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Build a Better Wort Chiller

So we finally enhanced the wort chiller several weeks ago, but there hasn’t been anything posted (read: I am lazy). The wait is over friends because here you have it our wonderfully more efficient wort chiller!

To review: Our immersion wort chiller is not particularly efficient because the coils of copper tubing end up just piling on top of each other in the bottom of the kettle like a slinky. To fix this we decided to get some heavy duty copper wire and weave it in and out between the twists of the tubing in order to hold the coils apart. That way we could actually get some cooling at the level of the wort near the top of the kettle where it is hottest (Heat rises…).

To get supplies I made a stop over at Home Depot which I would say is the store we visit second most after our homebrew shop. I have always thought that one of the most fun parts of homebrewing is cobbling random hardware together into workable equipment. Originally I had thought that 12ft of wire was going to be more than enough to make about three separate columns of wire up and down the chiller. In the end we only had enough to do it twice. This wire is 12 gauge insulated copper wire, that we stripped. As far as wire stripping is concerned, you should be sure you have wire strippers ahead of time because stripping 12 feet of wire with a box cutter is not fun. At all. I am talking blisters.

In any case, after we finished it turns out that we had made it about three or four inches too tall so I would suggest you take the time to measure out the normal height of the hot wort in your kettle and build your chiller from there. We on the other hand, prefer the ass backwards way of making the chiller, finding out it’s too tall and then bending the topmost weaves to compact the whole structure while it is sitting in near boiling wort burning our fingers. Yes, we went to college.

It works much better now than it used to. Note that you want the cooling water to enter the topmost coils and go through the bottom coils last (Again, heat rises…). We cut the cooling time to go from a boil to pitching temperature by about fifteen to twenty minutes.

There you go readers, you have finally gotten some useful information from us! Today we are bottling the Belgian (Not named yet but trying to avoid going with 2.0 on this one as with the stout) so hopefully get some notes about that up later. Cheers!

DISASTER in NY!

Update Below 3:30pm

Catastrophe struck F.X. Matt Brewing Co of Utica NY when a fire decimated the brewery. For those not familiar with it, the family run brewery makes the Saranac line of beers, found in bottles, many bars and in my fridge. They are one of our favorite regional breweries with unique brews like their pomegranate wheat.

The blaze began Thursday evening, potentially from welding work. After fighting the fire for 14 ½ hours the fire was declared under control this morning, though the fire department will continue to put out hotspots. Estimated loss at this point is $10 to $20 million. Read more here.

Truly a tragedy, our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and staff of F.X. Matt Brewing. Although it will probably not happen soon, we certainly hope they will be able to recover from this disaster so we will be able to continue to enjoy their delicious brews. Best of luck guys.

UPDATE: BEER SUPPLY UNAFFECTED! The damage to the brewery was almost entirely to the canning and packaging area. The bottling operation looks to be salvageable. Fermenting, aging and kegging were unaffected so the brewery will still be producing beer and likely outsource the canning side of the operation.

This is one thing I think is so great about brewing, the camaraderie. People help each other in the brewing field, whether it be craft breweries or homebrewers. Several breweries have already offered to give F.X. Matt Brewing help in covering the side of their operation that was lost in the fire giving them the option of loading the beer into tankers and shipping it to other breweries for canning.

Well that’s the end of my ramblings. Kick back, relax, and enjoy your Friday with a Saranac (or other F.X. Matt Brewing Co beer). Cheers!

Wishlist

After pawing through the blogs of the usual suspects (Monday Night Brewing, CNY Brew & Bearded Brewer) I found myself a bit envious. Not to say our operation is by any means pitiful but we are like the Oliver Twist of brewing equipment. Please sir, I want some more! So I came up with a wish list of what I would like to someday acquire for Midnight Brewing.

1) Electronic scale
2) Aeration stone w/pump
3) Plate Chiller
4) 100qt cooler converted to mashtun
5) Larger Kettle or another kettle plus additional propane burner
6) Keg + draft equipment
7) Steel conical fermenator (7gal if not larger)
8) Temperature controlled place for fermenator (converted fridge or build an insulated box)

So everything is kind of ordered from most feasible to least feasible. It is a wish list though so ideally money is going to drop from the sky and presto we bag the whole list in one go. Any other suggestions? If you suddenly had lets say $1000 for brewing equipment what would you do? In the meantime, homebrew, crack one open. Cheers!

PS. Tasting notes on Stout v3.0 and brewing notes on our Belgian to follow!

False Bottom?

As you read last week we ordered a false bottom so I thought it was time to make a post talking about our trial run with the new piece of equipment. So without further ado if you would take a look at the picture below you will see.... a shoe.... in a box. Clearly this is not a false bottom, unless you count how the sole of my shoe is falling off. Needless to say the false bottom has yet to show up leaving us brewless for the moment. Fear not, though, for hopefully it will arrive within the week and by this weekend we will be in full gear to brew!

Stout v3.0 should be ready to drink soon as well! More on that later.

So I propose a toast! Raise your homebrews to the... shoe... in a box... Cheers!

UPDATE: Disaster!!! After writing this post I happened to check the ol' email and found a message buried in with the spam from Mountain Homebrew. It seems this particular false bottom is unavailable from the manufacturer until further notice! Of course that can mean only one thing. There will only be a shoe in a box, nothing more. We will be looking for another place to get the false bottom (or perhaps just make one).