CNYBrew.com: And the winner is...

Sunday, February 24, 2008

And the winner is...


Brewing this weekend wound up getting canceled because it was Nick's brew-girlfriend's birthday. Keeping the brew-significant others appeased is ALWAYS a worthy reason to delay a brew weekend. God knows they put up with enough craziness.

With my new found extra time, I decided to take care of a few odds and ends.

$20 Gift Certificate

With the $20 gift certificate that I got for valentines day, there were a lot of opinions on how the money should be spent. It seemed that the funnel was prone to clogging so that was a "no-go", but the stainless steel spoon and the carboy carrier were both winners. So as you can see in the picture below, I got one of each and used the leftover money to get 1lb of extra light DME for my starters.




Racking Samuel Jackson

Even though Nick couldn't dedicate the necessary 5hrs to a brew day on Sunday, he was able to come over and give me a hand racking over my Samuel Jackson. I need a hand lifting things for the next few weeks since my surgery so Nick came over and did a little (much appreciated) heavy lifting for me. He also came baring the gift of home-made pasta that ended up being our delicious dinner.

The Samuel Jackson is going to be a heck of a beer. We dry hopped it in the secondary with a 1/2 oz of Amarillo leaf hops which really gave this a great finish. It tastes a lot like Samuel Adams, but I will wait to give a verdict after I do a little head-to-head. Nonetheless, it's going to be a great beer.

CO2 Stuff

So finally I had to make a run to Lowes to do some "home-owner" duties and on my way, I go right past Harbor Freight so I figured two birds with one stone. Since I made a trade with my brother in law (1 case of cream ale for his 5lb CO2 tank) I needed a regulator for my new tank in order to start using it with the jockey box. I had been eyeing up a dual gage gas regulator that they have there for $34 (such a good price), but wasn't sure if it was too good to be true. Well Saturday I broke down and got it.

As you can see from the picture below, once I figured out that it would work, I decided to put the new regulator on my 25lb CO2 tank instead of the new 5lb one because I use the 25lb tank all the time.

Now with the 5lb tank, since I use the air compressor release fittings, I picked up the necessary parts to have my small tank work with the other parts of my system. With my normal system I used these fittings and had an extra gas ball lock with a hose connected to a air compressor release fitting (male) and my large tank connects to the 4way manifold via a release fitting (female). The manifold has gas shutoffs so I can disconnect the CO2 and reconnect it to the single line.

With my new setup, there are 3 quick releases that will go to 3 gas ball locks and I will be able to power the two tap jockey box plus one other keg. I am officially king of the tailgate.



Even though we didn't brew, I still got a lot done. No complaints here.

Cheers!

4 comments:

Adam said...

You know your reflection would be inverted if you did that to the concave side of the spoon. (dunno why I had to share that)

Haven't dropped in in a while. Looks like you've been busy. Cool that your wife is supporting your brewing :-) Interesting CO2 setup. I haven't seen that kinda manifold before.

Take it easy.

Travis said...

Adam,

Glad to hear back from you. I have been a little crazy as of late too.

The manifolds that I use are really just parts for a more traditional air compressor with the quick release fittings. They work well and are a fraction of the price of a manifold from a beverage supply.

One thing to note is that on the manifold I use for my beer fridge, I installed ball shut-off valves. It was a great investment and I highly recommend it. if you're going to build your own stuff. Otherwise when you get messing around with things, you can accidentally decompress your kegs.

Cheers!

Adam said...

I'll have to add your link to my kegerator resources link list.

Nice little microblog addition at the top of the page.

Prost!

Kristen said...

I wish I would have read the "screen and funnels are prone to clogging" before I went out and bought one. It wasn't that big of a deal because I figured I needed a new funnel since its been several years, a lot of batches and its plastic. But the funnel did clog up unless I continued to move the spoon around on top of it.
A pain in the ass. I might go back to my ghetto set up.