Exciting

It's very exciting. This is the kind of thing that constitutes an event in my sad life. I had to go to Home Depot for some tools, and while I was there, I picked up the stuff to make a wort chiller. I just made the silly thing.

I know you're all dying to make your own wort coolers, so I'll tell you how I did it.

1. 50 feet of copper refrigeration tubing, 3/8" outer diameter

I wanted 3/8" because I read that it had more surface area for the volume, but now that I think about it, that reasoning may not be all that sound. I mean, okay for a given amount of water, the proportion of volume to area may be lower, but the total area is way smaller, and so is the volume, and the speed of the water through the tube will be slower, which means there will be more warm water in the tube.

2. 10" of reinforced vinyl tubing, 3/8" inner diameter, cut in two 5" sections
3. 4 hose clamps
4. 2 female garden hose connectors with 3/8" outer diameter nipples
5. 1 cheap tubing-bending tool, which is just a spring with a flare on one end

I cut the vinyl tubing to length, put two hose clamps on each piece, slid one end of each piece over and end of the copper and the other end over the hose connector nipples, and tightened the hose clamps. Everything fit fine, so I took the vinyl off (so I could slide the tubing tool over the copper) and started shaping the cooler.

I have a 5-gallon Rubbermaid cooler, which is a little smaller in diameter than my kettle. I decided to use that as the form for the outer layer of coils. I didn't need the bending tool for this. I tightened six or eight loops of the tubing so they clung to the cooler, and they looked fine.

To make the inner coils, I took a 3-quart saucepan, set it in the middle of the pile of tubing, and started winding around it. I wound it so I ended up with like 8 loops going back upward from the bottom of the wort cooler.

I left a foot or so of tubing to work with at each end. I put one sharp bend in each end to take the tubing up to the rim of the kettle, and then I bent three or four inches downward to hook over the rim and keep the cooler situated while in use. Then I put the vinyl and the hose connectors back one.

It was really easy. Took about 20 minutes, but it would have been quicker if I had done it by eye instead of using the Rubbermaid cooler and the sauce pan.

I also got a converter piece to connect a female connector to another female connector, so I can use an old piece of garden hose to drain the heated water out through the kitchen door. The particular piece of hose I have has a hole near the male connector, and the converter thing was cheaper than a new hose.

I'll be making a new wheat beer with Amarillo hops in a couple of days, so we'll see if it works.

I also got a hole saw to make a 7/8" hole in my kettle for the weldless spigot I bought from Morebeer. Hope that works as advertised. It's a little weird, using a hole saw for stainless, but I couldn't find a 7/8" bit.

In other news, the Budlike wuss beer I made for Val got stuck at a specific gravity of 1.024, and raising the temperature didn't help, so I made a new starter and pitched it last night. I'm fermenting it out at room temperature. I figure the fermentation is mostly done, so it shouldn't matter if the last part takes place at ale temperature.

It was fun making the starter. I used a crappy old packet of Saflager dry yeast (which expired last year), and my new starter kit, consisting of a 2000-ml Ehrlenmeyer, a bung, and an airlock. I used DME (malt extract) instead of my usual medium, which is malta in a Ziploc bag. It was wild, the way the yeast went nuts after only a few minutes in the starter. Right up there with midget porn.

So the beer situation is well in hand, and even though I'm dieting again, I'm seeing to it that I make an allowance for a few beers every day.

I'll tell you how it all works out.