First was the crows nest. This is a large piece of PVC piping with bolts sticking out of the sides. The idea is you attach a large hop bag to one side of the PVC and hang it over your kettle by the bolts. Then you just dump your hops and other adjuncts into the pvc/bag and this keeps the ingredients from clogging up you system. I built one of these last year but found I needed to make some improvements after a few brews.
One was the bolts, although they were the correct length I had 4 bolts on the unit which interfered with a lot of tasks we needed to do with the kettle while brewing. So I took out one bolt and switched the angle on 2 of the others to make the crows nest a tripod. The other issue was the smooth outside of the PVC caused the hop bag to slide off while stirring the pot. I took a large piece of PVC cut it down and glued the two pieces together to forma a collar to grip the hop bag more securely.
The next thing I wanted to build was a Counter-Flow Wort Chiller. Chilling a keggle full of wort from boiling down to 70 F with an immersion chiller was extremely time consuming and tedious. I found some plans for a Counter-Flow Wort Chiller online and figured that it would not only speed up my process but make my brewing more efficient. A quick run to Home Depot and I picked up 3/8" soft copper piping, a 5/8" high temp rubber garden hose, and a few 1/2" copper fittings.
The theory of an Counter-Flow Wort Chiller is that you run your wort through a thin copper coil, which is encased in a rubber hose. Through the rubber hose you run cold water in the opposite direction of the hot wort. This essential transfer the heat from the wort to the water and since they two liquids are running in opposite directions the cooling process happens through the entire coil.
After a few hours of cutting and fitting, having some family help me with the soldering, and more than a few curse words I am INSANELY happy to say that this project was a success. Mike and I used the the CFC for the first time at BUZZ's Big Brew Day and it was shockingly efficient. We transferred the wort at a pretty rapid pace through the boil kettle and by the time it reached the carboy the liquid was 62 degrees F.
We had quite a few people ask us about the project and many of them are planning on building one themselves. In fact I was asked to bring the CFC to the next Buzz meeting and give a talk on how it was made.
And finally the bad news. As I said in a previous post Mike and I were a bit stressed at Big Brew. And because of that a few things got overlooked. Including the fact that my refractometer ended up in a cup of water. We were dipping the refract in the water to clean it off and one time it got left in the cup. Well water got into the lenses and made the scale impossible to read. I dissected the refract down to the tiniest piece but sadly I can't get it back to it's former glory. On the upside I am now intimately familiar with how a refractometer works. Shit Happens! I WILL be buying a new one soon.
Cheers