So I’ve got a little left over Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket. I want to put it towards my all grain cooking set up.
Currently I have a turkey fryer burner that I’ve modified to hold my keg boil boil pot. No valve or false bottom or anything. Just a hole in the top and a 12" glass frying pan lid. I use a 10gal MT and I have the various little utensils and such.
Eventually I want my set up to be another keg for a hot water tank with it’s own burner and a valve that will dump into my MT by gravity. Then that will gravity dump into my Keggle which I would like to have a valve to dump into my ferment bucket.
So I eventually I still need 2 valves, 2 thermometers, 2 site tubes, a false bottom, a stand with 2 burners… And whatever I’m forgetting right now.
But I want to put my money to its best use as I go. For several years I’ve also been into building Jeeps for off-road, so I know about sinking money in the wrong place at the wrong time and finding a better cheaper way to do it later on.
I can weld and build most anything I need for this except the valves and thermometers.
I’ve got about $250 to spend right now. What would you do?
-finish building the wort boil keggle I have now?
-start building the stand and get a hot water keg?
fermentation temp control?
something else?
$250 won’t last long on some of these parts so just looking for ideas.
seems pricey for what’s essentially a bucket parka. you still have to control temp with ice packs or similar.
for 250 you could easily get a nice two stage controller and a decent chest freezer. I’m guessing you’ve already got an engine lifter or similar around the place so you don’t even have to worry about lifting full fermenters up and into a chest freezer
No where to really put a chest freezer unfortunately. At least not until we get into our new house next year. At that point I’ll have a nice concrete floor basement and plenty of room for a freezer. Some day!
in that case the brew bag or similar might be just the thing. you can accomplish the same thing with a 12 dollar rubbermade tub, and some foam insulation scraps or even an old comforter and some ice pack. which will leave you with 230 bucks to spend on fittings and, more importantly, ingredients for more brews. because beer is made out of ingredients not equipment.
by the way, for $230 bucks and what you already have you could put together a denny style all grain system and still have $100 left over for practice ingredients.
I would definitely find a way to control temperature before anything else. It may not bring you the convenience of some of the other things you want to do but it will have the greatest positive effect on your beer. There are a number of DIY options out there that are smaller than a chest freezer or a fridge if space is a concern.
I no sparge every 5 gallon batch these days and love it! I still batch sparge my larger batches only because I can’t fit the full volume of liquor in my MLT with the grains, but I would if I could. I regularly hit 73-75% efficiency with no sparge, which is only about 3% less than when I batch sparge, negligible in my book. The beers come out just as good and it makes for a simpler brew day.
Here’s my no sparge how-to with a BeerSmith tutorial, perhaps you’ll find it helpful:
I’ve built 4 temp controllers out of these… http://m.ebay.com/itm/281294885235?nav=SEARCH
Each set up is in a metal box with a built in outlet. I Have one controlling the temp for my keezer and the other three are for fermentation temp control. I’ll try to remember taking a pic of one tomorrow.
Looks like a great buy. Around half the price of a Ranco, and the Ranco doesn’t have an anti short cycle delay. I don’t recall seeing these around when I purchased, unfortunately.
Denny, when using this, what setting are you using? I recently bought one as well, and my temp seems to fluctuate a bit more than when I had 2 johnsons running heat/cooling. Do you set heat and cool to same temp, 1-2 degrees different, and where do you set diff, and other settings. I think I will really like this unit as well, just need to dial it in
I try not to set the differential lower than 2F to prevent constant cycling of the freezer. For a normal fermentation, I’ll set CSP to 64-65 and HSP to 60-61 to keep it around 63.