Lawrence Brewers Guild

Ken Peterson, one of our newest members, put his first beer into primary on 3.31.08. It's a Mild English session ale, with an OG of 1032, which we hit perfectly. It was a flawless brew day and a lot of fun.

You can check out photos of the momentous occasion here: http://lawrencebrewers.org/gallery2/mai ... npeterson/

Way to go Ken! Welcome to the guild. It's official, you're a brewer.

Looking forward to putting that into secondary with you soon.

Matt

Looks like a great job guys! Congrats Ken, give a few bottles to a friend who'll save 'em for a few months... that first batch seems to disappear way too fast!





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Congrats Sir! Looks like you had a good session. And in 3-4 weeks, it will be a good session beer!

Way to go Ken on your first brew......your hooked now! And also, way to go Matt for helping a new brewer out. This is what LBG is all about....Kudos!

Blktre wrote:Way to go Ken on your first brew......your hooked now! And also, way to go Matt for helping a new brewer out. This is what LBG is all about....Kudos!

Ditto that! Well done Ken. Welcome to Brewtopia. And Good on ya Matt for showing a new brewer the ropes!

Thanks guys... I have to admit, I was a little nervous doing this first batch with Ken as it has been so long since I'd done an extract kit. So I was very happy when we hit our gravity on the nose, and nothing went wrong, short of a very entertaining shot of water in the chest from the sink. :)

The only not-so-fun part was measuring our water from the dispenser on his refrigerator (as it was filtered, but the tap was not). That slowed things down a little, but not much. It also came out chilled, which made keeping our already chilled wort at pitching temps interesting. We had to nuke some of the water addition to keep the temp up. Looks like Ken will be putting an inline filter on his kitchen sink in the near future. :)

All said and done, Ken did most everything himself with minimal guidance from me, and I explained as much of everything as I could so he'd understand the why behind what he was doing. All in all, it went very well, and I'd brew with him again anytime.

Congrautulations on your first brew Ken and welcome to a pretty cool hobby.

I was perusing the pics and noticed the chiller. Looks like it fits the bill for doing an extract kit. Did you make that yourself or buy it?

thanks,
andrew c.

That chiller was one I loaned him. It's a simple 3/8ths soft copper tubing wrapped into a coil to fit inside your brew pot. They're pretty simple to make and work very effectively with a simple sink adapter, so long as the ground water is cool.

Copper is getting pretty expensive these days though, so they're not the cheap solution they once were. Let me know if you want to make one, they're great for extract brewing, and I'd be happy to help.

Matt

I think I do want to make one. I have seen videos of larger chillers made where the coils were wrapped around a corney keg. I was wondering what you wrapped the coil around that was that small?

I will probably be able to figure it out but I do appreciate your offer to help.

andrew c.

It really all depends on the dimensions of your boil kettle, but any good cylindrical shape will do... a smaller pot, a large cardboard tube.... corney's work GREAT, but if you want something smaller, it's not really hard to find something that will work. Or hell, just eyeball it. That one in the pictures is FAR from perfectly shaped anymore... it's pretty irregular at this point actually. You could eyeball it and do it all purely by hand and get the same results.

You want a couple inches between the chiller and your pot walls, but enough space inside the coil to stir gently with a spoon, so you can move the wort around to avoid stratification (a fancy term for cold liquid around your coil, but hot liquid everywhere else, preventing a fast chill).

You'd be surprised how well just coiling it by hand works. So long as you don't crimp the copper as you bend it, you're good. Work slowly and you'll be fine.

As for the ends, because this chiller is for use right by the sink, I've just got a barbed brass male NPT on one end (if you have a detachable sink sprayer, female if you have a threaded sink spigot), and the other end is just stuck into the sink to drain. The vinyl hose is simply hose-clamped to the ends of the copper. It doesn't have to be food grade or even really high-temp, as it's only going to touch water, and not your wort.

All the parts, save the copper, are VERY cheap.

With all that said, if you still want any help, just drop me a line. But yeah, I'm betting you can do it yourself just fine. :)

Matt

Thanks for the info. I think I have found my next project.

I appreciate the help.


Oh yeah, one more thing......GO HAWKS!