Planning for the next brew
Well, we don’t actually have a brew date yet. I’m thinking June 17th, which leaves us only about two weeks to get a bunch of stuff done.
First and foremost, northernbrewer is sending us a new March 809 pump, because the last one was a lemon. This time, the plan is to actually test the pump *before* brew day, so we’re not performing acrobatics to revert to an all-gravity setup before the mash dies on us.
Matt’s been talking about putting together a steam injection system using plans we’ve seen online. I personally don’t care if we use one of these for the next batch (a bitter) but it would be nice to have for batches where we’re using less highly modified malts that would really benefit from or maybe *require* a step mash.
We actually still need to develop a recipe! This one isn’t very difficult, but we need to do it so that we can plan out the day, and put together a grain bill. Don’t forget that we still need to go get the grains at some point.
We want to get the kegs professionally cut by a welder. If you don’t see why, you haven’t seen the pictures of my handy work.
We need to buy a couple more fittings so that some of the hacks we had put in place can be handled a little more smoothly and without having to think much about them on brew day. For example, we were missing a connection for the spigot coming off of the mash tun. In the end, we stuck a hose into a stopper, and stuck the stopper into the spigot, and it worked, but it’s not ideal.
Also, Matt got his hands on a utility cart made of angle iron that we want to use to create a sort of “brewery on wheels”, so we can wheel everything out on the cart, hook up the propane tank, and go to town, and then wheel it all back into the garage at the end of the day. There’s a wee bit of fabrication to take care of, but it’s damn near perfect for what we need, and it was being thrown out, so it’s free, which goes nicely with yet another Bamf motto: “If it’s free, it’s for me!”