My brew yesterday. Only a few inches of snow. I love being outside in the winter.
Suh-WEET!
. . . and the neighbors thinking . . “That crazy drunk is at it again!” 
Nice setup.
What is the shield around your propane burner made of? Is it a piece of duct work or something?
That’s what I figured they thought too… until the old lady came out and said “that chili sure smells good.” Yes, yes it does.
Yep. The burner sites on two concrete blocks. I wrap a piece of ductwork around it with a hole drilled in each end. A piece of copper wire in the holes serves as a “latch” to keep it around the burner.
I love the wind screen! Way better than the tin foil I use. Thanks for posting the picture!
+1
Great idea! … I need to adopt that one. 8)
+2
Duct could serve the dual purpose of acting as a screen for my Weber smoker too. 8)
It is extra shady when brewtime is 7pm to 2am…
This was my first AG batch. We had about 8 inches of snow. I hope to get some brewing in this weekend we have more now.
Sweet! I’m more of an AM brewer. I like to be done by lunchtime. We have about 6 or so inches now. I’ll be brewing as soon as my malt comes. I miscalculated my supplies of MO.
This was with snow on the ground, but a nice 45F sunny day a few weeks ago.
Used foil insulation as a large wind shield.
First time I used the new brewpot and made a nice english mild.
http://morebeer.ning.com/photo/chillinginwinter-1?context=user
hopefully the link will work… this is from last winter. I believe that my chiller actually froze up during the chilling process and I ended up breaking up frozen wort on the “out” line of the CFC. Planning on brewing a bock tomorrow, with a balmy 30 degrees and snow in the forecast.
sorry about the hijack, especially with green grass in the photo, but wanted to share my similar windscreen solution - quite a bit bulkier than the ductwork, but the culvert company was fine with giving me a piece of scrap culvert - even cut it to size for me. I used a stone metal-cutting wheel blade on my skil saw to cut the notch, and smoothed edges with a grinder.
It has a large enough diameter that it doesn’t get very hot from the burner.
I kept the piece I cut out, and bent it and position it under the spigot as a heat shield.
I guess you just kicked it up one notch, that’s even better. I’m going to have to reconsider that idea. 8)
I’m not so sure mine is a better solution - just free. A friend of mine uses ductwork and the way it cinches up against his kettle it has less heat loss than mine, and so I’m pretty sure his requires less propane. If I did duct work I think I would try to have it end below the spigot, or have a cutout where that would fit through.
Still, I can and have brewed in stiff winds and it simply is no big deal.
Been a few weeks since I’ve seen green grass. Nice pic. Thanks for the post.
Here’s one from last year (no green grass). I didn’t cut a hole in the ductwork for the spigot. Just wrap it around each time and hold it together with wire. it springs back to a flat sheet when I’m done and leans up against my workbench.
I froze my ass off brewing on Saturday. Everything was fine, nice and toasty in the garage until I had to run the hoses to chill. Then I had water freezing as soon as it was exposed to the air. I had a hell of a time keeping the hoses from freezing and they did freeze between the point where I was done chilling and draining the boil kettle into the fermenter.
Based on that I decided not to brew today. I didn’t have the energy to wrestle with those hoses again. I ordered an aquarium pump and I’m going to work on a closed chilling system to make it easier both for the winter and summer months.
This is the brewing area just after I shovelled it the night before brewing:
This was my last brew, a maibock, at the begining of the sparge last week… around 20 degrees outside
I had to cover the mash tun during the mash with a tarp… and it only lost a few degrees over the hour or 90 minutes.
Karl,
What did you treat the OSB with so it doesn’t rot?