Fermentation Friday is here!!!

OK, so here we go with the CNYBrew.com hosted Fermentation Friday. The subject for today kiddies is tell us about the craziest concoction you ever came up with (prepped or on the fly) for brewing. This can include ingredients, techniques and anything else you want to share.

For my fermentation Friday tale, I am going to talk about my "shower head sparge arm". It seems as though these types of project always seem to start with the best of intentions. In my case, I had wanted to make a nice sparge arm for my brewing operation and I was not into buying a fancy rotating head as I am a stingy man.

After several failed attempts at making a simple sparge arm, I was in Mr. Seconds looking for stuff for my house (and of course as always, perusing for potential brewing toys) when, in the bathroom section, I saw a shower head. Suddenly it all came together. It's versatile, mobile, easy to hang, and it will leave a nice evenly spread distribution of sparge water. It was all prefect, then came brew day.

As soon as I hooked it up and started to running the water for the sparge and everything went to hell. It leaked, parts melted, all the gaskets failed and the water ran out of it like it was coming out of a hose. Not the intended even trickling that I had imagined.

While this was not a disastrous problem to fix, I had totally pictured it as a perfect solution in mind. Like a kid who just got his sea monkeys in the mail, only to be disappointed when he adds them to the water, I had another failed sparge arm.

Tomorrow I am going to be posting a listing of all the other brew bloggers out there writing about their crazy ideas...