I am in the process of building a fermentation temperature controller (in the same spirit as the grainfather glycol chiller), the process is mostly done and I am testing the system with water. The heat exchange is made through a hand-bent copper tubing plunged in the fermentation vessel; the problem is, after a day or two, the water inside the vessel takes a light yellow tint and there is a rust spot at the bottom of the vessel (the chiller …
I haven't had the chance to brew in about two years and I've been storing my copper wort chiller in a storage locker for most of that time. Upon moving and retrieving it yesterday, it's got some really interesting coloration on it. The bronzed color is worn off in little splotches and circles here and there. I'm not sure what caused it (be it storage with too much access to the air or improper cleaning the only time I used …
I'm looking for a better solution for cleaning. Some of my equipment is home from copper which limits agents I can use. Currently my strategy is using barkeepers friend on all external surfaces such as my sparge arm and mash tun internals, and of course the inside of the kettles. Once everything is visibly clean I make a 5 gallon mixture of starsan, and circulate it through all my equipment. For the most part this works on everything except my …
I had an idea for cycling chilled water through something like a small copper wort chiller during fermentation to keep the temperature down. I have no problem setting up the peltier, pump, and thermostat - but I'm uncertain if it's ok to leave the copper in the fermenter with the beer the whole fermentation, or what tubing to use. Thinking about using some soft copper tubing like this: refrigerator copper tubing off ebay Would using copper tubing like this in …
Copper is great for all sorts of things, manifolds for your cooler based mashing tun, as well as that wort chiller you can't live without. However, copper gets really dirty, really quickly, and I don't think that any of us want all of those oxides in our brew. To date, I have been cleaning my wort chiller by soaking it in a bucket of star-san, which seems like a waste and it takes a long time to wait around for …
I'm using Protafloc Copper Finings for clearing the brew from proteins by adding it to the boil 15 minutes before the end of it. The product's made from red seaweed (Eucheuma Cottonii): http://www.brupaks.com/protafloc.htm. According to what it says on the package, best before date of this product expires next month. I've read that a similar product - Irish Moss - almost never expires (Does Irish Moss expire?) How is it with Protafloc - should I worry about that expiry date, …
Not having room or budget for a kegerator at the moment, I am considering building a jockey box for kegging homebrew. There are a lot of plans on the internet for building your own, including suggestions to use food-grade plastic, stainless, or copper for the coiled tubing. Is there a reason I couldn't use copper for this? It is cheaper than stainless, conducts heat much better than the plastic, and it would seem that I would be able to coil-to-size …