Vinylwasp's Brewdays

[Vinylwasp]

Hi everyone I've made the bold decision to blog all my brew days with plans to brewtube soon.

Blazing Paddles is a 7.5 ABV West Coast IPA I threw together with some hops and yeast I had laying around from June/July last year before I went under the knife.

Because I haven't brewed in 8 months I took some time to strip, clean and rebuild my brewery in the last 2 week and while doing that I documented the process of building a 3 vessel eHERMS using BrewPi Spark and Brewblox in some detail. There are 6 blog posts in total. I'll probably announce that in the Beer Equipment Forum too so please forgive me for cross-posting.

Cheers.

 

[Vinylwasp]

Hi everyone I've made the bold decision to blog all my brew days with plans to brewtube soon.

Blazing Paddles is a 7.5 ABV West Coast IPA I threw together with some hops and yeast I had laying around from June/July last year before I went under the knife.

Because I haven't brewed in 8 months I took some time to strip, clean and rebuild my brewery in the last 2 week and while doing that I documented the process of building a 3 vessel eHERMS using BrewPi Spark and Brewblox in some detail. There are 6 blog posts in total. I'll probably announce that in the Beer Equipment Forum too so please forgive me for cross-posting.

Cheers.

Update: 1:30pm Thursday 8th Feb 2024​

Fermentation has been rocketing over the last 24 hours. You can see the green line in the RAPT graphs above and below which is tracking the fermentation velocity which peaked at 27 SG point per day at 2am this morning. From that peak the velocity has started to dip but we're less than 3 days into fermentation and we're already at 1.031 (from 1.074 OG) so I'm pretty happy with that. Opening the fridge door it smells fantastic so I can't wait to dry hop once fermentation finishes.

I also bumped pressure up to 7psi as I'm aiming to finish around 12 so it looks like I'll need to add 2 psi per day.

Blazing Paddles is a 7.5 ABV West Coast IPA

 

[Buffers brewery]

Hi @Vinylwasp . Great set up . I read your brew day account with interest. What caused the power outage at mash out? Other than that, looked like an OK brew day.

 

[Vinylwasp]

Hi @Vinylwasp . Great set up . I read your brew day account with interest. What caused the power outage at mash out? Other than that, looked like an OK brew day.

Hey Buffer, great to bump into you, love the bottling stand you created for the counter-flow filler. I feel exactly the same way about using it as it comes.

Wrt the power failure, "Once the boil was underway I turned my attention back to the power loss at Cab A. After scrambling around and tracking down my circuit tester, I eventually found the problem, the main switch on the cabinet had failed. These are supposed to be rated at 16A. Look very closely at the photos and you'll see that the bayonet and contact are retained in the plastic body by a piece of plastic that is perhaps 3mm round and .6mm thick.

Once the element was on at 100% with the pump running, I'd guess I was drawing close to 13.5A though that switch so it would have been pretty hot, melted and the bayonet/contact assembly just fell out.

As it happened I had a spare switch (non water proof) laying around which I quickly swapped into place and was back up and running in 15 minutes."

I've just added this section and photos to the post. Blazing Paddles is a 7.5 ABV West Coast IPA

All also added extended recipe + file in beersmith.bsmx format.

 

[Buffers brewery]

That’s one of the challenges of all electric brewing! When I swapped from gas to electric for my boiler I had to decide where to plug stuff in as I had pumps and a HERMS plugged into my garage spur that had a couple of fridge freezers and a tumble drier already connected (yes the wife always managed to do some washing on a brew day!
I ended up plugging my electric boiler into a separate ring in my conservatory. Even though that’s the only thing on that cable the plug still is noticeably warm at the end of the boil!
Glad you got it sorted. All part of the “fun”

 

[Vinylwasp]

That’s one of the challenges of all electric brewing! When I swapped from gas to electric for my boiler I had to decide where to plug stuff in as I had pumps and a HERMS plugged into my garage spur that had a couple of fridge freezers and a tumble drier already connected (yes the wife always managed to do some washing on a brew day!
I ended up plugging my electric boiler into a separate ring in my conservatory. Even though that’s the only thing on that cable the plug still is noticeably warm at the end of the boil!
Glad you got it sorted. All part of the “fun”

Cheers, like you say all part of the fun, made more challenging by the dilemma of cheap parts from Amazon vs paying 5 x the price from RS Components or the like.

 

[Vinylwasp]

Got another brewday in last Thursday, my interpretation of the Electric Brewery's Electric IPA.
For the recipe and a full run-down follow the link.

Electric IPA Recipe (my version in Beersmith)

Ingredients (hops + yeast)

Brewstand (boil is underway, just before I cleaned the MT)

BrewBlox Brewery Control software (mashing, and maintaining temp via HERMS recirc)

Fermentation kicking off - 48hrs after pitching

Fermentation Temp management

Fermentation monitoring with Rapt Pill (gravity velocity - green line)