Posted: 7/24/2011 8:29:47 PM EDT
While I much admire all those posts of finely prepared and smoked meats, I'm pretty much a caveman as far as my taste in meat is concerned! I figure as long as most of the moo, oink, neigh, or what have you is cooked out of it, I'm good to go!  OTOH, I'm MUCH more particular about my beer! Milwaukees' finest (or what used to be Milwaukees' finest) and the like don't much appeal to me. For a number of years now, I've been drinking, pretty much exclusively, New Glarus beers - and mostly beers in the 'unplugged' series. Unfortunately they come and go, and when they're gone they'll (probably) never be seen again!  Suddenly, I find we are in a drought - there are no new unplugged beers on the shelves anywhere I've been in the state - and Spotted Cow, while good, gets boring after awhile. So today, after about a 15 year hiatus, I brewed a batch of beer! While I was stationed in Germany, I got in the habit of keeping 'Alt Bier' on hand. I'm starting with kits, to establish a routine, so as this was an easy kit, that's what I brewed!The brewing setup: 30gal propane tank, Blichmann Engineering burner and 22qt Mirro stock pot.  Malt is mixed in and boiling - just added the bittering hops  Starting to siphon the cooled wort into the primary fermenter - boy that Auto-Siphon is the cats' meow!  6 gallon carboy for a primary fermentation vessal (The black streaks around the sides are NOT critters! They are my 5 gallon marks for make up water!)  There it is - not QUITE beer yet  After a couple days of primary fermentation, then it will get racked off into another carboy for a secondary fermentation/clarification. It will stay in the secondary 'til I back home, in a few weeks, and can bottle it. I CAN'T WAIT!  |
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Quoted: Well now, there's an idea!I can't wait either. I've always wanted to try this. See, what you need to do is get together with some of the finely prepared and smoked meat folks and do a little bartering. These things tend to go well together. Hmm...  I tried home brewing about 15 years ago - with mixed success. The biggest problem I had then was a gas stove that didn't have quite enough capacity to boil 2.5 gallons of water. That Blichmann burner solved that problem! My next acquisition, after I've made a few batches and established a routine, will be a 10 gallon brew kettle. Then I'll probably stop making kits and start making my own recipes. I think the internet has been a boon to the homebrewer and the industry! There is a WHOLE LOT more information and a MANY more products available, to the homebrewer, now than there was 15 years ago! |
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Good luck on the whole beer thing.
I can't stop admiring that burner! Plus I love anyhting made in stainless steel. So I went to their web site and saw that stand. That is a great solution to an idea I have had for awhile, I just could not come up with a way to make it safely. Is that burner new to you? Do you like it? |
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Yep, the burner is new to me. I had thoughts of buying one of those 'King Cooker' style burners - typically found as part of the turkey deep frying set - (they are significantly less expensive) but after wandering around the internetz for a while, I came to the conclusion I should spend the money once and be done with it! The same holds true for the Blichmann 10 gallon brew kettle I plan to get. There are a number of alternatives out there, but none (that I've seen) have the same number of USEFUL features! I like the burner! It is definitely a big step up from a gas stove! Having said that, I had a bunch of trouble trying to get it to work initially. I couldn't keep the flame going, at first, and when I did get it going good, the regulator froze up on me! Finally, after a bunch of experimentation with the orientation of the regulator and judicious applications of warm water to the frozen regulator, I got it going and kept it going - even when the wind shifted to where it was blowing right into the air valve vents! I have no idea what it was I did that got it to work, but PFM works for me! More than likely I'll have to spend some time getting all the kinks worked out. That stainless sure is pretty isn't it! The local Home Brew Store (http://www.grapegrainandbean.com/) had a used stand for sale, complete with burners, and brew pots. I looked at it, thought about it, but I don't plan on doing all grain brews for a LONG time, if ever, so I couldn't justify spending the money on it! BTW: The Alt Bier is now in the secondary and it smells wonderful! I took another sample, to record my specific gravity, and had a taste. The initial bitterness has softened substantially and, I think in 3 or 4 weeks this stuff will be mighty tasty and ready to bottle! |
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You froze the regulator and the outdoor temps were above freezing? The only time I ever froze up a hose on a tank was when the tank was outside a tent, the heater was inside and the outside temps were near zero. That is very interesting to say the least but a propane person will know the answer.
I use the typical turkey burners outside a lot, but rarely fry. They are great for boiling lots of veggies for canning, large batches of sauce. Doing shrimp boils or my favorite, use with th a large 14" cast iron pan or wok. I want to rig one in a stand and leave it outside. Probably gut an old BBQ so it is a hollow shell on wheels and add an aluminum shelf I have set aside. Then I want to set up a removable stainless top to do teppanyaki style cooking (Like Benihanas). It could even end up being an oven since I make bread and pizza on the grill. The weak link in all of this is the burners and how they are designed. I just don't like them. There is a LOT right about the one you bought. From the wind baffels to some safety features in the design and of course being stainless. Thanks again for posting the info. I saw that brew kettle on their web site, I want one and I don't even do home brewing. The cool thing, while typing this post, I just worked out how I will do the teppanyaki top! I was overthinking it. |
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I really don't know WHY it was freezing up. My understanding is that if there's TOO much gas going through the regulator, it will freeze up - something about pressure drop - but I didn't THINK that there was that much going through there. In some cases, there was just barely enough gas there to light the burner! I watched the video that Blichmann has on their site and (tried) to emulate it. A friend of mine happened to be driving by and saw me messing around with it and HE stopped and messed with it for about 1/2 hour too. We'd get it going and all of a sudden it would flare up and then just as fast, it would die down and/or go out. You could hear the gas flowing through the venturi - some times a steady hiss, sometimes you'd hear it pulse. At first (and maybe still), we thought the regulator was bad, but the Home Brew store wasn't open so, rather than wasting the day, I just kept messing with it. There was some printing stamped on the regulator - that was partially obscured by a tag - that said something to the effect of mounting the regulator with the vent hole vertical. So I just kept repositioning the regulator 'til it finally worked! Although, at that point I was afraid to turn the gas too high and have it freeze up in the middle of the boil! I looked around at a number of Home Brew websites, and read a number of reviews on the different burners available - lots of folks use the King Cookers for home brewing, so plenty of reviews on Amazon.com and such places - and came to the conclusion, for the same reasons you mentioned, that this was the one to get! Pretty much the same with the Brew Kettle! At present, I'm doing 2.5 gallon boils and I'm using gallon jugs to estimate the amount of water added. If you use any grains (for color and flavor) in your recipe, you have to steep them at 160-170 degrees. Then, when you're done, you have to siphon the wort out of the kettle and into your fermenter. The Blichmann kettle has a built in liquid sight-glass, temperature gauge, and a valve for draining. I realized right quick, after doing it the way I did, that all those tools will be useful! You know, I never thought of that, but I could use it to cook my steaks and such when I didn't want to wait on the Weber to get ready... OTOH, the time it takes for the Weber to get ready is prime beer drinking time! |