Don’t add your rice hulls before your grain when you’re recirculating the HERMS. They go right through your false bottom and plug up your lines down stream. Its not fun pulling apart the hard plumbing at 160F against the clock…
anyone else got a good lesson learnt the hard way? ;D
Powdered ingredients like cocoa or ground dates will clog the screen in my kettle and make chilling no fun.
Yeah don’t put hot wort in a glass carboy bc it will shatter and send 5 gallons of hot sugar water every where and your basement will smell like a fraternity for a couple of months.
I leaned early on that lautering 14 gallons of hot wort into the kettle (on floor) and then expect to be able to deadlift it onto the stove is a fools errand.
Nnnnnnnnnggggg! Nope. ;D
I’m going to update my lesson to “rice hulls go through 3/32” perforated false bottoms", after reclogging while stirring the sparge, and after i’m finished today its a Denny braid from now on.
14 gallons x 8.34 pounds per gallon x 1.050 = 122.6 pounds
plus the weight of the kettle.
Maybe you could lauter on your bench and press it to the stove? ;D
I made this mistake the first time I used my coleman extreme mash tun, 25 lbs of grain and 1.5 qt/lb of water.
Me:Hey this is great I can just put the mash tun on the ground under the spigot of my kettle and run the strike water right into it!
90 minutes later
Me:alright time to runoff… hmmm… maybe if I cut through the floor and dig a hole in the ground… nah. Deadlift!
luckily I am a fairly strong guy and those handle on the coleman area also strong.
Not THAT strong…I’ve had one come off. Not break, just bend out of place. I was able to reinsert it. Careful.
oy! I am soo glad that did not happen. Last time the cooler sat on a stool and I added water via a bucket until the kettle was light enough to lift.
a little night time brewing and I though my flame looked kinda high so I turned it down and puff…the flame was reflecting so it looked brighter and I turned it off. So I turned on the gas then realized my lighter was about 15 feet away. Of course it won’t light right away…WOOOOSH.
Lesson, if you arent lighting right away, turn off the gas.
Dried bitter orange peel chunks swell to a size slightly bigger than the opening on the spigot and the ID of the pipe in your counterflow chiller. Use a hops bag if you don’t want to have to backflush and or break down all your equipment while it’s full of hot wort.