Who is brewing, right now?

[brewinhard]

WY 2112 California Lager. Fermenting the cal common between 60-62F. Will probably do the same for the baltic.

[cascadiabrewer]

Brewed 5 gallons of russian imperial stout and 5 gallons of barleywine right before my carpal tunnel surgery. Now relaxing on some meds listening to them ferment.

[brewinhard]

Brewed 5 gallons of russian imperial stout and 5 gallons of barleywine right before my carpal tunnel surgery. Now relaxing on some meds listening to them ferment.

Well maybe if you stopped jerking off then you wouldn't have needed surgery!

Hope you heal quickly.

[cascadiabrewer]

Thanks. So more brewing, less jerking. Got it!

[brewinhard]

Unless you are able to switch wrists to keep things even....

[NateBrews]

Brewing up a 12P Czech lager. I just picked up a Blichmann autosparge and am trying using that to feed my mash tun while constantly recirc'ing into my kettle (where the heater is). It is sort of a RIMS setup...sort of.

I have been debating what the best place to servo the temperature is. I think it is in the kettle since that will be the hottest place and it seems like the place of highest temperature is going to determine the rate at which the enzymes denature. Consequently, there is a 5 degree difference between the mash and the kettle. That said, all the volume is getting rotated though the kettle so I'm a bit unsure what effective mash temperature I am mashing at. My gut says it is the kettle temperature, or maybe slightly lower than that.

[brewinhard]

I hate when there are variables that make you guess about supposedly "controlled" points in brewing. Sometimes when I borrow my buddies huge mash tun (for doing big batches of strong beer, high OG) I just can't seem to get a perfectly consistent mash temp across the board.

[NateBrews]

What I really need to do is just brew the english bitter I have made many times and calibrate to that. I just figure that I have to get the thing dialed in and I'll be in good shape.

As a related note, the autosparge worked very nicely. I had done the same thing before with just trying to get the in/out flow rates just right and it ran the tun/kettle dry a couple times. This thing was just "set it and forget it". I did get some kind of odd banging around that happened when it was throttling, like the full pressure of the chugger pump was too much and made the thing bounce too much. I just need to add a little damping to the system and it settles out (in the form of closing the ball valve on the pump most of the way, more than the autosparge needed by a little and that is all).