Brewed a 10 gallon Pilsner today to test out the whole new eBrew Panel. It went great. I did this as a pure electric brew, even though I could connect up to the gas and run that too. I had to pack 20 gallons of water in 5 gallon buckets from my soft water tap and then added some CaCL2 (0.7g / gallon) to the initial mash to help lower pH.
I have been using my HLT or BK to heat PBW cleaner for the fermenter clean up (5-7 gallons of water needed) with CIP spray ball. Normally, this would be perfect to clean just with all my brew setup, but it is less and less convenient to do then. I normally clean all the brew day stuff with scrub pad and bar keeps friend and hot water. The fermenter is 2-3 weeks later and it really screams that it wants just 3 gallons of 180'F PBW. Well, that is close to the minimum volume I can heat in my HLT and it is not great at getting all the liquid out of the vessel (it still has a dip tube and misses about 1/2 gallon on pickup).
Today was the day I would test out some of the new additions and changes I had made to my brewery! Namely, the bottom drain mash tun and the replumbed natural gas access from the garage instead of off the back patio deck (to help make it easier to wheel 15 gallons of fresh wort in my large half bbl stainless steel conical fermenter from SS Brewtech).
It was LONG over due time for me to replenish my long gone favorite house beer, my beloved Dark IPA. I was quite frustrated with myself for letting it go so long, especially since I had been working from home all summer due to some crazy disease or something. It was not rational or reasonable that I had let things get so far out of control. And, so, with a couple weeks off to bleed down my extensive time off before retiring, I resolved to have a brew day!
Well, after *many* years of not updating my Blog or brewing page, I've decided it is time for some updates! Oh, I've still been brewing; just more like a well oiled recipe book with little changes. I'm now retired from my day job as a DRAM/NAND Flash Electrical Engineer working for Micron Technology of almost 26 years...and one of the things I wanted to toy with was growing my brewery scale (or at least seeing how to make it better). I'm still not sure to what end...
