Probably the longest day of my life, but brew day 1 in the GF is in the books.
I could not believe how well everything works, but it literally took me over 6 hours from start to finish, most likely because I'm extremely anal and more likely because I wanted to ensure my thousand dollar toy stays in good condition.
My issues:
- missed my batch size by about 1L (22L in the fermenter). Not sure why - was bang on 28L prior to boil and post sparge.
- forgot to add my whirfloc tablet (whoops)
- when transferring the wort to my fermenter a lot of wort got stuck in the chiller (wouldn't go into the fermenter and wouldn't suck back down to the GF when I stopped the pump)
- while cleaning, I couldn't pump water through the chiller. Took me about an hour to figure it out - something to do with the seal. Was leaking water and worked, but I managed to stop the leak too and get it to work properly.
- cleaning. Took me a life time.
Notes for next day:
- clean all elements of malt pipe once boil and bittering hops addition is complete. Just clean EVERYTHING as you go.
Annoying things:
- I stuffed up the rehydrating of my yeast. I boiled water and when I went to pitch the yeast I noticed it was full of floating pieces so abandoned it. Chilling was done, needed to pitch, so I sprinkled directly onto the wort [emoji16] definitely want to get into making starters prior to brew day.
Notes:
- missed my recipe SG by 3 points. Ended with 1.062 instead of 1.065 (in beersmith with 73% brewhouse efficiency.
- no issues at all with the ball valve. There was heaps of **** stuck but it kept going. Might actually clean it out during the boil next time though to speed the flow through the chiller.
I could not believe how well everything works, but it literally took me over 6 hours from start to finish, most likely because I'm extremely anal and more likely because I wanted to ensure my thousand dollar toy stays in good condition.
My issues:
- missed my batch size by about 1L (22L in the fermenter). Not sure why - was bang on 28L prior to boil and post sparge.
- forgot to add my whirfloc tablet (whoops)
- when transferring the wort to my fermenter a lot of wort got stuck in the chiller (wouldn't go into the fermenter and wouldn't suck back down to the GF when I stopped the pump)
- while cleaning, I couldn't pump water through the chiller. Took me about an hour to figure it out - something to do with the seal. Was leaking water and worked, but I managed to stop the leak too and get it to work properly.
- cleaning. Took me a life time.
Notes for next day:
- clean all elements of malt pipe once boil and bittering hops addition is complete. Just clean EVERYTHING as you go.
Annoying things:
- I stuffed up the rehydrating of my yeast. I boiled water and when I went to pitch the yeast I noticed it was full of floating pieces so abandoned it. Chilling was done, needed to pitch, so I sprinkled directly onto the wort [emoji16] definitely want to get into making starters prior to brew day.
Notes:
- missed my recipe SG by 3 points. Ended with 1.062 instead of 1.065 (in beersmith with 73% brewhouse efficiency.
- no issues at all with the ball valve. There was heaps of **** stuck but it kept going. Might actually clean it out during the boil next time though to speed the flow through the chiller.