That One Thing...

Anti gas drops... look it up.

 

Serious? I'll use the cherry flavored ones.

 

Seriously. Simethicone is what you are looking for.

 

Boilovers plagued my brew day yesterday, guess I've just got to pony up the dough for a larger brew kettle.

The other thing that's been bothering me is getting so much trub into the fermenter. By that point in the day I'm too tired to whirlpool and then carefully siphon the wort so I usually just pour it through a paint strainer bag but that doesn't really seem to do much. Oh well, can't say that its really affected quality. With a nice cold crash I end up with a pretty compact layer in teh end.

 

This stuff is awesome.
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/fermcap-s-1-oz.html

 

Thanks! I'll give it a shot. Probably still get a 20gal brew kettle though so I can make 10gal batches, etc.

 

I have a 15 gal brew kettle and I sometimes make 12.5 gallon batches. I fill it up to near the top and have never had a boilover since I have started using foam control. It is supposed to be good for head retention as well.

 

I hate waiting for the wort to come to a boil and having to watch it and deal with it.

Most recently though I failed to put my manifold in my mash tun. I only noticed it after I had already dumped 5lbs of grain and water into it and started to mix it. Not only was it difficult to put together to begin with, it's much more annoying when the copper heats up because of the water. Still hit my mash temp though

 

Wind.

Brewing in even a moderately breezy day is a PITA. Flame blows out (we use low pressure natural gas as opposed to high pressure LP), stuff falls over, papers and cups of hops get blown all over the place. I don't like wind in general, and it just makes brew day no fun.

So if it's a windy day, I don't brew.

 

2 things that have happened way too many times involve dumping wot on the garage floor. I've left the valve open on my kettle several times when I start the runoff, nothing gets the heart racing like the sound or liquid hitting concrete. The other time is at the end-I use my pump to recirculate the wort through a counterflow chiller and a coil sitting in an ice bath, then back to the kettle. I've had the clamp on the return end come loose a couple of times sending wort cascading across the garage floor. I think I finally got that problem solved forever by drilling a hole in the kettle handle, inserting the 1/2" copper tube and then pinching the end so it cannot come back out of the hole once the hose is attached.