Category: Misha’s Brewing

So, I got everything assembled last night, and filled the tun with a bunch o’ water. This was both to make sure that the spigot’s gaskets were holding (no leaking around the edges), and to check that the laws of physics weren’t being broken inside–that it would indeed draw the water all the way down to the tops of the manifold slots.

Worked pretty well, except for some slight air leakage around the connection between the manifold and the inside end of the spigot–the blame for which I could easily lay at the feet of a lack of teflon tape to really seal it in there. So, not normally a problem–I’ve got a roll of teflon tape for just such situations…

Which led to my cleaning & straightening about 80% of my brewing storage area, looking for the !*@&%^* teflon tape. Not a bad idea, in and of itself, as I really needed to do such a cleaning (and now I really need to actually finish the cleaning), but not exactly how I had intended to spend my holiday. Anyway, long about noon, I finally broke down and asked my Dear Lady Wife whether she had seen my teflon tape–and, as such things are wont to work out, she had. (For the curious, it was in my truck, in a ‘tool kit’ she had put together to go help out a friend.)

Long story even longer, I managed to clean out a bunch of crap I didn’t remember that I had (and that I didn’t need), providing me with space in the storage area to clear off a bit of the bar, which is always a good thing. Now, to get my Dear Lady Wife to stop piling books & such on the comfy chair down here, so I might be able to relax in the quiet with a pint & a nice book…

Yes, today is my birthday. Woohoo! 37 grand years. Anyway, I thought I’d show off a bit of the ‘goodies’ I’ve picked up today…

This would be from my mother-in-law… A bench-top bottle-capper, two (!) siphon starters, an assortment of in-line valves, some hose clamps, a hose cutter, and a ‘sure-screen’. It’s all got its use, but some of it will admittedly be staying in the plastic for now…

I also swung an Igloo Ice Cube cooler (70 qt) to replace my 10-gallon Gott-style cooler for the mash tun, and made some new liquid pick-ups based on this month’s Brew Your Own! magazine. The latter were a necessity–the HLT didn’t have any sort of pick-up at all, so I was losing about a half gallon of hot water per pot; the mash-tun was marginally better, but its pick-up was in the center of the pot (which sucks when a whirlpool is your primary ‘filtration’). Moving the pick-up to the edge of the pot will help immensely, I think.

Then there was the sack of Golden Promise malt–but I was going to get that, anyway. 🙂