A raging Friday night..

Evening all. Am mid brew with a 55L batch of 1.079SG Porter which is about to come up to the boil and I thought Id share the loves. The recipe is a bit of a bastard 11kg Pale, 1.4 Crystal 60, 1kg black, 1kg chocolate, 1kg Rye, .6kg Caraaroma, 0.4melanoidin, 0.3kg special B. Obviously aiming for a meal of a beer. Hopping with a small dose of Pac Jade to 20IBu and 200G of Tettnager at flame out and fermenting with 04.

Reason I came on though is a few boys from the forum have been over in the last couple of weeks and were frothing on the setup, suggested I post some pics, so here it is in all of its rough-as-guts glory. Feel free to ask questions. Its electric and running a 3kw element in the kettle. HLT is roughly temp controlled using an STC1000 and a solid state relay switched on the low voltage side with 2 6V phone chargers (to achieve 12V, I told you it was rough ;). I think the element in that is 3kw too as the last blew, inspiring us to put in a float switch and and an RCD too.. Mash Tun is a shitty chinese pot wrapped in some not so shitty timber, pumped full of expanding foam. Has 3 outlets in the bottom of the pot manifolded together to meet the valve so it gets quite even draw through the grain bed. Laser cut false bottom, think I posted the files up for that a while back. Also use one of Chris Banks' sparge arms and fancy pot lid welded to an arm which fits on for the recirc. Camlock everywhere also. Its a pretty sweet setup, could be better in many areas (wouldnt mind adding RIMS to it), but functionally it works and makes nice beer, which is clearly a bonus.