3" boka LM build

[Cane Toad]

Hi Haze,send Mac a PM,I think he may still have a few fermenters from his shed cleanout the other weekend
Cheers

[Kimbo]

hi Haze,
with a TPW you dont need neutrients, the tomato paste is the neut. ;-)
as for fermenters and stuff, there is an old bloke set up at the old Guilford weigh station that sells all sorts real cheap :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[SBB]

hi Haze,
with a TPW you dont need neutrients, the tomato paste is the neut. ;-)
as for fermenters and stuff, there is an old bloke set up at the old Guilford weigh station that sells all sorts real cheap :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Kimbos right.....stick to the recipe.....dont fuck with it and it will be fine.......from what Ive seen a lot of development went into the original Birdwatchers TPW and it works...why fuck with it unless your sure you can make it even better??

[haze]

Hey good tip cheers kimbo. thats close by. Reckon he is there on sundays ?

Ill skip the neutrients then eyy :)

Did some practice on some scrap for the slants. I took the document thats online - bokatemplate_rev.pdf and enlarged it 150% (actually had to fine tune it for 142% for my printer setup)

Wrapped it around the pipe and covered entirely with clear tape.



Need a steady hand with an angle grinder. Get it straight and keep going. It was a thin disc flexovit you should be able to see the size in pic.



A piece of the pipe i was trying to use the vice to flatten. Doesnt work, needed to be bashed flat with a rubber mallet.



Fits good! Was suprised. Love it when you just fluke it like that :-D



So i have more confidence to try on the real one now.

[R-sole]

If the urn is in good working order, sell it for $80 to an all grain brewer. They only last a matter of hours on here...
http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/i ... howforum=8

Eskys work fine for a fermenter, i use one for a mash tun. They're all food safe.

[Kimbo]

Yip,
My first boiler was an urn, they work a treat. ;-)

[haze]

not selling the urn now. It was far to handy to boil 10litres water for doing washs :)

2 x 25lt TPWash's on the go (if anyone looking for instructions, look in Tried and Proven in forums). Seems very easy to do.

I used Juice of 1.5 lemons in each instead of citric acid. Ive bought citric acid now so ill use that for the third one.


2 containers i bought from nice old guy in guildford ($12 each) and one that i had already.


Just pitched the yeast.


After an hour. Temperature is at 37degrees.


And i read recently that the yeast don't actually eat the sugar, they have no oxygen and they cant get it from the water so they remove it from the sugar and make alcohol as byproduct. So they eat the nutrients (which i guess is the tomato paste).

[haze]

if anyone notices anything weird about the wash pics lemme know. dont know what to expect here.

Other than that, ill update still progress soon.

[Sam.]

And i read recently that the yeast don't actually eat the sugar, they have no oxygen and they cant get it from the water so they remove it from the sugar and make alcohol as byproduct. So they eat the nutrients (which i guess is the tomato paste).

Sortof, in the first couple of days the yeast eats all the oxygen in the wash while it multiplies massively (this is why you need to aerate your wash). Then once the oxygen is all gone it goes to work on the sugar to produce piss and CO2. These are the aerobic and anerobic stages.

The nutrients are to set the perfect condition so the yeast can do their job properly.

If you want to know more about yeast talk to an all grain beer brewer, some of them go fucking nuts about yeast strains :-D

[haze]

Cheers Sam_n_liv. Only thing i didnt understand was the aerate your wash ? Did i miss a step stirring it up?

Still build going well.

I got SS supplies from stirlings here in perth. 3" triclamp, 3" ferrules, Ball valve and a top cap.

good picture for someone wondering what these clamps are about like i was. One of the ferrules will get butt welded to the keg, the other gets welded to the column.


I couldnt get a 3" SS cap so i ended up getting this cover that is designed for ballustrading. It was a tiny bit too small so i cut in some tabs and bent them over to make it sit. Came with vent hole pre done :)


Not sure how im going to permanently connect the condensor to hoses for water. For now i will just put hose over the end and use hose clamps.


Just the ball valve. SS

[haze]

Plates ready to weld. Sorry no photo of actual plates.


Welded.


One of the only copper porn pics. Scrubbers :D. 5Star supplied this awesome stuff.



Also.. 2x2200W elements installed from KegKing - Easy as,2x 32mm holes and put elements through the keg top and tighten nut. 3" ferrule welded to keg and other one to column. Welded in 1/4" SS pipe for putting thermometer and alcohol output.

[haze]

So ive got Insulation to do, im going to use some offcuts of some good stuff to insulate the column and some laminate floorboard underlay to do the keg. Ill wrap it in 3 layers. It has foil backing and 1mm foam and its free.

Now a parrot.. I would like to make one real simple. I want to use a design very similar to this



But i want to permanently attach to column without the base. Good idea, bad idea.. ? Everyone seems to have theirs freestanding but i dont understand why.

Otherwise.... Im looking close! real close. Im time poor as always but i hope to get a vinegar run in during the week and then try run my wash's through it on friday :D :D

[R-sole]

Looks like you are nearly there. As to the parrot

1) you don't really need it on a column once you know how to drive it. The output is 95+ all day long.

2) you read the alcometer where it meets the alc, you'll never see taht line on the model you've shown. It just won't function.

[haze]

couple things i noticed when heating up the keg. First - I only used one heating element, the top one. The keg got too hot to keep your hand on without insulation in about 30 mins. Interestingly the bottom of the keg below the element was completely cold. As in just as cold as it came from the tap. This totally suprised me, i thought the water would have mixed a bit at least. So i hope when i run the lower element that it will heat all of the bottom. Mind you it didnt boil and i guess that would allow some flow of heat in the liquid. Simple science i know but i was suprised with the heat layers.

So make sure you install one of the elements as low as possible!

Other one. The keg king heating elements need a IEC power cable to plug into them (like a kettle cord or PC power cable) but make sure they can handle the power. I quickly grabbed one and it was underated for the job and became hot during the run. I will upgrade the cables.

[haze]

Looks like you are nearly there. As to the parrot

1) you don't really need it on a column once you know how to drive it. The output is 95+ all day long.

2) you read the alcometer where it meets the alc, you'll never see taht line on the model you've shown. It just won't function.

ahhhhhhhhhhhh. now i understand why everyone puts that step up bit at the top. Was scratching my head at the over engineering but that makes sense

[MacStill]

You'll also want the inlet line to be longer, you dont want the fluid level sitting higher than your valve once the parrot is full.... that would crteate all sorts of problems.

Also if your going to mount it permanent you'll want an air vent just below your valve, otherwise your alcometer will bob up n down like crazy.

Other than that it's looking real good :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[stubbydrainer]

very nice Haze :handgestures-thumbupleft:
you can be proud of this build, you've done well,
besides a few lil teething probs with the parrot,( but thats how we learn new stuff )
I await some good results to be posted now

Cheers
Stubs

[Sam.]

Cheers Sam_n_liv. Only thing i didnt understand was the aerate your wash ? Did i miss a step stirring it up?

Haze, aerated the wash is just a fancy name for stirring the shit out of it! Or pouring it from a height to get some air in with it. Some beer brewers go as far as using aerating stones but this is usually because they have boiled the whole batch in the making (boiling will remove all oxygen from the liquid)

The build is looking good as well by the way :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[haze]

Ive just got around to doing a vinegar run. Used 1:8 vinegar to water mix ending up with about 40l in the keg.

It took forever to boil then i realised that i hadnt turned on the second heating element. heh. 10 mins later it boiled and and the thermometer raised quickly to 99.6 degrees and stayed there.

I turned off the 2nd heating element and it was happy to keep boiling so looks like ill get away with running one element once its boiled. I let vapour come out the top column for 20 minutes and then turned on the water supply to the condensor and it instantly knocked down vapours and i collected from the output.

thats about it. just bored waiting.. good thing ive got a laptop in the shed now

[haze]

doing first still run now. used 25 litres of TPW.

I took about 400ml of heads, excessive and i wished i put in small jars so i could smell where to cut. next time.

Still is at 78.7degrees and has been sitting on that for the last hour. So far i have collected 2 jars of hearts each around 250ml. Its too warm to test the alc level yet.

First jar of 250ml hearts i collected at 2 drips per second
Second jar i opened the valve so it was almost dribbling out

How fast can i collect ? is the only way to tell with a alc meter and keep checking the ABV?

Im onto the 3rd jar of collections. its gone up 0.1 degrees to 78.8.

EDIT - I collected 500ml on the 3rd jar very quickly. dribbling out. Still had gone up to 79degrees.

4th Jar in place, take of speed slower at 3 drips a second. Temp has dropped back to 78.8. I must have been running it too fast.

EDIT - 4th jar collection was 250ml. stayed at 78.8 whole time.

5th was another 100ml. temp was steady at 78.8.

6th in now and putting the rest to tails. Fully opened valve.

Ill leave collections open to air and smell what ive got tomorrow