Sunday, July 16, 2006
Beating the heat...
And I don't mean the ridiculously hot stuff outside...
I finally got around to getting some stuff to move the potentiometer on my stir plate outside of where it was before. Reason being is that it is old technology, and it develops a hell of alot of heat while the stirplate is on. that heat in turn translates into heating the starter on the stirplate... much more than you would think. I have got to bed before with the starter at 68 degrees and woken up with it over 80... whoops! At any rate, I got a standard old electrical outlet box to test it out with, used some 14 gauge wire I had lying around, and I'm currently running a test downstairs with water to see how much the temperature rises (if any at all). I'm expecting it to be basically zero.
In addition to that, I bought some new brass fittings at Home Depot to try to make my ice water pump recirculation loop less leaky. Its been a bane of my 10 gallon summer brews for over a year now - time I try out some new fittings and get rid of the leaking. The water spraying everywhere is more of an annoyance for most things... unless that nasty hose water happens to spray into your cooling wort!!! Anyhoo, I'll let you guys know how it goes next weekend. I'll take some pics to upload to the blog... not sure I've ever put my pump skid and ice water recirc loop on here before...
Oh yeah... Next couple brews:
I finally got around to getting some stuff to move the potentiometer on my stir plate outside of where it was before. Reason being is that it is old technology, and it develops a hell of alot of heat while the stirplate is on. that heat in turn translates into heating the starter on the stirplate... much more than you would think. I have got to bed before with the starter at 68 degrees and woken up with it over 80... whoops! At any rate, I got a standard old electrical outlet box to test it out with, used some 14 gauge wire I had lying around, and I'm currently running a test downstairs with water to see how much the temperature rises (if any at all). I'm expecting it to be basically zero.In addition to that, I bought some new brass fittings at Home Depot to try to make my ice water pump recirculation loop less leaky. Its been a bane of my 10 gallon summer brews for over a year now - time I try out some new fittings and get rid of the leaking. The water spraying everywhere is more of an annoyance for most things... unless that nasty hose water happens to spray into your cooling wort!!! Anyhoo, I'll let you guys know how it goes next weekend. I'll take some pics to upload to the blog... not sure I've ever put my pump skid and ice water recirc loop on here before...
Oh yeah... Next couple brews:
- Amarillo Assault Pale Ale (same as previous amarillo but about 2x the hops!!!)
- Scottish 80/-
- Scotch Ale
- Abbey Dubbel
