Mill Hopper Design – Plans Soon!

I know that this is possibly a bit arse-about-face, but I’ve been playing with Google Sketchup to create a set of plans for my hopper design.  Not so I can build it, but so you can!

Stay tuned for more…

Ghetto Hop Scales

So you’ve bought yourself some awesomely cheap electronic scales from ebay.  But what about when someone pours a beer on them, they run out of batteries or just stop working?

The answer: you only find out when you desperately need them!  And usually this is when you already have your sparge done and you’re on the boil.  Or worse still when you’re halfway through your hop additions!

My quick and dirty solution?  A jerry-rigged balance scale made out of a steel ruler, a pencil, two egg cups and a cough medicine measure…

Place the ruler on the pencil and an egg cup on either end.  Move the pencil until they balance.  Measure the weight of hops you want with the medicine measure (in my case 7mL = 7g).  Pour it in one egg cup.  Carefully add hop pellets one at a time to the other until the water cup rises.  Bingo 7g worth of hops! (well, as close as we’re ever going to get at short notice)

MIG Welder

So the CFC needs a new home on the brew frame, eh?  Sounds like I need a welder…

…oh yes, that’s right – I bought a second-hand one yesterday!  It’s a Cigweld Transmig 135 – does gas and gasless.  Clearly I’m no welder (yet?) but hopefully we can come to an amicable understanding…

Action Shot

Just a quick (and only slightly out-of-date) photo of the brew rig in action…

Notice that this is prior to the HLT thermostat upgrade and flow-control on the CFC.  What it does point out all too clearly though is that the CFC needs a place to live on the brew frame!

Heater Pad

It’s cold and wintery and there’s something about brewing yeast that is clearly some kind of cosmic prank:  all the beers you drink in summer need to be brewed at cold temperatures (lagers) and all the hearty ales that you might drink in winter like a warm temp!

I thought it time to complete the fermentation fridge by giving it the ability to heat as well as cool (after struggling to brew a hefeweizen under an electric blanket in the kitchen!).  My STC-1000 aquarium thermostat already has a heating and cooling side wired up so really all that is required is to put in some kind of heating element.  I originally had a 28W lightbulb doing the job, but I didn’t really like the fact that I could burn my fridge down (I had a close call with an ominous brown discolouration of the liner) and the UV put out by the lamp is not exactly great for beer (it comes in brown bottles for a reason!) .  So time for a proper heater…

There are two main styles available: a belt and a pad.  Belts are cheaper and more efficient at heating your brew as they wrap around the side of the fermenter and conduct directly into the beer.  But I brew inside a well-insulated fridge and rely on a thermostat taking readings of the air inside the fridge.  Heat the brew and it’s going to overshoot wildly while the air inside the fridge catches up – I don’t want to use my beer as a makeshift radiator!

I went with a heat pad.  It sits nicely in the bottom of the fridge a shelf or two below the beer so it’s heating the air and not the beer directly.

It’s only a 25W model.  I figured that it was pretty much the same as the light bulb I’d been using.  After watching it only increase temperatures incredibly slowly over a number of hours I began to get worried.  But no need to – I had 40L of beer in the fridge and it takes a while for things to reach equilibrium.  So if you’re wondering: a 25W pad is perfectly capable!  In fact its low “seeping” power means that it doesn’t rapidly heat, trip the thermostat, overrun, plunge and then repeat over and over.