Monthly Archives: June 2013

General

Bastogne Ale Bottles and Kegged and @BrewPi

This morning I managed to get 20 bottles full with 7.82 % Bastogne/Trappist Ale, the rest went in to the Keg.
OG 1.080, FG 1.020….

Looking forward to tasting this in 3 or 4 weeks time.

Yesterday there was a nice new REV C BrewPi shield kit waiting for me when I got in from Work. Elco was kind enough to also send me a bare  Rev B Shield PCB to build up, which, once I manage to get it up to our Technical Support Services SMD facilities and build it, I plan to hack around and play with on the mega2560 and the  I2C displays Cool
Piccies to follow when my phone is charged Sad

Home Brew

False Bottom modified

After my last mash, I decided to make some changes to my Mash Tun False bottom. Last weekend I applied Silicone Sealant .

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It’s been curing for a week now and i’m wondering if it’s ok to do a mash with it yet ?
The Acetic acid smell has gone but it’s got a petro chemical  smell about it Angry

I used Homebase general Purpose Silicone Sealant, the one with a 25 year guarantee, I wondering if I should have used Aquarium/ fish safe sealant Sad
I plan to have a #Brewday either tomorrow or over the weekend, maybe a test soak is in order …..

BrewPi, Home Brew

update New – Old Fridge

After a bit of a delay This evening I’ll be picking up my New-Old Fridge.
It’ll have to be transported on it’s side in the back of my Estate car Oops so after getting to the Brew Shed will have to be left to settle for a day or two as  I don’t want the compressor oil up it’s cooling tubes…Crying
Over those settling days I’ll start to convert it to a second BrewPi Fermentation Setup and then put it into use as a conditioning fridge!
Hopefully I’ll remember to take piccies of the conversion along the way !

******update 8th Jun*****

After picking up and defrosting the freezer with a hose and letting it settle overnight It’s now being used as a conditioning fridge with the STC1000  the @BrewPi is a bit too much overKill  Plus I’ve not currently got the coding Skills to get my dev system up and running …

IMG_4058 IMG_4076 Before and after shot of the freezer defrost

 

The fridge part nicely takes  a couple of corny kegs and there’s a convenient entry point for the CO2 and NTC thermister  at the back  Cool

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termostat housing convenient entry for Probe and CO2 line 2 kegs holding at 10.5 c
Home Brew

2nd FV Blow off modification

I’d been pondering how to get the Temperature  probe into the Second FV, and after seeing Coombes69 build  it gave me the idea of using a John Guest speed fitting that I had spare. 12mm hole and the John Guest speed fitting fits a treat. My blow off bottle isn’t as fancy but what the heck it’ll work !

IMG_4041 IMG_4042

 

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BrewPi

SSR purchase

After reading  Coombes69 troubles with Cheap Chinese  Fotek  SSR’s  and whilst  browsing on Ebay, I came across the following listing http://r.ebay.com/X1rmLN listed as ERL SSRs but are in fact ERI SSR’s made by Electronic Relays India and seem to have been around for 25 years so I decided to get a couple

$T2eC16N,!yEE9s5jE,)jBRn1oW3EI!~~60_57

I can’t find the exact model on their website  so I’m hoping they’re an old model
I’ll let you know how they work out Ha Ha

 

****Update****
  They have arrived, obviously not new other  as the seller said  the part number 009-0022313 suggests that they are from ATM machines and are possibly also made by powersem   data sheet  pdf 

BrewPi

@BrewPi thoughts I2C

Two new I2C boards arrived  very quickly from China .  I need to get on and get to grips  with my novice attempts at trying to use them in my BrewPi dev system,  I’m realising just what a novice at C++ I really am.
I found another library fron DigiSpark that works and looks more compact than ones listed on arduino-info site.

I’d tried to adapt the Brewpi code to use the i2c code on the arduino-info site without much success and It’s got to the point where because i haven’t read up enough  I’m thinking of replacing the functional code from the DigiSpark drivers into the SPi drivers done by Elco . I need to try and find more time to learn and read more tutorials on C++ Tutorial – Introduction to C++ – Cprogramming.com.  Maybe if I ask both Elco and MDMA they can integrate it into the Dyna build as an option but I’ll wait until the current build frenzy is out of the way…

General, Home Brew

#BrewDay

Yesterdays #BrewDay didn’t go without it’s problems !Hell Boy
I need to sort out the mesh in the bottom of the Mashtun, either that or get another Stainless Steel mash Tun with a better fitting False bottom ! The grist came past the edges of the mesh and blocked the copper tube filter plus the Weight of 9Kg of malt didn’t help !
Then in the Last 1/2 of the boil the thermal trip on the boiler kept cutting out so boil was at 88c… In the end the contents were dumped back into the mash tun and the boiler bottom was removed and the trip bypassed Oops
The boil then resumed…

Took longer than anticipated but lets hope the Trappist/Bastogne ale  comes out ok Big Smile

OG of the Bastogne 1.080 which is pretty close to the design value of the Beersmith recipe

Now what temperature should i throttle it down to  ? Smile1 don’t want too much of that banana in there …