Homebrew Beer Blog

A little departure here, but something that others may find interesting.

With the arrival of baby Ben, we're looking to economize. Cable TV is the top of the list. I've read a lot on digital TV, and what's particularly cool about it is if it you have a halfway decent signal, you'll have a perfect picture. There's no ghosting, no fuzzy, no funky colors, no buzzing sound. So, it seemed I could get a great TV, but just fewer channels.

We watch some misc cable channels, but the bulk of what we watch in on the Tivo and from the broadcast networks. Everything else is on DVD or can be gotten on DVD from Netflix or the library. So, it seems we can cut the cable to save a good deal of cash with only a minor lifestyle change. The other question was whether to just keep the minimal basic for about $20/mo w/ taxes and fees, or deal with an antenna. I did some research and it seemed I should have no problem getting a decent signal at the house. And with a little upfront outlay, I should be able to have free TV and recover my costs within a year even over the costs of minimal cable.

The other part of the plan was we would keep Tivo. We're big fans, and we figure the Tivo will maximize the channels we get for our entertainment.

Here are a couple sites I used to gear up my migration to the antenna:

http://www.antennaweb.org/
http://www.tvfool.com/

These two sites are great for helping decide what kind of antenna to get, and how to point that antenna, and even what you may get over the air. A key point for me is I didn't want to have to rotate the antenna to use it. I just wanted a good fixed antenna. I was fortunate that I'm there's a cluster of antennas close to the same direction from my house (NBC, FOX, CN, ABC), and the other antennas (CBS, PBS) are close enough to me that I don't need to be pointing at them. Plus, there are some other misc channels with general syndicated programming, So, it looked like I could get away with a fixed directional antenna.

Gear

So, here's a breakdown of what I built. I got a lot of this from Warren Electronics, which seem to have good prices and great people.

Channel Master 4228 Antenna - $50
Heavy Duty Pole (4x - 20ft) - $30
Heavy Duty Wall mounts (4x) - $14
4' Grounding Rod - $5
6 Gauge Copper wire - $25
50' RG-6 Quad Shield Cable - $30
Grounding Block - $1
Channel Master 7777 Pre-Amp - $53

So, in total I was out $208 + shipping. The pre-amp wasn't really needed, but I've got about 100 feet of coax between the antenna and my living room set, so I figured I would do it right, and I'm glad I did. (see below). So Based on my current cable bill, I'd make that back in about four months, and in about 11 months with just basic cable. Sounds good.

I got my $40 coupon things from the Gov and I picked up a cheap-o converter from Walmart for a net $9.

Installation

There are a couple things I considered with the installation. I was originally going to put it up on the chimney, but I started thinking about a few things there. While it was an easy install, I didn't like the idea of putting more stress on the brick chimney with the wind blowing on the antenna. Also, that would be more cabling and I preferred to keep it as short as possible, and finally I was a little paranoid of lighting and I wouldn't be able to give a direct route to ground.

So, I went with a basic pole setup. I attached it to a shed attachd onto the garage, and that let me get inside the shed to build in some supports. I screwed in 2x4 braces into the framing and then I screwed the mounts into that. I used a total of 20 feet of pole. 10 feet is attached to the shed, and 10 feet in the air. this gets most of the antenna peaking over the roof line. I was going to go 25 feet, but felt a little iffy going that high without some kind of guy wire support. As it turns out, there's no need to go higher, so I left it at 20. I was going to make a cement base for it, but got lazy. Instead, I just used four mounts and that should be more than sturdy. Also, the mast poles from Warren are pretty heavy duty. Compared to what I found at Lowes and Menards, these are way better. I wouldn't be all that confident in the lighter poles holding during a good storm.

The cable run is pretty simple. I ran 25 feet of RG-6 quad shielded coax down the pole, tacked it onto the house, through the grounding block, and drilled a whole into the house. From there, I just ran it over to my existing cable splitter. Originally I was going to make my own cable. I've got the tools and cabling and figured I could save $30 or so. Even if you're good at it, I don't recommend it. I suggest buying a quality commercial cables because there would be nothing worse than something coming loose in a January blizzard.

The other big factor was the grounding. It's important to ground both the antenna and mast. It took a little effort figure out where the house ground was. My cable and phone hookups are just tied into the metal pole housing the electrical. Going down stairs with a flash light, I found a big copper wire running from the electric box along the top of the basement wall to the old well pipe. As it turns out, this is exactly where I would be placing my antenna, so that worked out perfectly. It's important to tie the antenna into the house ground, otherwise you will creating a ground loop. You want all electrical energy to be flowing in the same direction, if just to eliminate interference, or worse, keep an electrical spike from running through your equipment rather than the electrical ground. I also used a grounding spike for the mast. I ran a 6 gauge wire down the mast and into the grounding spike, and then tied the spike into the house ground. The idea here is first the mast ground should discharge any electrical energy, which should minimize the changes of a lightening strike, but in the event that happens, I'm providing a direct path straight down. For the grounding block, I just drilled a hole into the basement next to the hole for the antenna coax. I ran the copper wire around the house ground wire and then tied it into the block.

As it turned out, I've got about 100 feet of between the antenna and my main TV. I've got a powered amp I used with cable TV, and the signal was decent. Most my channels were coming in at 60-75%, with my lower power PBS down in 50%. CBS and PBS was behind me, but only about 8 miles away. I would get occasional broken signal, but with some antenna tweaking I had it pretty good for all channels. I tried using just a good splitter, and the signal went way down. Most channels were down to 40% and the PBS was marginal and the CBS broke up frequently. It seemed I need an amp of some kind to get my signal to the living room, so I decided to spring for a pre-amp and do it right.

Basically, by running an amp in-line I was boosting the signal, but also boosting any noise I picked up along the way. Boosting the signal at the antenna will always give a superior signal. I figured since I was in this deep already, might as well go another $50. This increased my signal well and got most my channels into the low 80's and PBS up to 60%. Everything came in well, and I was satisfied. The pre-amp seems highly rated with good power and minimal noise. It's kind of nifty since you put the amp up on the antenna, plug the antenna into the amp, then run the coax down into the house. At the TV, yo plug the coax into the power adapter, then from the adapter into the TV/converter. This send power the amp so you don't need to run a dedicated power up the mast.

Tivo HD

The final piece of the puzzle I decided to upgrade the Tivo. The thought process here was I wanted to get a higher end converter anyway since the cheap one was just for testing. I wanted something with component out, and since digital TV had 5.1 surround sound, that would be cool to plug into my stereo. These specs are pretty high end boxes, and I figured one would run me $110-$120 even with the $40 coupon. Contrast this with a refurbished Tivo HD, at $180, basically I'd kick in an extra $60. And I could probably sell my old Tivo on Craigslist. In exchange, I'll get higher quality Tivo viewing since the Tivo records in HD and converts down to SD, I'd get 5.1 sound both live and recorded, and I'd get dual tuners. And also, whenever we get around to getting a HD set, our Tivo will be ready. So, it seemed like a good move. Not surprisingly, the Tivo seems to have a better tuner than the Wallyworld special. This boosted up my signal into the mid 90's, and PBS up into the upper 70%. Bonus.

So, now I'm getting very strong signals that's actually much better than cable. The down converted HD looks fantastic, and my digital cable would occasionally scramble out on me, so the antenna is actually proving to be more reliable. Plus, I'm getting 5.1 sound. All in all, this is a good upgrade, plus a money saver.

I was looking through the site here and noticed I've left out a letter in my HERMS setup, the Recirculation. I recently posted about my pump setup and purge valve, so I'll cover two types of recirculation in my system: mash and chilling.

Mashing

The mashing recirculation is fairly simple. There are numerous ways of making a HREMS as I described in the theory post. My system recirculates continuously, so there's nothing really special going on with the pump controls. I just turn it on, and eyeball the flow rate to about 1/3 speed or so. The pump runs during the entire mash. For more details on the HERMS, check out the HERMS page.

One other item of interest here may be the wort return to the mash-tun. You'll want to have some system that will return the wort as evenly as possible so not to promote channeling and unnecessary aeration. I use a pretty simple setup where I have a length of silicone tubing coiled on top of the mash. It creates a gentile whirlpool above the mash, which I think helps with channeling.

Chilling

The chilling recirculation is based off of Jamil's whirlpool setup, but I've taken it up a notch with the double chiller. Jamil's site has a lot of details that's not worth rehashing here, but basically what I do is I dunk the chiller in the kettle during the last 15 minutes, then start recirculating boiling wort. When I kill the flame and start the chill, it knocks down the temps very quickly. I can get down to 10+ my chill water temp in about 10-15 minutes and to my chill water temp in about 20 to 25. When the tap water is running down to in the 50's this goes real quick.

For those concerned with DMS, the SMM precursor should be halted below 140, and this setup knocks the entire kettle down below 140 in like a minute. Also, hop alpha acid isomerization will end the faster you get the entire wort off of the boil, plus that should help retain more of the volatile hop aromas. Compare these two items to a plate or counter-flow setup where much of the wort stands at near boiling for the duration of the chill. The importance of this is debatable at this scale, but it's still kind of cool.

I used to own a Therminator and hands down this system is a considerable net time savings, not to mention piece of mind about cleaning and sanitising. To sanitize, I just stick in the boil and to clean I just dunk it in a bucket of cleaner (made from waste chill water, which later gets dumped into the boil kettle for cleaning) and hose it off to dry.

To build the chilling setup, I found a coil of 1/2 ID copper tubing at the scrap yard. I cut off a 2-3 foot length and gave it a slight S-shaped bend Then I soldered an 90-degree arm, then a at the end a 45-degree elbow fitting. This gives me my directed jet. I just did it this way to avoid messing up the copper with my bending, plus I was already soldering the pipe fitting on the other end. If you can get a bending tool, that may worth the small investment.

The whirlpool action isn't anything dramatic. It's just enough to get some movement in the kettle, which is really all you need to really improve chilling. I don't think the pump is sufficient to actually whirlpool trub, so usually after I'm done chilling, I'll pull it out, then give it a gentile spin with a big sanitized stainless spoon, then let it settle out as I clean up. If I'm using whole hops with my false bottom, I don't even bother whirlpooling the trub since the wort is pretty well filtered by the hops do to the recirculation.

Flow Rates

Flow rates can be important. In the mash, you shouldn't need to recirculate a whole lot of volume, and like I said, I usually go w/ my pump open only about 1/3. The mash can gum up the works, however, and prime spots are cheap barbs/nipples and quick disconnects. For chilling, it's perhaps an even bigger deal with each restriction lowering the flow. Less flow, poorer the whirlpool and longer the chilling.

To really improve my pump flow in both of these tasks was to swap out all my hose barbs with full bore connectors, and then replaced my disconnects with tri-clover fittings. Anything that obstructs or restricts the flow makes a significant difference, not only in the flow rates, but in clogging the works up. Take note of the differences in hose barbs. You will likely find similar differences between ball valves, so keep an eye on the bore size. More than once, I had various disconnects and cheap connectors choke up the works with pellet hops and clumps of grain.

When I first got a pump, I was all excited to make my brew day faster and easier. That was until I had to prime it, and it got worse the first time I lost the prime.

The March magnetic pumps are great for brewing, but they're not self-priming. These pumps are not terribly powerful, so what happens is a little pocket of air forms outside the input, or in the head itself, and the pump is a no-go. It's not that bad, but it can take some practice and really sucks when you lose your prime and you have to start swapping hoses to get things working. Fear not, there is a better way.

I built this little stand for my pump a while back and it has worked perfectly. This is my second stand, the first was a little more temporary, but I learned a couple things along the way. I never really thought about putting the pump on my actual brew stand, although that is a popular configuration. It's kind of nice to have everything there, but I like moving the pump around. My hoses don't need to be quite as long, and I can use the pump for things off of the brew cart. Specifically, I can pull out my chiller and put it in the drive way without having to bring the whole cart with me.

To start off, the idea here is first the pump must be positioned below your brewing vessels. If it's not, you're going to have troubles. So, you want it as close to the ground as you can, or at least sufficiently below your kettles.

I configured the pump head so the inlet is facing down. I used it facing up, and the default sideways, and feel this works better. The idea here is that gravity will push water up through the pump head, and air will come out the output or purge valve. This will successfully flush the head of air, and successfully eliminates that pocket of air, since air wants to rise. It seems to me, by pushing from the bottom, I get all the air out, plus air wants to go up anyway.

The second part of the design is the purge valve. Here, I just took a T fitting and some nipples with a couple 1/2-inch valves. I also put a barb on the end just so it doesn't dribble all over the place. The idea of the purge valve is you close the main valve, and use the purge valve to flush out the head. This is key, otherwise will have to use your output hose, and that can be a pain if you already got it connected. Plus, generally you need to lay below the pump itself, which is usually the ground, and that's probably not the most sanitary thing with cooled wort.

Lastly, there's the stand itself. This is a sturdy little stand which is nice to keep the pump off of the ground where it gets wet. I run the power straight down from the ceiling where I have an extension cord reel. This makes it safer working with electricity and liquid.

So, to recap, here is how I prime with this setup. Lets say I'm setting up to whirlpool w/ my chiller.

1 - Connect the input hose to the boil kettle and output to the whirlpool return/chiller

2 - Close all valves on the pump and open the kettle valve.

3 - Open the purge valve, and wort from the kettle will flow into the pump head and out the purge valve. Close the purge valve.

4 - Turn the pump on, then open the purge valve again until I get a strong stream, which is usually just a second.

5 - Close purge valve and open the main valve.

That's it. If for some reason I lose prime along the way, I just repeat steps 2-5.

For parts here, this is a March 809-HS pump, which is pretty standard in the homebrew shops. I use 1/2-inch ID silicone tubing. I got the stuff from McMaster-Carr. If you've you have got the extra change, I'd recommend getting the thicker/stiffer stuff rather than the real soft. Less kinking and every once in a while I'll get a pin hole leak in the thin stuff. Not really relevant to this post, but I upgraded my pump config for tri-clovers instead of the hose barbs. That just lets me disassemble easier for storage and drying. All stainless parts are 1/2", and the little stand was built with 2x4's.

Something that always nagged on me is how much oxygen is really getting into my stir plate starters. I just pitch the yeast, toss the starter on the plate, and expect it to work out. I either cover the starter loosely with foil or using a foam stopper. I figure this must allow some gas exchange as it's a popular system, but to me, intuitively it would seem once the oxygen in the head space is dissolved and consumed, not a whole lot would replace it. Perhaps if it was a wide mouth container, there would be a greater exchange, but I'm not so sure with these Erlenmeyer flasks.

So, I tried something different. I got a couple starters going this week, but this time I put a hose from my aquarium pump into the head space. The pump has a sterile filter, and the starter is loosely covered with foil. In theory here, the pump will push sterile air into the head space and excess will vent out. The spinning of the stir plate will absorb fresh O2 constantly. An alternative could be to just use an air stone, and perhaps skip the stir plate all together, but I think there would be lots of foaming. So, I just put the tube to deliver fresh air to the head space rather than the starter itself.

This might be excessive, but I can't see it hurting. Worst case I'm just entertaining myself. I don't have anything real concrete for results, but just visually there might be something here. I'll keep playing around with this and maybe I'll do some experiments. I was thinking of decanting off the starter into graduated cylinder and comparing yeast volumes.

Anyone else try anything like this?

UPDATE 07/02/08: I did three batches w/ this technique with so far positive results. I did a stout, Alt and a lager at 67, 60, 50 degrees, respectively. All three had quick starts and vigorous fermentation. It seems this technique produces more viable and vital yeast than just the stir plate alone. I'm curious how they turn out.

A week or so ago I took the BJCP Exam. I almost took it last year, but things get busy, priorities change, and suddenly the exam is a couple weeks away and my head throbs thinking about all the material. Here in MI, it's traditionally given once a year, so during the past year I read a bunch (as seen in the Books section) and brewed a bunch. I just bit the bullet and stuck with my plans to take it, even though I could have used more time.

This is kind of a weird goal for me. I first got into entering competitions a couple years ago to bring my brewing up to the next level. Things got better, but I'm on a continuous improvement plan. As time went on, I started getting lower returns on my score sheets. Basically, if it wasn't technically flawed in the check box sense, I didn't get much useful feedback. Metals/ribbon are cool, but I know my beer could get better, and these guys weren't telling me much to help. Clearly the beer wasn't blowing anyone away to give me something in the mid 40's, nor was it good enough to consistently place. Something was lacking, and I can only assume the judges didn't know how to articulate this in a meaningful way. The other problem was just plain crappy sheets that said nothing. Just kind of arbitrary scoring and comments, with no indication of why aroma was 8 out of 12, nor what could make it 12 out of 12. I'm not even getting what they say. I can respect an opinion, provided it's within the stated guidelines. I just want an some kind of it out from there, but I can't read someone's mind as to why they took off four points, provided there actually was a reason. It gets a little tiring to pack up six bottles, and then pay the shipping and entries, wait a month and get "nice aroma."

So, I felt a few different things about the BJCP.

1 - I didn't want to rely on someone to tell me about my beer. Anonymous, objective feedback is enormously valuable, but I wanted to stop sending in beer to see what they think/detect. Instead I wanted to send in beer of which I have a strong opinion, and then see if others share it.

2 - Contribute to a solution. BJCP is a great program, but I think it has some weak judges, or at least judges who don't share my opinions of amateur brewing.

The conflict here is that I'm in this to improve my beer. I don't particularly enjoy judging other people's beer. Usually it involves a 1-2 hour drive and killing an entire Saturday. I would rather try and improve my beer by actually brewing -- which doesn't involve travel and only takes up 1/2 a Saturday. But, each comp is a great learning experience, if you make the most of it. There are great judges out there. Every judge and strengths and weaknesses, and getting paired with a good judge or even just recognizing other's strengths, is a great way to learn. There are also many styles. And many defects. If you judge long enough, you'll keep getting exposed to different things. Basically in one day I'll get hit with 25-30 different beers. I really think this will greatly help pick out issues and help fine tune my brewing.

3 - A third side reason here is to simply understand the whole process. As much as I want feedback, winning is cool. It's pretty eye opening to start judging after sending so many beers to competitions. Sometimes I marvel that I managed to win anything. :D But, more to the point, it's given a bit more respect to the judges. The whole BJCP thing is a learning experience, for both the brewers and judges.

I think it takes an exceptional judge to be an expert in any category they're judging, in addition to a skilled and knowledgeable brewer. I think that if you're mostly either a beer geek or home brewer judge, you're at a big disadvantage. If you never had more than one of the classic examples of a style, and had them a few times, brewed it yourself, and perhaps even visited where it's brewed, it's hard to have a deep understanding of that specific sub-style. You can read about it all you want, but that's not the same as experiencing the range the style has to offer. And I mean range, not just one example, or even the best example. On the flip side, I think it's not too hard to brew a good beer, but you have to be a really great brewer to consistently brew great beer. To get there, you need to know how to make it happen, and I think that's the only way to really know the difference between a good and great beer. So basically I'm saying you need to be a great brewer to be a great judge. Reading about brewing and knowing great beer is just like only reading about a sub-style and knowing it.

Anyways... a bit of a soapbox. I've got a lot of opinions here, so maybe I'll revisit someday. If you've got something to share, please do in the comments.