Still a rank amateur at the end of the day.

[JoKing]

You're always learning new things about brewing when you're a brewer... like remembering important steps throughout the the brewing process. Especially remembering to put the temperature probe in the conditioning fridge when attempting to condition a nice robust Porter.

Dunno what I was thinking on this one, but I ended up with about 15 Liters of 8% Ice Porter. It tastes pretty good... Decided to call it "Titanic Porter" given that there was an enourmous iceberg still floating in it when I decided to keg the bugger.

I also learned how to clean black goop out of my fridge and off the floor:

Nice!

Another thing that I learned was to follow your instincts - remember how things went in your previous brews, and make adjustments to help improve things. The perfect example is the first brew that I made in 2010: a Russian Imperial Stout.

I can remember that when I milled all of my grain together - there were a couple of anomalies. The Roast was in big chunks and the Oats Malt looked like they were almost whole still. So what I did on the brew I did this Sunday was crush the Oats and Roast and Malt all seperately on different mill settings... so first of all I milled the Roasts - 1.2kg all up. I milled this stiff firstly with my normal gap setting, and again with the rollers touching. This process turned all the roasted grains into dust.

Then, I adjusted the gap to halfway between where I normally have it from where they were touching. Then I milled my 2.5kg of Oat Malt. This worked a treat - the insides got ripped out and the huskes were still largely intact. This was a great idea.

Then after all that - I milled the crystals and base malt at my regular setting:

12 kilos of malt all up to go into a 20L batch of brew...

Now here's another learning curve: I planned to use a liqour grist ratio of 3:1 which meant I would have needed 36 Liters of strike water - this was more than my bloody boil volume! I didn't think that through fully at the time - because last time I used 2.2:1 which is why I had such great efficiency last time. I should have gone the same way and things would have been the same, but because I had more mash volume - my sparge depth had changed (it was deeper) meaning I couldn't effectively rinse the grains without diluting the sweet wort below the sparge water. Basically this means I went from 81% efficiency to 75% efficiency meaning I didn't hit my target of 1.107. I only got 1.100... bummer.

Heres a pic of me recirculating 45 Liters of mash:

And how the sparge works in my brewery:

I know another brewer who is about to get one of the pictured magnetic drive pumps... Happy Brewing!!!

[Mike Neilson]

Here here Greig cant see any point in paying another $100 for a pump that does the same thing and comes with a 1 year warranty!! I have mine running now and I cant even here it, Whats the point? to say you have a March pump?

[JoKing]

Yeah - these Chinese ones are awesome. I've using it.... and abusing it for over a year now, and it just keeps on running. Tempercon are rips offs compared to what we got them over for... but it's not worth the hassle to get any more over when they are already here. And... technically, these chinese ones are better than a march pump if you go by the specs.

[Reviled]

Ive seen Jo's pump in action and not only does it do the trick perfectly fine but you can hardly hear the sucker when its running, soooo quiet!

[studio1]

Martin - I think I can get em for about $235 landed. I'm not saying the Chinese ones are bad....but March is made in the USA and has many many years of homebrew and commercial pedigree. So at that pricing compared to the Chinese one on TM...which would you rather have?

[JoKing]

Studio - to be fair... if you were to go through the hassle of importing goods from overseas, you'd be better off getting these ones from China. You'll get two of them for the price of one March pump.