I got my recirculating chiller on Thursday, and didn’t have a chance to try it out until today. Well… that’s not entirely true, I did turn it on and put some water in it Thursday night to make sure it worked. But today was the first day I got to actually try it out. It worked pretty well. It’s a NESLAB RTE-111 analog model recirculating bath chiller. It’s a little on the noisy side (similar to the sound level of a small air conditioner) but it cools the water down quickly. At first I was concerned that the pump wasn’t working since it didn’t seem to be circulating at all. However, once I put both ends into a pot of water and just let the thing run for a while, it did start circulating like it should. I will be getting some copper tubing and fittings sometime this week to make my wort chiller which will be hooked up to the NESLAB.
I also got my yeast, yeast nutrient, and yeast energizer for making my first batch of mead. Unfortunately I still don’t have my honey. The reason being that I want to see if I can get it locally, but that is a lot of honey to try to find for a decent price around here. I will probably get some this week and if I get time this coming weekend make my first batch of mead. I also picked up a new fermenter since I know it will be tied up with the mead for a while. My plan is to see if I can get to the point where I have at least 2 batches of beer going at any given time.
Speaking of beer, I have gotten in my ingredients for my extract brews. I am hoping to get away from extract brewing but right now I don’t have much choice since my all grain setup isn’t quite there yet. Hopefully in the coming month I will finish putting that all together. I am trying to get a make a RIMS system and so far I have my temperature probes, a plc to control it and am working on getting my plumbing together, along with a heater that meets my requirements.
Hopefully I should get some pictures of my new equipment up here soon.
