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- Jan 17, 2017
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This post is both a review and inquiry into issues. So this is my set up here. First I must say that I love everything I've gotten from them so far. I only started brewing in December. Initially I was going to go the regular route with basic equipment, but I stumbled across the SS Brew Bucket thread on here, read Jamil Zainasheff's beginners advice on temp control, and decided to splurge on a quality fermenter with the FTSs Temp Controller. I don't think I'll ever buy anything but SS fermenters now. At the start of the semester in February I was fortunate enough to get some extra scholarship money so I threw down and got the SS Brewmaster Chronical, the FTTs temp controller, and the glycol chiller. They've both worked fairly great. Easy enough to set up, great customer service, and overall everything I've got from them has been aesthetically beautiful. I feel they're comparable to the Apple products of homebrewing. Great functioning and beautiful products, but I had some issues, mostly more associated to my own inexperience. The first was with the seal to the lid of the Chronical. It was far more of a pain in the ass to put in than the bucket. I knowingly put it on upside down thinking the clamps would still adequately seal it,they didn't. I noticed when cold crashing I had no signs of suck back in the balloon on the end of the blowoff. It shrunk but not to the point of being completely sealed which I attributed to the extra head space in the lid. 4 days later my pilsner wort rather than clear, turned more into an orange juice. It doesn't help that I attempted a partial mash with the stove top and oven and totally jacked it up. I fixed the seal and applied biofine, but my first question to those more experienced is if this beer is totally screwed due to that amount of time being exposed to oxygen? Also when and how many trub dumps should I be doing with a conical? I've done 3 thus far. The first was 24 hours after pitching, the second about 2 days into the cold crash to remove the trub plug, and I did another last night to remove as much yeast as possible.
My second issue and question deals with the glycol chiller. First off it works great at maintaining and cold crashing temps. I live in a 1 bedroom studio apartment. Our upstairs studio has pretty much been transformed into my little brew haven, and while a little noisy, the chamber virtually drowns out the whizzing temp pumps, it's not so noisy that it is ever distracting, and I like the background noise with me even knocking out a couple naps upstairs. The issue occurs in the lower temp ranges. It drops temps great till the 30s. With it and my wort chiller I get my wort temps down from 200F to 44F in right around 2 hours. My 10% ABV Tripel was cold crashed at 33 F for 5 days no problem. My 6% pilsner has only reached 33 F once, and the FTTs pump was constantly going till temps settled around 37 F and now it struggles to hold there. I searched the FAQs on the SS website and I found out that the chilling coil inside the fermenter can potentially ice up, and it will insulate it from the beer. It makes sense. My high alcohol Tripel chilled far easier, I've also kept the glycol temperature at about 26F which is constantly recirculating through the coils in the fermenter ,but I can't find this issue anywhere else online. Does anyone have any suggestions or workarounds to this? It now struggles to maintain at 37 F and I was hoping to cold crash a lager a bit lower. I've raised the glycol temp to 31F doing gradual temp step-downs for the fermenter. I even also shortened the lines by about 3 ft, and double insulated them with the hopes of raising the cooling efficiency, still nothing. Sorry for the long winded post. I just wanted to let anyone pondering brewing investments my experience, and see if any of you more salty brewers knew anything about my two issues. Is my lager ruined beyond repair or even being socially drinkable (I'm personally going to drink it no matter what)? And is there a solution to getting my glycol chiller to maintain fermenter temps in the lower 30s?
View attachment 1490582926374.jpg
My second issue and question deals with the glycol chiller. First off it works great at maintaining and cold crashing temps. I live in a 1 bedroom studio apartment. Our upstairs studio has pretty much been transformed into my little brew haven, and while a little noisy, the chamber virtually drowns out the whizzing temp pumps, it's not so noisy that it is ever distracting, and I like the background noise with me even knocking out a couple naps upstairs. The issue occurs in the lower temp ranges. It drops temps great till the 30s. With it and my wort chiller I get my wort temps down from 200F to 44F in right around 2 hours. My 10% ABV Tripel was cold crashed at 33 F for 5 days no problem. My 6% pilsner has only reached 33 F once, and the FTTs pump was constantly going till temps settled around 37 F and now it struggles to hold there. I searched the FAQs on the SS website and I found out that the chilling coil inside the fermenter can potentially ice up, and it will insulate it from the beer. It makes sense. My high alcohol Tripel chilled far easier, I've also kept the glycol temperature at about 26F which is constantly recirculating through the coils in the fermenter ,but I can't find this issue anywhere else online. Does anyone have any suggestions or workarounds to this? It now struggles to maintain at 37 F and I was hoping to cold crash a lager a bit lower. I've raised the glycol temp to 31F doing gradual temp step-downs for the fermenter. I even also shortened the lines by about 3 ft, and double insulated them with the hopes of raising the cooling efficiency, still nothing. Sorry for the long winded post. I just wanted to let anyone pondering brewing investments my experience, and see if any of you more salty brewers knew anything about my two issues. Is my lager ruined beyond repair or even being socially drinkable (I'm personally going to drink it no matter what)? And is there a solution to getting my glycol chiller to maintain fermenter temps in the lower 30s?
View attachment 1490582926374.jpg