A Mash Tun Odyssey

Well, it turns out that the sealant gel stuff does not actually bond well to either the plastic of the Rubbermaid container or the brass fittings. My next step was a couple of neat rubber washers held on with Krazy Glue, but that didn't bond to the plastic either. Design failures no. 2 and 3.

So, faced with the fact that nothing bonds to cylindrical coolers, I got a #5½ drilled stopper and experimented with that. Unfortunately, my brass and stainless steel fittings were just too heavy, it seemed, and tended to pull the stopper at a downward angle and cause leaks. Failure no. 4.

Yesterday, I went to my LHBS to see if they had perhaps a better-fitting stopper, which they did not. They did, however, have these little plastic ball valves with 3/8" hose barbs on each end. Aha! This fit perfectly into the stopper, so I stopped at Home Depot and got a 3/8" brass hose barb splicer, clamped my hose braid onto it, and stuck it in the other end of the stopper. Tested it, and though it did leak a little at first, it apparently eventually sealed itself. It lost maybe an ounce or so of water in 90 minutes, so really not bad.

So now I have 30 or 40 bucks' worth of brass and stainless pipe nipples, hose barbs, couplers and ball valves, and $6 of plumbing parts actually in use in the tun. Frankly, I'm just glad to be at the end of that adventure. Can't wait to brew this weekend with it!

Mash Tun Update

So, last night, to test the seal on my new mash tun, I filled the thing up with ten gallons of water and let it sit overnight with the valve closed. In the morning, the level had gone down just a tiny bit and there was a very slow drip right at the valve egress.

Now, I'm not exactly sure of the cause, but I have a couple of things to try. First, I'm going to apply a little more sealant gel stuff, which I imagine can't hurt. Second, I'm going to use a little Teflon tape on the threads of the hose barb I have connected to the ball valve. I did this on my first mash tun and I'm not sure why I skipped that step this time. Wish me luck!

Ol' Smokey

On Sunday I brewed a smoked porter with the idea of building a lot more smoke into it than #7, Djibouti Smoked Porter, had. To this end, I used about twice as much rauch malt and even threw in half a pound of super smoky peated malt to boost the flavor to new heights.

The Recipe:

5 lb 2-row pale malt
5 lb rauch malt
1 lb chocolate malt
8 oz peated malt

5 AAU (31g @ 4.5% AA) Willamette @ 60
4 AAU (25g @ 4.5% AA) Willamette @ 20

1 Irish Moss tablet @ 15 min

Wyeast 1728 - Scottish Ale

Mashed at 156° for an hour using about 13 quarts of water. Sparged with 165°+ water until I had about 26 quarts for the boil. This included a 4-quart mini-batch in the middle.

O.G.: 1.046
Est. IBU: 29.9

I only got about 60% efficiency on this batch, a fact which did not impress me. This was despite a bizarre experiment in which I took about 12 cups of the grist on a quick spin in the food processor to try to crack it down further. Perhaps next time I will run all the grain through this to boost efficiency a bit.

One interesting thing is that the batch did not smell super smoky. When I started the dough-in process, I got a big whiff of the peated malt; however, once the boil was on I pretty much lost all sense of the smoke. Perhaps it will be more noticeable once all the sweetness has been fermented out.

I used the Scottish Ale yeast for this recipe because I plan on using the yeast to make my next batch, which will be a Wee Heavy. That will require enough grain that I'll get to use my brand new mash tun... exciting!

A Whole New Tun

Yesterday, I received in the mail a new 10 gallon cylindrical Rubbermaid cooler. I then had to go visit Lowe's to get new brass fittings and a new stainless steel braid from a faucet hose. It turns out that what I got did not exactly accomplish what I wanted to convert my new cooler into a mash tun, but luckily I had a few left over fittings from my first mash tun which allowed me to construct something that works.

Unlike my last tun, I was not able to re-use the built-in o-ring seal, so I had to use silicone caulking gel (designed for aquarium and food-safe use) to make my connections water-tight. Now, this stuff says that it does not necessarily bond well to metal or certain kinds of plastic, so it may end up being a bad choice. Still, it's worth a try.

Today I may try kegging and/or bottling batches 17 and 18. That would free up a carboy for brewing a heavily-smoked porter for which I picked up ingredients today and may brew later today or tomorrow.

The Hops Grid

So, I've decided to expand the Beer Grid to include dashboard data for things like hops, yeast and maybe even styles and grains. To that end, I've entered all my brews' hops data and have created:

The Hops Grid

I figure, as long as I'm collecting all this data, I might as well display it.

Time Heals All Brews

Yesterday I sampled a bottle of batch #5, Mulligan ESB. This was a beer that never carbonated in the bottle; I hate throwing things out, so it's just been sitting for a little over seven months in my junk room.

I was rather astonished to find how well it had matured. It's still basically uncarbonated, but it has developed a flavor profile similar to a barleywine or a Belgian dubbel (albeit lighter in color and flavor intensity). I was rather impressed, to say the least. I'm looking forward to trying it on its one-year birthday to see how much more it has matured.

I'm also considering opening all the bottles and kegging it. I probably have about 18 or so bottles of it left, so that's about 3 gallons total; it may just be worthwhile to do so.

Blackacre American Stout

Today I brewed up a stout with the idea of pitching the yeast from batch #18. This was batch #20, which I guess is some kind of milestone.

The Recipe:

8 lb 2-row pale malt
1 lb flaked barley
14 oz chocolate malt
6 oz black barley

10 AAU (62g @ 4.5% AA) Willamette @ 60
5 AAU (31g @ 4.5% AA) Willamette @ 30
5 AAU (31g @ 4.5% AA) Willamette @ 5

1 Irish Moss tablet @ 15 min

Wyeast 1056 - American Ale

Mashed at 151° for an hour using about 13.5-14 quarts of water. Sparged with 170°+ water until I had about 26 quarts for the boil.

O.G.: 1.049
Est. IBU: 59.4

Today was a solidly uneventful brew day. Milled my grain twice and inspected it at the homebrew store; it looked pretty good there. Got 70% efficiency with my mash, which isn't great but at the very least isn't terrible. In fact, I would be happy with 70% as long as I had a modicum of consistency.

Pitched 100mL of the yeast cake harvested on Thursday from batch #18. This should have been roughly 200 billion cells, based on a rough estimate.