so i think ive found the issue.

part 1: for full BIAB in BS they recommend changing the grain absorbtion rate for no sparge.Last Paragraph[/url]

This added c. 1l to the initial mash volume – see below

part 2. When printing a recipe from BS2 or viewing the ipad version, you might see a figure quoted saying total water needed, but only in the desktop version (that i can see anyway) is the correct figure of mash volume needed (shown in green) visible. This is where i’ve been mashing with 1.5- 2l too little of water and because my volumes are off my mash efficiency has been off too, leading to low pre boil OG.

I’ve emailed the creator or beersmith for ipad to see if this is shown somewhere, because when i look at either a printed recipe from desktop (i’ve linked to at least one up there^) or the ipad version, i’ve incorrectly been taking the first stage of the mash -the saccharification process- as the strike water volume. oops 🙂

If i’m being thick please let me know, otherwise i’ll update you with what Brad says!

Cheers

Just a wee PSA – the hose reel used for my wort chiller from Tesco is reduced in my local tescos from £10 to £7. Might help you grum.

So been doing some more research on beersmith giving me dodgy volumes and as PF correctly guessed i am 99% sure its too little strike water to start with. Off to do some good old fashioned troubleshooting!

Castle Business Park by any chance?

exactly what i thought and then immediately discounted it. i work acoss the road at Craigforth. small world.

#coolstory

Overdetailed Dave strikes again!

Hey Grum,

Hope the wort chiller posts above make sense. My top tips if i was doing it again would be:

1. the crucial bit of the wort chiller is getting a nice curve without crimping the pipe to get the exit pipe running up the inside of the coil. if i was doing this again i’d make that bend using a pipe bender. I’d feed the pipe bender approx 2 feet onto the coil and make a near 90 degree bend, leaving the pipe bender in place (could be controversial doing this but i think it would stop the pipe crimping. I’d then feed my gas main over the now bent 2ft section after taking a check out of the bottom of the gas main. I’d then start winding the pipe round the gas main (or whatever else you have)working from the ground floor up. This would allow you to wind the coil around the exit pipe without having to worry about trying to squeeze it through the coil after making it. To be honst neither scenario is ideal as this is where you are most likely to bend the pipe. copper is surprisingly pliable until it starts to kink and then it creases very easily, so it was a tetchy moment doing the last section as i almost buggered it. Luckily some gentle work with pliers got it back to normal(almost, my OCD is still smarting 😉 )

2. If you can get a bit of gas main thats straight is really good to use, just about the perfect size for a 15-19l pot.

3. give the copper a good heat in the oven, it makes it easier to bend until it cools down, which it does rapidly – an essential property of a wort chiller 🙂

4. never straighten a section and then try to rebend it if at all possible, it almost never bends as well 2nd time round. If you follow point 1 above straighten the pipe as mich as you need to but be careful when bending it afterwards.

5. work out the height of your pot and how many coils you’ll need before the pipes exit the pot and get a good bend on them to get them out of harms way as much as possible. As others menioned up there if it leaks you are in trouble.

6. the wee mini hose i linked to in one of the posts is the best tenner i spent on my AG setup. does the job brilliantly and i got a free spray gun for my regular hose to boot 🙂

7. get your copper from a plumbers merchant and shop around – its probably a tenner cheaper than b and q in most cases. Also check the coil for damage before you take it home/start using it, if a small ding is there it will probably kink when you start bending it.

8. finally, unless its a really serious issue, don’t let OCD get the better of you and try to fix it. I did and wasted £16 worth of copper in doing so. In most cases the kink will not be serious enough to severely impair the flow so just let it be 🙂

Hopefully this helps, good luck if you try it.

Cheers

EDIT – crude visual representation if what i mean below. copper is coopper coloured coil, the grey bit is your pipe bender. The yellow thing is a cutout of the gas main and the black blob in the bottom lefthand corner is your cutout for the pipe to come through. The copper would be wound anti clockwise from the ground up.

Hi Grum,

I’ll drop a better note out tonight with my experiences but if you have a gander at this post and this postit gives you some idea of how i did it.

Hi Pf, quick on the draw 🙂

Yeah the equipment profile was way out, but i copied it via the cloud to beersmith on my desktop, so something went awry in between.

something weird going on though as my grain bill as posted above was 3.1x kg (i did tweak the colour very slightly manually) and a volume of 13 litres. What other settings do you select in Bs i.e. mash profile?

so here’s my equipment profile from BS – anyone spot anything odd?

I am using a tweaked equipment profile so its based mostly on your previous profile, but upped the volumes to get 10l into the FV. If you could upload your current one i’ll download it and compare it to mine. It seemed to square with all the other values when i did the equipment wizard on beersmith, but clearly something is off.

Thanks again for your help, appreciate it.

+1 for little bottler. great wee bit of kit.

I started with 13.52L for the mash PF, per the beersmith instructions. If you plumb in the recipe above (its called SNPA clone classic recipe on beersmith)what volume of strike water does your beersmith suggest? or shoul i be ignoring that altogether?

sounds like its definitely a recipe scaling issue with the water then 🙂

So i brewed up the SNPA clone yesterday and it’s in the FV now. Much more relaxed about brew day now, i don’t feel the need to watch over the mash like an expectant mother 🙂 Brew time was about 4 hours so there’s room for improvement there but I didn’t feel rushed or forget anything.

I took a lot of care this time to get an accurate mash volume by measuring out the water – i have a stainless 1litre jug and the markings were close enough to 1kg when i weighed it so i was confident the mash volume was correct to within a few ml, certainly not wildly out. I think my mash temps might be a bit low still, but it’s difficult to measure within the pot (I use PF’s trick of sticking it in the oven at 60ish degrees) so a thermometer with a probe might help, although realistically I’m not sure how you could adjust the mash temp quickly or accurately enough to make a difference. I think it’s probably a case of leaving it well alone.

I actually did better than my target OG for pre-boil – i hit 1.056 instead of 1.053, so if I’m right i think that means my mash efficiency is better than 65%? Either way I was reasonably chuffed so far.

I also just added the hops to the boil loose. I got a decent conical sieve from Sainsbury’s – solid stainless steel with holes punched in it – far better than the mesh design. It filtered all the gunk out and as said before it aerated the wort really well. I might use a hop bag for dry hopping but I think I’ll add hops loose to the boil now.

The issue came with post-boil OG / volume – it was miles over the target – 1.078! instead of 1.062 and when I put it in the fermenter it looked like 7.5L, so I topped up with tap water again (naughty) to hit the target OG of 1.062 spot on in the fv. I ran the risk of contaminating the brew again though so hopefully I’ll get away with it again.
However, I’m puzzled as to how I’m losing so much volume between the mash and post boil. I give the mashing bag a good squeeze after mashing, so I know I’ll be losing some volume there but that should be accounted for. I also googled the evaporation rates and I think I have the standard figure plumbed in, but I don’t think I could be boiling off 2.5l more than the figure. The only explanation I have is that beersmith calcs are off somewhere, either with the initial mash volume (although pre boil OG would be off surely?) or I’m losing too much to the grain.
I’m going to work out accurate volumes for my pot using a measuring stick and also test the boil off rate for my kit too, to try and get to the bottom of this. Happy enough with the process though and I’ve got 22.5kg of Maris otter pale malt in the brewshack to experiment with!

Nothing wrong with kit beers Samuri, especially when they turn out looking like that 🙂

I brewed a festival ales porter at the tail end of last year and loaded it with the pellet hops that came with it. 7 months on and its got a great earthy character and jet black colour. Can’t have too many of them though 🙂

super excited for this weekends brew. I was looking for a recipe to use up some maris otter and my leftover citra, but i took a hankering for brewing the SNPA clone that Peterfile posted on page one. So i started looking around for the ingredients etc and happened across this post regarding the SNPA brewers gettin involved. So in short, the ingredients are on the way to make this at the weekend. Recipe below that i’ve scaled using my equipment profile, comments welcome. (OG looks a bit optimistic!) Can’t wait for this!

:O

yeah good call. i think the wife would have a canary if the cupboard under the stairs was coated in beer! 🙂

So how does the refractometer work then PF? I’m going to be shopping for malt soon and its payday 😈

Well against better advice i just bottled my brew today, without taking 3 days of readings 🙂

Good news is the FG was 1.008, from an OG of 1.057. These were values taken at 20 degrees, although I’m not sure how the addition of the water after i took my first reading will have affected it – i assume the volume is greater as I took the OG before adding c. 1.5l to the wort so the ABV will be less than what i think should be 6.5%. Either way a pretty potent brew, although I’ll be amazed if those figures are bang on.

It also tastes really good. Lovely colour, malt character and a nice bitterness from the hops but not too much flavour or aroma. I’m sure this is to do with only dry hopping with 20g of hops but overall I’m really pleased. I think once it’s carbonated it should be great. Definitely a platform to improve upon.

Did have a bit of an issue with my syphon appearing to introduce bubbles in the wort (not sure what went on as it was underwater but bubbles were appearing in the syphon line) but i didn’t drag very much sediment through at all, it was a pretty clean brew. The trub was also very liquid and the gunk on the FV (Krausen?) was not difficult to clean off at all, compared to some of the brews I’ve don’t where you almost have to pressure wash it off…

I got 14 500ml bottles out of it, so 7l bottled which i think is good. I had nearly 1/2 a litre left over from bottling which was my hydrometer sample and the dregs from my bottling FV (see below – it became my first taster :)) and i had 1.75l of trub / yeast / wastage which sounded a lot but i don’t think i could have got more out of the FV without getting right into the sediment, so overall just shy of 10l into the FV.
Really quite happy so far, plans to get more malt and just do the same recipe again with a couple of tweaks to see how it compares!

thanks j_d i smell a bulk buy coming on!

edit – the Crisp maltings group are on my doorstep!

http://www.crispmalt.co/

good point, time to check the gravity and a wee cheeky taste!

How well would 25kg of malt store by the way? Its going to get expensive mail ordering 3kg ofgrain with a 6.95 delivery charge, so was thinking of going for a 25kg sack. The other option i might have is that i live in alloa and i think there is still a maltings here, so might be worth trying to buy direct!

hey guys, my first brew has been in the primary now for 11 days, so will be fermented out. it was dry hopped a week ago so should be coming along nicely. question is how long do you chill it down for if you use temp control? i’m going to bottle soon so i’m going to chill down to 6 degrees for a few days. actually looking forward to getting this one n the bottle and planning my next brew!

Dry hopped the brew last night. Sterilised the muslin bag and dropped in another 20g of citra. Not much but that’s what the recipe called for. Will bottle next week at some point, can’t wait!

Thanks for your comprehensive update PF – much appreciated! I need to google why the pre-boil OG was a bit low but i think i’m right in assuming that its not mashed quite enough. Like you say the post boil OG should be the key factor and i went and monkeyed ith it when there was no need to. You are quite right about the extra 3 bottles and thinking back there was no valid reason to top it up apart from the recipe saying so. Thats the beer-brain at work right there 🙂

Re the cooling i saw all this lovely clear wort and didn’t want to disturb it, so i left it alone. and then promptly stirred it all up using the whirlpooling, so yeah kind of pointless 🙂

Sounds like an idea using the sieve though, as the other thing that occurred to me was that i didn’t aerate the wort very much on putting it into the FV as i siphoned it in. I needn’t have worried though, went downstairs at 7am, roughtly 12 hours after pitching the yeast and before i opened the brew fridge i heard the welcome sounds of a gurgling airlock. c. 24 hours later and its going like stink!

I normally fermented at 18 degrees but i have the temp set at 19.3 according to the recipe and its working away really well, so i’ll let it be for a few days before dry hopping.

On the strike water the recipe only called for 13.6l of strike water and estimated my final batch vol should have been 10l, so something is off quite a bit somewhere. i followed the recipe i posted almost to the letter so if any beersmith whizzkids can see something obvious i’d be interested to see what went awry.

just got the brewing bug again, can’t wait to see what its like!

so, first brew post mortem:

1. missed pre-boil OG by 3 points (hit 1.044 instead of 1.047), possibly due to mash temps being too low? That was accounting for wort temp so it was a real 3 point difference.

2. Chilling the wort took FOREVER to get to 20 degrees. in the end i think at 21/22 i gave up and got things moving, it must have taken 45 mins. No leaks though!

3. my digital thermometer seemed to be givin me funny readings from the wort during chilling. one area was c. 7 degrees hotter than the other. stirred it a bit which leads me to:

4. hot/cold break settling nicely before i whirlpooled the pan. pointless i think as it stirred it all up and then when i tried to syphon it all went in to the FV anyway 🙁 Not sure what the protocol is on this, i’ve read leaving the break in the pan is recommended, but a bit in the FV will do no harm. hard to whirlpool it then leave it long enough to settle out after chilling as that took ages.

5. nailed the OG in the FV – 1.056 and i was shooting for 1.055. However, and this is the worrying bit, i was c. 1.5l off my target of 10l into the FV. I had to top up the FV to 10l with water. Not sure if that was the right thing to do or not but its done now. mixed in the rehydrated us-05 so we’ll wait to see what happens.I think my volumes were ok to start with but i can only assume i had less in the pan than i thought i did pre boil. need to find a repeatable method of measuring water (i did weigh it this time on bathroom scales but thats a faff and probably not all that accurate)

6. drinking during a brew is not a good idea. i knocked in 4 cooking lagers and 1/2 bottle of wine whilst waiting. definitely clouded judgement towards the end of the brew.

all in all though a most enjoyable afternoon so we’ll see what comes out of it in 2 weeks!

your c+c would be most welcome 🙂

sweet, i was just contemplating how to hit those figures with temp etc. Wont be long until the boil now!

Thanks PF, its been a long time coming as you know! Feel confident that things are going ok. Oven temp is about 63 degrees but i dont want to start messing with it as i’ll just let the mash do its work. I know mashing too low is an issue but getting into fractions of a degree at this stage is a bit beyond me. We’ll see what the OG says at the end of the mash. I think next time i’ll get either put the probe from the brewfridge into the mash itself or get one of these probe thermometers with a remote wire and see whats going on in there.

just popped the vacuum pack of citra hops, smells lovely. i think i will dry hop this batch as i have plenty of muslin bags and my syphon will cope with residue.

one q though, the recipe above calls for 75 min mash and then slowly raise temps to 75 degrees over 10 mins, not sure what this is for or if i should bother doing it? I dont want to go off piste from the recipe if i can help it, but all the recipes discussed here dont menion a step like this.

Cheers

mashing as we speak. Hit upon using my brewfridge climate controller to chek oven temps. We’ll see if its a good idea!

and lo, on the seventh day he brewed.

Yes, i’m breaking my 6 month duck and actually brewing a batch today. Any last minute advice? Heres the recipe etc – if you see a glaring omission let me know. Thanks to all the contributors on this thread, a great resource. i’ll pop up some pics of the brew day later!

SMASHing it

American Pale Ale (10 A)

Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 10.00 l
Boil Size: 12.12 l
Boil Time: 60 min
End of Boil Vol: 10.92 l
Final Bottling Vol: 9.17 l
Fermentation: Ale, Two Stage

Date: 22 Aug 2012
Brewer: David Russell
Asst Brewer:
Equipment: David’s BIAB
Efficiency: 70.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 73.5 %
Taste Rating: 30.0

Taste Notes:

Prepare for Brewing

? Clean and Prepare Brewing Equipment
? Total Water Needed: 13.63 l

Mash or Steep Grains

Mash Ingredients

Amt

Name

Type

#

%/IBU

2.46 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 1 100.0 %

Mash Steps

Name

Description

Step Temperature

Step Time

Saccharification Add 13.63 l of water at 70.2 C 66.7 C 75 min
Mash Out Heat to 75.6 C over 7 min 75.6 C 10 min
? If steeping, remove grains, and prepare to boil wort

? Add water to achieve boil volume of 12.12 l
? Estimated pre-boil gravity is 1.047 SG

Boil Ingredients

Amt

Name

Type

#

%/IBU

7.57 g Citra [12.00 %] – Boil 60.0 min Hop 2 20.4 IBUs
0.53 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 3 –
15.13 g Citra [12.00 %] – Boil 10.0 min Hop 4 14.8 IBUs
7.57 g Citra [12.00 %] – Boil 5.0 min Hop 5 4.1 IBUs
? Estimated Post Boil Vol: 10.92 l and Est Post Boil Gravity: 1.055 SG

Cool and Transfer Wort
? Cool wort to fermentation temperature
? Transfer wort to fermenter
? Add water if needed to achieve final volume of 10.00 l

Pitch Yeast and Measure Gravity and Volume

Fermentation Ingredients

Amt

Name

Type

#

%/IBU

1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05) [50.28 ml] Yeast 6 –
? Measure Actual Original Gravity _______ (Target: 1.055 SG)
? Measure Actual Batch Volume _______ (Target: 10.00 l)
? Add water if needed to achieve final volume of 10.00 l

Fermentation
? 22 Aug 2012 – Primary Fermentation (6.00 days at 19.4 C ending at 19.4 C)
? 28 Aug 2012 – Secondary Fermentation (6.00 days at 19.4 C ending at 19.4 C)

Dry Hop and Bottle/Keg

Dry Hop/Bottling Ingredients

Amt

Name

Type

#

%/IBU

14.98 g Citra [12.00 %] – Dry Hop 4.0 Days Hop 7 0.0 IBUs
? Measure Final Gravity: _________ (Estimate: 1.012 SG)
? Date Bottled/Kegged: 03 Sep 2012 – Carbonation: Keg with 86.48 KPA
? Age beer for 6.00 days at 18.3 C
? 09 Sep 2012 – Drink and enjoy!

Notes

great, thanks for confirming trout. be prepared for endless boring updates throughout Sunday!

mmm, hop tea sounds cool 🙂

I should have been more specific on the malt – the brewuk sells crushed malt here as well as whole malt here

i assumed it was crushed malt i’d need, rather than wholegrain, but not so sure now!

hey guys, thanks for the advice as always. the hop timings etc was a copy/paste from the recipe on my ipad so i didn’t chop out the yeast nutrient – i’d already decided that wasn’t happening :). fair point on the water stabiliser though, we’re central scotland so nice soft water here. the stabiliser was 12 notes from brewuk, so a bit of money saved.

I was also going to avoid dry hopping this one, mainly because its messy and its my first “complex” brew. i’ll be neurotic enough about it!

I also use starsan PF, its great to work with. dont fear the foam!

brewday scheduled for Sunday so its all happening now, looking forward to it!

edit – i’m assuming its crushed malt! also buying som muslin bags as i’m sure they will be useful.

Hi john

The amounts are wrong here but the timings should be ok:

Ingredients
Amount Name Type #
1.00 tbsp PH 5.2 Stabilizer (Mash 60 min) Misc 1
10 lbs Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 2
0.5 oz Citra [12.0%] – Boil 60 min Hops 3
1.00 Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15 min) Misc 4
1.0 oz Citra [12.0%] – Boil 10 min Hops 5
0.5 oz Citra [12.0%] – Boil 5 min Hops 6
1 pkgs California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) Yeast 7
1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Primary 3 days) Misc 8
1.0 oz Citra [12.0%] – Dry Hop 4 days Hops 9

so i’m all guns blazing now 🙂

Got a VM running the beersmith trial at the moment to see what its like and found a simple SMASH recipe using Maris Otter and Citra hops. converted it using Peterfile’s original BIAB profile and upped the volume to the full 10l for the final volume. The recipe is calling for the following:

California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) (i was going to use us-05 as it seems to be a fine substitute)
Citra Hop 54.25g
PH 5.2 Stabilizer (is this necessary? I assume poss not based on your tap water.)
Pale Malt, Maris Otter 2.88kg
Whirlfloc Tablet (i assume protofloc is the same thing?)

do those figures seem about right? Also another silly question but i assume we use crushed Malt?

I’m going to jam an order in with Brewuk soon as i have a voucher to spend and i’ll get this beer brewing soon!

Happy to report the boil test was a complete success! Looks like the chiller worked quite well, i’m amazed at the heat of the water coming out at the start and how quickly the wort cooled from c.70 degrees to about 40. I didn’t take temps to start with and finished when it had cooled to about 40 but everything looked in order. No leaks anyway which is the important bit. Happy days.

Boil test is going to happen this week, so fingers crossed. Cracking idea reusing the water there nzcol, need to think about ideas for that.

Incidentally the wife has dubbed me the mad scientist after buying stuff and cannibalising it 🙂

Hey all,

I’ve been mulling over how to improve my wort chiller following the first effort and took on board the feedback from guys here regarding the possibility of leaky connections.

I knew the hose i had used was too big for the copper and wasn’t a snug fit on the 10mm pipe, so i was looking for a hose with a smaller ID that would fit neatly over the copper. The presented an issue though with the ability to interface with a standard hosepipe connection for running the water in.

I happened upon a great wee solution today whilst browsing in the time thief known as Tesco – a wee 10m micro hose for a tenner. Link here

Its ideal – 11.5mm hose with the standard hose connectors built in, all on a tidy reel. The hose fits really snugly over the copper, i had to heat the hose end in boiling water to get it about an inch over the copper. I took 1.5m off one end of the hose and this will be the waste outlet into the sink, with the remaining 8.5m wound onto the hose reel with a hose connector on one end. I’ll never need 8.5m of reach with the hose but the fact its on a reel means its not too obtrusive.

I also got some amalgamating tape and wound loads of it onto the copper so the tape, a tighter hose fit and a jubilee clamp must surely banish any hope of leaks! I still need to do a live test though.

A few pics below but i’m really rather chuffed with this, turned out pretty well imo.

great sauce in this recipe

Have you tried this experiment with beer instead?

i liked that:

great update – thanks PF. I really like my brew fridge too, its a fit and forget once you get it set up properly and very cheap to put together. In my case it has been forgotten as its not climate controlled a brew all year :)Shameful i know but i’ll get one going soon. I still have c. 60 bottles of kit brew in my sisters garage to plough through….

the refractometer sounds good but i think i’ll learn to walk first – this thread is a bad influence for new toys 🙂

A couple of inane questions for the brewers. Following on from the wort chiller DIY effort i’ll look at sealing the hoses, but i’m sure i read somewhere that the cold water inlet pipe does make a difference. I expect you’d have the cold water inlet pipe feeding the top of the coil and the warmed water would exit the bottom of the pan. Can anyone confirm this?

also PF i was wondering if you have changed your beersmith equipment profile? I assume the volumes etc have remained the same. To be honest i need to get beersmith back open and have a better look at it. I was toying with getting the ipad version only as i dont want to buy a licence for both desktop and ipad, but does anyone have a burning love / hate for either bit of software?

so many questions, so little brewing 🙂

Thats a good shout guys on testing during a boil, i’ll give it a go and see how it fares. I think at least a second jubilee clip would be needed at least but i’ll check out the sealing tapes too.

it had better be an epic first brew 🙂

Thanks for the comments folks, much appreciated. It was an interesting half hour bending the pipe I tell you.

Interestingly if you are looking for something cylindrical and straight to wrap copper round to make your own, an off cut from a 140mm gas pipe is just the ticket. The guys were replacing the gas main near my folks house and were happy to give me an offcut that was basically straight. Worked like a charm.

I will tweak the connections a bit because I think there is potential for leakage with the jubilee clips alone, but the pipe passed a pressure test with a finger over the end at mains pressure, so hopefully all good. Now to actually brew a batch!

Cheers

Hey guys, more good advice as always, especially thanks to PF and J_D

To be fair i have a lot of kit from my kit brewing time, so I don’t actually need a lot more stuff to move to the BIAB method, although I completely take your point about working with what you have. I have come to loathe starting a task if i don’t feel I have the right kit, as I’ve made too many screw ups in the past by trying to improvise – my previous attempt at a wort chiller and a very expensive attempt to drift bearings out of a Chris King hub spring to mind 🙁 I’m not quite an ATGNI type, but not far off. I guess i just don’t want to be lacking something vital on the day that causes a screw up because that really winds me up if time and effort and money goes to waste. I’m sure there are many on here who sympathise 🙂
I’ve got my 19l pot now and i managed to put together a wort chiller today (I had already bought the copper and fittings for it) so the only things i need now are a mashing bag and some ingredients! The brewuk guys sell both so I’m going to put an order in this week and break my duck!

In terms of the wort chiller I’d say a DIY effort is fine if a: you are an accomplished metalworker, as copper is a bit temperamental to work, or b: you aren’t looking for a perfect example (it’s really hard to get copper looking like a factory finish)
My chiller is functional and looks ok, but I almost crimped the pipe twice because of the way it bent. I was using a pipe bender but a small lapse in concentration and its easy to crimp the pipe, then there is a few sweaty moment as you try to recover it. I’m reasonably happy with it though and it fits the pot quite well. A few pics below for you to laugh at 🙂

I can’t believe you still haven’t brewed a batch!

yeah thats classic me – research it to death, buy stuff and want everything perfect before starting it, then make an @rse of it anyway. research more, buy more stuff, still make an @rse of it 2nd time 🙂

Once the pot arrives i’ll get the chiller made and just buy the rest of the bits / ingredients and give it a go. found a nice smash recipe on beersmith so i’ll get the bits and get it done.

Half the battle is finding / making time, i just need to go for it!