Yoga mat coozie? Do you use it on a cooler or do you use it on a metal heated kettle? My mash tun is a Blichmann BoilerMaker that is directly fired. I’m wondering if I were to use a yoga mat, if it would melt?
It was in the Zymurgy gadget issue a couple years back. Unfortunately I dont have a photo in my tablet right now. Its like an upside down foam pot that I built which after ive shut of the flame, I slide that down over the stainless mash tun. In summer I dont need it, fall and spring it holds temp, in winter I dont use it and simply run a low flame with my recirculation going.
TOTALLY!! Me too. Had me fooled as well.
It’s funny, I couldn’t wait to get out of the kitchen in my early brewing years. Now that I go outside with propane, pump, 20 gallon kettle, etc, I really just want to brew in the kitchen anytime the weather is below 50.
Hate to rub it in, but this is the weather I have to look forward to starting next month.
That’s perfect, Steve. I love brewing in those temps. That would be autumn here in eastern Iowa. But brewing in the kitch is totally awesome too. Perfect weather year round.
I guess we all get used to working within the annual range of temps and other seasonal factors that impact our brew sessions. I’ve always loved winter brewing. Brewing in winter in Spokane, WA outside, in my situation I keep an eye on weather reports and brew on days above freezing so no frozen hoses or creating a skating rink.
Luckily I have a very good LHBS so no worries about frozen yeast in the mail, etc. and an advance call to him ensures he will add any liquid yeast order needed if he doesn’t have it in inventory.
The best part here is very little in the way of airborne particulate and no bugs, and the very cold ground water temp that makes chilling 11 gallons a breeze with my immersion chiller. Also it’s a source of activity and getting out of the house. I don’t mind dressing more warmly to adapt to a little chilly weather. Still, I must admit that the couple winters I lived and brewed outside in more temperate Maryland made winter brewing a milder, more relaxed, obstacle-free and sometimes spontaneous experience in comparison.
I brewed yesterday in my garage. It was about 26 degrees…Celsius. Muggy too.
For some reason this winter has felt like a wet, muggy spring in Philly so far. Think we only had one brutally cold day.
Same here in southern New England. We went for a walk around the neighborhood on Christmas day after dinner, one of us in shorts, and all remarked how it was colder on Halloween when we took the kids trick-or-treating.
Pretty cold today, though, and the first snow is expected tonight.
And even then, you’ll get mostly rain. We went for a walk Christmas day too in short sleeve shirts, etc. Definitely colder today, with 3-6" of snow expected tonight and tomorrow. Not a lot but enough to freak everyone out who forgot how to drive in the snow from last winter.
The first round of snow is done and cleared off the driveway already. We got 1 or 2 inches, hard to tell. We are supposed to get another 5 to 7 tonight.
We’re all just being lazy toady watching the wind blow. Finally seems like Winter in Iowa.
Paul
We got 13 inches. I have two snowblowers. Both of them are broken.
About 3-4 here, but it changed over to sleet and freezing rain early. Roads sucked driving into work yesterday…I’m already ready for spring!
Where I live, it starts raining in October and it basically rains until about June or July.
The worst part is that the temperature dipped and everything refroze last night and stayed that way. My driveway was like a hockey rink for most of the day.
We just experienced the warmest December on record with an average temperature of 43.1 degrees. That’s 12.6 degrees above average. The month included seven 60+ days.
Same here. We had a tornado here last week…at Christmas time. No measurable snow this month. Craziness.
You’re not caught up in any of that major flooding are you?
No, luckily. Flooding got fairly close but we dodged it. We got over 6 inches of rain in a week. Pretty soggy.