Man, adding new gear made my brewday stumble

[chrislehr]

First day using my therminator. Opted for gravity fed (still scared of spraying hot wort everywhere with the pump that doesnt have a housing yet)

Day started off pretty good. mashed in a little high for me (168) and gravity was solid for my 6.5g of run off.

Then while I was building a hop blocker since this is a Belgian IPA and my previous wort chillers didn't mind hop residue, I ignored the pot too long and overboiled about a 1/2 gallon. Ugh. Then, I measured my hops late and had to make a last minute substitution (.75 of centenial swapped to .75 of nugget. Close enough on alpha, this was the 5 min hop add though, so the nose might be pretty off from intent.

Oh well. The 60 minute boil went OK, but time was FLYING by because I was frantically making hoses and cleaning and sanitizing the therminator.

My first attempt, I had the h20 on too slow, and the water coming out was 200, but the wort was 115ish. I was REAL glad I chose to output to bucket rather than carboy. Aerated the wort (aka, poured it back into my kettle) and re-ran about 3 gallons of it, ending up with 78 degrees into the carboy.

Poor change management today meant I have no idea how long I sparged, how long I chilled, or what my OG was. I later tipped the carboy for a reading and came in at 1.068.. A little under the estimated, but based on all of the above I was happy with the outcome and the new toys.

 

[BrewMoreBeers]

i have a Therminator too. i find that using a small pond pump to pump ice water thru the water ports allows me to chill 5 gallons from boil to about 60 degrees in one pass using a 22 lbs bag of ice and about three gallons of water in a bucket as the water source.

You can then use the same pond pump (with a few plumbing adaptors) to push PBW and StarSan thru the wort side of the Therminator to clean the unit.

I LOVE my Therminator when pairs with a pond pump. When i ran it only with tap water the story was a little different. i also recirulate my chilled wort back into my BK so that i can have total control over the chill temp. then when i hit my target temp i transfer to my primary.

 

[weirdboy]

i have a Therminator too. i find that using a small pond pump to pump ice water thru the water ports allows me to chill 5 gallons from boil to about 60 degrees in one pass using a 22 lbs bag of ice and about three gallons of water in a bucket as the water source.

You can then use the same pond pump (with a few plumbing adaptors) to push PBW and StarSan thru the wort side of the Therminator to clean the unit.

I LOVE my Therminator when pairs with a pond pump. When i ran it only with tap water the story was a little different. i also recirulate my chilled wort back into my BK so that i can have total control over the chill temp. then when i hit my target temp i transfer to my primary.

This is exactly what I do, too, except I fill the BK with PBW since I've got to clean it anyway, heat it up, and recirculate.