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Ever watched one of those boring YouTube home-brewing tutorials?


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Just watched the latest pilsner. Is that a SCA 25 litres cube you are using? Did you drill a hole in the lid for an airlock? The squeezing part (the bag not the cube). I have a small grape press I would use to get the last drop out. I would scale it down.

It looks like he uses that just to store the wort. Some like to cool the wort (wort chiller) in the urn/boiler and dump straight into the fermenter - maybe he doesn't have one...so stores it in the fridge?

 

Anyhow I'm needing some $$$ to get a urn so I know nothing. lol

 

 

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$275 for the 40l crown. You can pay far more just for a stock pot so not a bad price. The largest stock pot I have now is a 20l and have a 8l urn with concealed element. Instead of going out and buying more equipment I would be tempted, as I said, scale it down so I could use the 8l urn. I'm not a big consumer and don't have many friends!!

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What he's doing is using the 'no-chill' method, which in reality is slow chill but semantics, whatever.

 

The wort is boiled for x amount of minutes, then left to sit for 10-15 minutes before being drained into the cube while still near boiling. This practically sterilises the inside of the cube, preventing infection. Once it cools to room temperature it can be further chilled in the fridge before being dumped into the fermenter and the yeast pitched. Or you can dump it in at room temp and pitch before bringing the temp down.

 

I use this method and have done for the nearly 3 years I've been brewing AG with my urn. I like the convenience of it, because I don't have to schedule brew days to line up with having an empty FV. Brew whenever, ferment it whenever. Easy!

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I use this method and have done for the nearly 3 years I've been brewing AG with my urn. I like the convenience of it' date=' because I don't have to schedule brew days to line up with having an empty FV. Brew whenever, ferment it whenever. Easy! [/quote']

 

Sounds like a good idea. Would there be a use-by date on the wort. I guess you would need to store in fridge until fermentation day.

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Technically, yeah. I've heard of people storing these cubes for up to 2 years. However, most of the time they get fermented after a month or two.

 

I just leave them out in the brewery area. They don't need to be in the fridge, the cubes are sealed closed while hot, so they keep fine at room temp.

 

I work M-F broken shifts, and I normally tip one into the FV and pitch yeast on a weekday in my break, so my method is to take the yeast starter out of the brewing fridge and put the cube into it, when I leave for work in the morning. When I get home, the yeast have warmed up and the wort has cooled down and it can be dumped into the FV and the yeast pitched.

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What Otto said.

 

Perhaps I'm skipping too many details in my brew day videos ...

Nah, maybe get a better HD camera - do it in the same fast time - then I can analyse your videos with the pause button. So even if you skip mentioning it - the challenge would be to piece together the missing clues like CSI - Home Brew

 

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The camera is fairly decent quality - what quality is YouTube serving up to you? It sometimes scales back the quality itself if it thinks you have a slower connection. Click "Settings" (the cog) in the bottom right of the video and you'll see a drop-down that lets you choose.

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720HD is good enough for me.

 

Anyhow I like the idea of not giving too many details because for example.

It's obvious @0:40 that you switch the urn OFF to mash at temp or "up to ..stuff..so". But upon analysis one can see it's 69C° and hour or so later we see it has dropped to 65C°.

 

I like the vagueness of it all actually. Further details can be found upon analysis of the video.lol

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Wow' date=' I lost all that temperature? I didn't even look properly!

 

It was only about 4 degrees outside when I did that though, so no wonder. I did a pretty lazy job of wrapping the urn up too to be fair.[/quote']

 

I have a Columbia Titanium Jacket, I sweat in it at 0°. Maybe something made from that. (I think it's a mylar/foam/mylar layer thing). That would be cool to see - a custom urn glove.

 

As anyone fitted a pump to an urn cirulate it at a set temp? or are there other reasons not to leave the urn on aswell.

 

I'm not likely to get one soon sad but at least I'm learning as much as I can until then.

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Most of the reason the urn is switched off is so that the bag doesn't get burnt by the element coming on at some point.

 

Of course, where there's a problem, there's a solution, in this case a false bottom that keeps the bag off the element. I use one and it works a treat for being able to maintain or raise mash temps without having to lift the bag every time. cool

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Most of the reason the urn is switched off is so that the bag doesn't get burnt by the element coming on at some point.

 

cool

 

I'm sure the crown has a concealed element otherwise as you say burning and a pita to clean.

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  • 2 weeks later...
... and my better half always gets a giggle from them and often asks if you have a new one up.

 

That's great to hear - one of the things I really want is for non-brewers to be at least mildly entertained by the videos.

 

PS. She should still count herself lucky - my better half usually gets roped in to playing Dog

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Holy moly, my

video has suddenly gone off! 350 views overnight! I wonder who's watching it ...

 

Unfortunately views don't seem to be filtering through to my other videos pinched I wonder how I can make them appear in the suggestions above others? In some of my videos they do, but not this one.

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Hey, great videos KR !

Just watched the hops one and as coincidence would have it i've got some of those stainless steel tea balls on the way from ebay.

But i was wondering, do they float with the hops in them or sink to the bottom and if so what affect that would have with them being in the sludge on the bottom of the FV compared to floating on top when using a tea bag / cleaning cloth / muslin ?

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