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Category: making things

Updated River Bends Map

Published March 13, 2011

After a bike ride this afternoon I decided to (finally) update the River Bends trail map so that it’s more usable. Besides adding more asphalt and a better key I cleaned some things up, added the park’s address, and changed the trail lines to dashed pieces. These dashed lines should make the map more readable when printed in black and white, and the addition of the river, railroad tracks, and more road should make it easier to tell where one is when riding along.

In the future I’m going to consider adding in the Clinton-Kalamazoo Canal and maybe tweaking the route a bit. Maybe there will even be some more single track to add by that next time, too…

Click the image above or here for a PDF of the map: River_Bends_13-Mar-2011.pdf

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Scalded Wort

Published March 12, 2011

The thinner new pot and super-hot turkey burner flame resulted in a little bit of scalding on the bottom of the boil kettle from beer-making yesterday. However, it’s just a little bit, and I don’t see it causing any issues. The larger kettle with a bigger opening made boiling a lot easier. Foam-ups during hop addition cleared themselves automatically, there was practically no risk of boil-over, and I could keep the heat nicely high (and thus a harder boil) during the whole process.

After boiling and cooling the wort I also did something to save a bit of money on yeast: racking the wort right on to the trub from the previous batch of beer. Since I was making a darker and hoppier (but otherwise similar style) beer this won’t affect the flavor of it, and the extremely large quantity of yeast meant that the batch was fermenting strongly within four hours. Normally the amount of activity seen just a few hours later would take 24-36 hours to occur when pitching (pouring into the wort) the quantity of yeast in a Wyeast Activator pack. Not only did this decrease lag time while the yeast started growing, it also saves roughly $8 on yeast, the time spent cleaning out the fermenter, and is simply less wasteful overall.

As this beer (a dark IPA) is recommended to have two months of aging I’ll probably do another short-aging-time beer after this with the goal of having three full kegs of beer in the kegged beer cooler. If I can constantly keep three different (tasty) beers in there with one aging, I’ll be pretty set for variety, having friends over, and saving money overall.

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Gas Distribution Manifold and Dessicant

Published March 6, 2011

This afternoon I added a bit of a luxury to the Kegged Beer Cooler, a three-way gas manifold. While not necessary, this will allow me to easily shut off gas to different connectors if I’m needing to play with different pressures for force carbonating beer, soda, fruit, etc.

Since I was drilling from the inside of the cabinet outward without using a guide the external screw heads aren’t quite lined up (picture). This is disappointing because it doesn’t look as nice as it could, but I guess I’ll just have to leave it. To be sure that I didn’t hit any gas lines I first cut small holes in the aluminum liner with a pointed razor blade, tore back the metal with needle nose pliers, then poked carefully through the foam with a plastic tool until I reached the steel outer wall. The foam was then cleared out using a drill bit in my fingers, and then I completed drilling through the outside.

A few days ago I received some desiccant bags purchased from eBay (picture) and those are now in place as well, so the kegged beer cooler project is pretty much finished. I may eventually add external taps, but for now using picnic-style taps inside of the unit should suffice.

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Inconvenienced by Safety

Published March 5, 2011

A few weeks back I ordered this turkey fryer setup from Cabela’s to replace the burner/regulator that I had problems with a few weeks back. Today when setting it up for use I found that there is an electronic interlock on the gas line which will cut off the gas flow after the last time it was manually reset.

I attempted to remove this, but as can be seen here there is a laquer-like thread locker on the fitting between the regulator and the interlock. While this likely won’t be a huge issue, I’d really prefer to simply concentrate on brewing beer and not pressing a button to keep things running.

UPDATE: In practice this wasn’t that much of a hinderance. The large red button which starts the gas flowing and resets the electronic timer serves as a quick turn-on, and the black button is a good emergency-off in case of a boil-over. A green light illuminates when the gas is flowing and it starts blinking before the gas shuts off, giving one ample time to press the red button and keep gas flowing. While it would be nice to not have this safety in place, it’s not as difficult to deal with as I’d expected.

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Kegged Beer Cooler: Complete

Published March 3, 2011

The kegged beer cooler is complete, sitting in the basement, and is actively cooling what remains of two kegs of beer. Tonight I ran the gas lines, fitted everything into place, and set it up against one wall of the basement. It’s currently set to start cooling at 40°F and shut off at 35°F ambient temperature in the unit, which I expect to keep the beer at somewhere in that range. It may be necessary to narrow the band to something a bit narrower, but I’ll be able to determine that after putting a full keg of beer in the freezer and monitoring it.

I’ve been considering fitting the fridge with taps, but for the time being I think I’ll just stay with using picnic-style taps inside the unit. Actual beer faucets are around $100/each after considering all mounting hardware, and I don’t think they’ll provide enough benefit to justify doubling the cost of the unit.

Here’s some more notable photos of the unit throughout its progress:

· Completed chest freezer to beer keg conversion.
· Looking inside at two corney kegs, party tap-style dispensing lines, gas lines, temperature sensor, etc.
· Gas line transition from the compressor compartment into the body of the freezer. It is held in place with twist-type reusable cable ties.
· Temperature probe in place and gas line and Y fitted. Excess foam was left in place to serve as a hose guide.
· Operational Johnson Controls A419 temperature control indicating that it is currently cooling.

All of the photos can be found here. And yes, Roxie approves of it.

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Temperature Control Fitted

Published March 3, 2011

The temperature control for the kegged beer cooler fitted and it seems to work. It started, cooled the unit until the appropriate temperature was reached, then turned itself off. Now I just have to run the gas lines and see how it goes with actually cooling beer. This will require a little bit more hardware, although I’ll probably only fit it out for two kegs for the time being, as that’s how many I have. It’s too bad that my current kegs are also almost empty, as I won’t be able to run it fully loaded. I guess it’ll be time to brew more soon.

I also need to consider monitoring temperature in the unit or attaching the probe to a specific keg. I think that in the unit will be sufficient, but for the first couple weeks I’ll double-check this by occasionally checking the temperature of a keg itself.

New photos from tonight’s work are can be found on this page.

(Yes, I know those screws are too long, but they are what I had laying available. Oh well, they neither interfere with anything nor will they be seen once the unit is closed up.)

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Kegged Beer Cooler Ingress Fittings

Published March 1, 2011

Meijer is great for when it’s 10pm and the next step of your project requires Great Stuff spray foam insulation.

Continuing the project to turn a chest freezer into a temperature controlled cooler for home-brewed beer (previously) I made a hole inside the cabinet (picture) the size of a film canister without hitting any of the gas lines. This was done by marking a hole, then carefully tearing away the aluminum liner with pliers, then digging through the foam with a screwdriver before finishing off the hole with a drill and file. Looking around the basement I came across some plastic pieces that were perfect for the gas and temperature probe ingress fittings, fashioned out of a 10cc syringe and a used bathroom water supply line that I’d once had (incorrectly) fitted to my to my toilet (picture).

These fit very nicely into the hole. With the flange on the syringe and the water line nicely fitting up against the inside of the freezer’s compressor compartment both plastic bits nicely stayed in place nicely (picture) making surrounding them with spray foam insulation (picture) very easy. I fitted a scrap piece of vinyl tubing in the syringe housing to keep foam out, and it did a great job. Once removed (picture) there is now a clear ingress for gas, and the temperature probe should sit nicely on top of the grey plastic tube holding it nicely mid-level in the unit without touching any sidewalls.

Now all I have to do is fashion a mount for the temperature controller, wire it in, fit the temperature probe, run gas lines, and build a CO2 tank retention system. This is probably only a couple more evenings worth of work, which should be right in time for the wit that I’ve currently got aging and which is due to be kegged on Monday. Oh, and I might cover the lid with some horrible contact paper design, perhaps even something as bad as butcher block.

(Yes, this does mean that all beer served from this cooling unit will be heavily dependent on both an old (but unused) syringe and something which once supplied water to one of my toilets.)

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Chest Freezer First Steps

Published February 28, 2011

Now that I’m brewing beer again and kegging it (1 · 2 · 3 · 4), the approach of warm weather means that I have to find a way to keep the kegs cool so that I may serve them. To do this I purchased a chest freezer and am in the process of adapting it to use a more precise temperature control system so that I may try and keep the kegs at a consistant 40°F.

After receiving a Johnson Controls A419ABC-1C temperature control I opened up the 7.0 ft3 Holiday-brand chest freezer acquired from Lowes (item number 0073849) and set to understanding it’s temperature control system. It turns out that this chest freezer just has a basic on/off control that switches mains on and off for the compressor based on a temperature probe fed into the wall of the freezer. This should make it very easy to replace the controller with the A419.

Part of converting a chest freezer to beer keg holding requires one to drill holes for both CO2 and the temperature control, which is a very risky task because hitting the refrigerant lines will vent the freezer’s cooling system rendering it useless. To try and understand where the coils are I started the freezer, let it run for a bit, then placed 1L of boiling water in it with the lid closed. The result was this, a nicely frosted freezer showing that almost all of the bottom part contains coils. Knowing this I’m going to attempt to drill the gas/probe holes by first carefully removing some of the lining metal then picking away at the foam to be sure that I’m not going to hit a line when widening the hole. I will start in the corner in the upper right of this picture, as this will allow for both easy gas and temperature probe access once everything is assembled. Hopefully that’ll go well.

If you’re interested, my first photos from this project can be found here.

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Area 51 is Drinkable!

Published February 10, 2011

It might possible be a bit cloudy, but the Area 51 American IPA (previously), which is really more of an American Pale Ale, is ready to drink. Comparing it to other beer photos of mine I think it’s pretty spot-on style-wise, and taste-wise it’s really quite nice. This is the first beer that I’ve made which I’d easily think came from a proper brewery had I not known that I made it.

This, plus the ease of kegs, is a good thing. If I can keep up quality like this I’ll be quite happy and likely brewing a lot of my own beer in the future.

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