Success!

So, having finished making my immersion heater and insulating jackets, I found the time to put down a new brew. It's an ale with honey making up the bulk of the extra sugars.

Anyway, I hooked the immersion heater up to my arduino thermostat, with the vat snug in its wet suit, and off it went. I did, however, however, have a slight hiccough with the thermostat. Before plugging it in and leaving it, I decided to do a double-check that everything was working fine. It wasn't. Long story short, my power supply wasn't stable enough to form a stable reference voltage, so the temperature reading varied by +/- ~15 degrees C. Ridiculous... Anyway, I plugged the arduino into my laptop, plugged the charger in, and left the whole lot looking after the beer.

6 days later, it was bottling time.

Pictures ahoy.

The two lovely wet suits, dutifully awaiting the literal and proverbial 'chop', alongside their soon-to-be best friends, the 5 litre jar complete with cider on the left, and the 30 litre vat on the right.

One leg removed to make the sleeve for the jar.

Completed sleeve, I tucked a bit of scrap in to complete the sleeve.

And here's the vat in it's wet suit. Right on the front you can see a line of rough stitches, there's another one just on the edge on the right, these join a panel in to make the sleeve big enough to cover the vat. I also cut out a little slot for the tap.

I would show you the immersion heater, but I haven't got any photos of it, and it's pretty dull anyway. I just bought a length of aluminium tubing that was slightly too small to go over the end of the cartridge heater, then drilled one end out to 8mm, the diameter of the heater, and araldited the heater in. The tube is about 300mm long, and has a terminated mains cable coming out the other end ready to plug into the power outlet from my thermostat.

Wetsuits and cartridge heaters

Following the advice of Anonymous, I have bought a cartridge heater, found on ebay for under AU$8. It's 220VAC, 400W, which is more than I need, but not way too much, It will probably take at least a fortnight to arrive, and so I'm going to make the glue gun heater anyway, especially considering that I will need two heaters eventually anyway, as I brew in both a small 5L jar and a big 30L vat, sometimes simultaneously. Also, I have a small brew going at the moment, into which I would like to place a heater as soon as possible.

Insulation: I want thermal insulation for my vats, as I think I mentioned. I called up ACT foam and rubber and Clarke Rubber to ask after various foams for this purpose. I was quoted $39.90 p/sm for some stuff called 'form fit', which sounded quite good, or $120 for 2 square metres of neoprene. Being a cheapskate, I decided to find another source of neoprene for my insulating jackets. Wetsuits.

So, today on my way home from uni I stopped in at some op shops and picked up two absolutely hideous wetsuits, one for $15 and one for $20. The leg from one wetsuit provided me with an almost ready-made jacket for my 5L jar, and the trunk of the other, plus a strip from the trunk of the first, make up a jacket for the 30L vat.

I'll post some pictures soon.