I built a stir plate a few months back and I only recently got the pics up on our photopage.

It was just a standard stir plate build out. I enhanced mine with an on/off rocker switch. Not really necessary, but it was a fun part of the project.

I wanted to throw up a post to alert you all to the photos.  Once I draw up a wiring diagram I’ll post that here as well.

If you have questions about building your own leave comments with this post and I’ll try and help you out.

Brew On! 

I brewed up another batch of Oatmeal Stout with a few minor tweaks (I’ll post the recipe separately). Got up at 5AM on Sunday morning to brew so I could hopefully finish before my wife went to work at 11.

Everything went fine with the batch except my chilling process.  I guess I didn’t clear my water supply hose well enough after the last session (Holiday Ale), because it had some frozen blockages in it.  So I had 7.5 gallons of 212F wort in my kettle on the burner and no way to hook up the immersion chiller (IC).

The only option I had was to transfer the beer directly into a sanitized bucket fermentor, add the IC to the bucket of wort, then carry the 5.5 gallons to the side of the house where I could get the IC to reach the faucet.  I chilled as usual without issue.

My concern is adding 212F wort to a plastic bucket may force some plastic like flavors to become evident in the beer.  I know from my extract days I used to put hot wort in a the bucket with out problem.  But in that case, I just added cold top off water right away.  Using a chiller, the wort cools down slower than that.

We’ll just have to wait and see.  Check back on this in a few weeks when I get the beer into a keg.

Hey, it’s the holiday time and what homebrewer doesn’t put a few pieces of homebrewing equipment on their list?

I have been eyeing a Better Bottle Carboy for a while. Here’s a picture of it:

I probably will still use a bucket for primary fermentation, but for beers that need to be conditioned I will transfer the beer into this vessel. This carboy is made of plastic so it’s lighter and easier to clean than glass. It’s relatively inexpensive too…around 24 bucks.

For twice the money, I could ask for the same carboy but one with a spigot on the bottom of it. Here a picture of what I mean:

The question: Is the spigot really worth twice the money?

I posted way back in August that I wanted to buy a wort chiller.  Well, I took my time to find a good bargain.  I saw a potential good deal on eBay, placed a bid, and won the auction…this internet thing is out of sight.  Can I still make ironic jokes about the internet?  Meh, I don’t care. 

Here the wort-chiller I received via UPS yesterday:

That’s a 20 foot sized copper wort chiller. For those of you who are thinking about making the jump to larger pots for full 5-6 gallon boils, this piece is essential for dropping the temperature of your brew from just under boiling temps to fermentation temps. Other methods to cool your wort will take too long. The longer it takes for the wort to cool means the longer it is exposed to the elements and a larger chance for contamination from airborne pest like wild yeasts or bacteria. Contamination may result in your beer having off flavors…it may even undrinkable. That’s a bummer, let me tell you.

There are other wort chillers out there and we’ll talk about those in future posts, but the immersion style chiller is the cheapest but effective.

Another tool to measuring your brew’s specific gravity is a refractometer.  It can measure the amount of sugar in a liquid by the amount the liquid refracts light.

Fascinating stuff!

To measure your brew’s specific gravity, a small sample (a few drops) are placed on the triangle end of the refractometer. Once the sample has been placed on the tip, the cover is closed down. To take a reading, you take the round end and place it up to your eye. The triangle end is pointed towards a light source which allows the refraction to be captured and presented to the viewer through the eyepiece.

The refractormer measures specific gravity using the Brix scale, which can be converted to other units of measurement like the Balling Scale or Plato degrees.

It’s more expensive than a hydrometer, but it uses a much smaller sample…and it’s 10 times as cool.

This is the last post of the beginner kit item review. The last items, highlighted in the picture below, are used to keep your other equipment clean.

The white packet is sanitizer. Any piece of equipment that will come into contact with your brew should be sanitized* before brewing. The sanitizer in the packet is most likely in a powder form. To prepare and use the sanitizer, follow the directions on the packet.

*Sanitized is different than clean…we’ll discuss the difference in a future post.

The bottle brush is used, you guessed it, to clean the inside of your bottles. You will want to clean your bottles well to avoid contaminating your beer. I ruined a perfectly good better because I was lazy and I didn’t do a good enough job cleaning my bottles.
As I alluded to earlier, cleaning bottles and sanitizing bottles are two different things. We’ll go through each process…in an upcoming post.

Thanks for reading these posts describing the items in a beginner brewing kit. If you missed anything, be sure to check out the following sections:

• Beginner Brewing Kit
• Beginner Brew Pot
• Fermentation Bucket
• Racking Cane
• Bottling Bucket
• Hydrometer
• Bottle Capper

Another funky red highlight for the next few items for this review. I am sure you have seen bottle caps before, but the black device with the two handles is a bottle capper. Although it looks like a medieval era implement of torture, it’s a very kind and gentle tool that allows you to top your bottles with caps.

When I first got my kit, I thought it was going to be difficult to use…but I found it to be very easy. There is a magnet in the middle of the capper that holds the cap in place. Once you line up the capper with the top of the bottle, you pull down on the two handles and voila your bottle is capped.