beer outside. I use a counter-pressure bottle filler to fill filtered/carbonated beer for storage sometimes. The gas side is hooked up using a quick disconnect (same as the carboy cap), and the beer side is hooked up using a ball lock quick disconnect and 10' of 3/16 ID vinyl tubing. This setup works great and it allows me to bottle crystal clear beer for the more discriminating beer drinkers. After I fill the bottles I cap them with the Red Baron Bottle Capper. |