Astro-imaging and ham radio and homebrewing

It looks a little neater now; I shortened all of the hoses for a cleaner setup. The third test brew yesterday went well, though the day was far too hot for it.  That was aggravated by the fact that I kept the door behind the rig closed this time. That killed the breeze that had provided some measure of relief on previous brews. That breeze was making it difficult to “dial in” the burners, as it was blowing right into the vented areas at the rear of each burner. Once I have the control box mounted on its own stand I will be able to position the brewstand to avoid that. As it is, everything is tethered to the fixed controller location so I don’t have much freedom of movement.

With the flames undisturbed I could make the area even less comfortable by cranking the burners up! Boiloff was initially higher than intended and I had to cut the boil flame down to avoid losing too much volume.  I haven’t yet weighed the propane tank but I expect fuel consumption to be down a little from the 7 pounds I used last weekend. I think I will end up around 3 pounds for a 5 gallon brew and 6 pounds for ten gallons. That would put me about where I was with the original gravity feed system I had been using; I can live with that. The burners can be switched over to natural gas by swapping a spring in each solenoid valve and drilling out an orifice in each burner. When I get around to that my fuel costs will drop greatly.

I don’t know at what temperature the ground water was, but I was able to get the boil kettle down to 75 degrees very quickly by recirculating through the plate chiller. Transfer into the fermenters was at 65 degrees. I doubt that the ground water will ever be much warmer than it is now, after a couple of weeks of 90 degree days so I should be free of cooling concerns.

The second session went well.  It was, for me, a big batch of a big beer. I scaled up the recipe for the 10%abv Russian imperial stout that I have produced several times on the Z to ten gallons for this rig. No room left in the mash tun, but it all worked OK. Batch size is a complicated decision. I can spend all day in the barn and make either 5 or 10 gallons. It seems a no-brainer to choose to make 10. On the other hand, it is a hobby and I can brew twice as frequently (and have more variety) by selecting 5 gallon batches. Right now my perceptions are skewed a bit because I have been making 2.5 gallon batches all year so even 5 gallons looks like a lot of beer. There is no economy of scale with larger batches because (to my surprise) propane consumption doubled for the 10 gallon brew and ingredient costs are constant because I always buy bulk grains.

Meanwhile, the fermentation freezer is full. I don’t even have room for the 2.5g batch I brewed Friday so it is still sitting in a sink of cold water. I need to rack a couple of kegs from the freezer this afternoon. I’ll need to rack some more to make room for the brew I plan to do next weekend. Then I will be shut down until some more brews complete fermentation. Three weekends in a row on a conventional system is very unusual for me. I am just exercising the setup to make sure there are no surprises on the public brew day at the end of the month. Once a month will be normal, with small, low-effort brews on the Z to fill in the gaps.

Did the first brew on the updated system today. It is a very different experience from using the Zymatic, which is all I have used since November. It is  a more modest change from brewing on my original three vessel gravity feed system, but a significant one. I can report that each design change ended up pleasing me. To anyone considering switching from gravity feed to a single tier system, or to HERMS, or to direct RIMS, or from a conventional counterflow chiller to a plate chiller, or to an Autosparge, or to PID burner control, or to a whirlpool setup: I encourage you to give it a go.

During today’s brew I found that I appreciated each and every upgrade from my original setup. There is no reason to think that any of the changes (or all of them combined) are going to suddenly make better beer – but I enjoyed having and using them. It is a hobby, after all, and if I am going to spend most of a Saturday doing it I want to enjoy it. The system delivered on that goal; I did enjoy it. Further, over the last few months I also enjoyed figuring out how I wanted to implement each change as well as the activity of putting the system together. I wimped out on building the stand itself as I don’t weld but I got to select each component of the system and put it all together the way I wanted to. It was rewarding to see each element performing as desired.

So: is it better than the Zymatic? It is certainly very different, and using it is a very different experience. The Zymatic is extremely easy to use while still giving the user complete control over the brewing process. One makes all of the same decisions – recipe, ingredients, mash temperature and duration, boil duration, hop additions, etc. It can then be left to its own devices to achieve all of these things, leaving the brewer free to attend to other matters. This compensates for the limited batch size (usually 2.5 to 3.5 gallons) by permitting more frequent brewing sessions. You don’t have to set aside an uninterrupted brew day. I use mine in my office and brew while conducting business.  This rig requires much more attention. I have to be there to tell it when to change temperatures. I have to be there to open and close valves and to move hoses and to turn pumps on and off. I have to be there to add hops at the appropriate times. I have to be there because from one to three large propane burners are operating most of the time and should not be unattended. I have seen some strong diatribes by those who feel that since the Zymatic eliminates much of this it isn’t “real” homebrewing. I don’t buy that; to me, homebrewing is about making decisions and implementing them. If the machine runs the valves and heaters under my command, the process is no less “pure” than if I stand there and perform the same functions by hand.

Conclusion: I like the Zymatic and will continue to use it, but less frequently (I have done 38 Zymatic brews since January). I have missed “normal” brewing and enjoy the hands-on aspect of using the new system as well, and will do dedicated brew days as time and weather permit.  Each has its place and fills its own role.

Had another burst of activity tonight despite high temps and humidity. Got two PIDs autotrained, both pumps mounted, and most hoses built and connected. I would have finished the hoses but have misplaced some of the connectors I had stashed. I’ll dig them out tomorrow (I hope).  Still need to train the third PID, mount the chiller RTD sensor, make up the last of the hoses, and make some changes that occured to me during tonight’s tests. Those will involve punching a couple more kettle holes but I have everything already set out to do that so it will be easy. I still haven’t found my old counterflow chiller so I’ll be using the plate chiller, which I hope to learn to trust as I use it. I always meant to switch over to it, but I trusted the counterflow chiller and hated to mess with that which works well.

Next stage, after everything works as it is, is to rig the (heavily) used 20 gallon Blichmann G1 pot I picked up for not much. It has LOTS of excess holes in it, including three 2″ triclamp fittings that were used for electric elements. I will have to cap a bunch of holes first, but the plan is to make it into a boil hettle so I can increase my max batch size. Then I can convert the existing 15G boil jettle into a hot liquor tank and get rid of the converted keg I am now using. I want to do it partly for esthetic reasons (I don’t like the looks of convered Sanke kegs), partly for ethical reasons (there is no easy way to tell whether a given Sanke keg was ever stolen but it is certain that some were), but mostly because I much prefer the fuel efficiency of a flat bottomed kettle. Once I eventually switch to natural gas it won’t be so big a deal, but I don’t know how much propane this rig is going to consume per brew session. The old rig rig used about 3-4 pounds per brew but it had smaller burners. I haven’t performed any meaningful delta-T tests but I observed about three degrees/minute heat rise in the MLT while recirculating through a HERMS heat exchanger that was exposed to room temperature air rather then to water at operating temperature. It should do better in service – and the other two burners are mounted closer to the kettles than that one so they should also do better. I never got three degrees/minute out of the old rig so this should be a nice improvement.