While silent I may have been over the past couple of months, inactive I have not.  More about Basil and the Senator’s wedding, and my alleged poisoning of the guests, another time.

A sparge arm, or something to help with sparging has been on my mind for a long time.  I’ve been disappointed thus far with the efficiency of my mashes, and had contemplated a rotating sparge arm with the help of Q.  Anyway, I decided that without a pump to force the water out, it wasn’t worth the hassle of setting up a sparge arm that rotates, so I found  more simple, rigid one to copy here.

Using some of the leftover 10mm copper coil, and borrowing Q’s 1mm drill bits (which I managed to break both of just before I’d finished!), and some 15mm copper pipe to feed the coil (which Q had left over from building his new mash tun manifold).  I used a bit of wood with a grove cut in it to drill the holes in the coil (see piture 1), which happened to fit around my parents’ bread bin nicely (picture 2), before soldering the joints, and leaving the (almost) finished product (picture 3).  I made a bracket out of a scrap bit of wood to hold it to the top of the mash tun.  Will post picture of the whole thing after my next brew day.

More on the other Summer brew projects soon.

It was a delight to see Fendog alive and well today and all fears of mass-poisonings have be alleviated. I’d like to think he came all the way back to hear me preach at church this morning but no, he’s taken a midharvest break to pop over to Oxford to get his hat blocked in time for the next wedding.

It was timely from my point of view – I’d ordered a batch of ingredients before remembering that all the brewing equipment was stashed at the Lab and with Fendog and all his housemates away for the summer, there was no way to get at it. But I now have what I need to get a brew or two done after Fendog popped round with some essential kit including a couple of things he’d rigged up in Q’s workshop whilst back on the farm.

Firstly, he’s fitted a tap and a hop-strainer to the big brew pan we got from the Guru which will be very helpful. Previously we have had to pour or siphon through a seive into the primary fermenter.

Secondly, he’s made a counter-flow chiller! This is used after the boil to bring the temperature of the wort down to be able to pitch the yeast. The treasure trove we got from the Guru included an immersion chiller which is the alternative design. There are several disadvantages with immersion chillers which I will outine in a separate post, and I’m sure Fendog will discuss the design and construction elsewhre, so I’ll just show you the finished product:

The Bulge is due to make an appearance in three weeks, and I’m hoping I can get a couple of brews in before then without the Queen noticing.