Ok...glad I asked. I thought part of the point of the brewjacket was not needing and immersion cooler.
no, the brewjacket isn't meant to cool from 212 down to 68... i'd be afraid of blowing it due to the demand (thing would have to run on max for hours and hours). it's meant to keep the beer at a desired temp, but only once you're already there (or close).
Guess that's an advantage the Anvil has.
i suppose one could do that... but i wouldn't. when you cool wort quickly, you get something called the cold break: proteins that coagulate and form a sludge. there are differing opinions about how desirable it is to not transfer the break material (there is also hot break, which forms when you first hit boiling), personally i prefer to leave it behind. what i definitely don't want is hop material in my fermenter (at least not until i dry-hop) because leaving plant matter in your beer for the duration of fermentation can result in vegetal, grassy flavors. if you transfer hot wort, break material and the hops will end up in your fermenter. by cooling in the kettle, you allow the break material and hops to fall out.
So leave on stove for 30-45 mins with the top on and keep and eye on the temp gauge so when it gets below 90ish I can transfer. Then set the brew jacket to the desired temp and come back a few hours/a day later to pitch
you can get slightly faster cooling by leaving the top off until you get to around 140*F. until then, you have little risk.
just leaving the pot on the stove to cool in the air is likely to take overnight. not sure how viable that is...
something i did was to carry the pot to the bathroom and put it in a tub filled with cold water. obviously you need to be very, very careful when carrying a pot with 5-6 gallons of recently boiled liquid, and it's pretty heavy (around 60 lbs in my case) but it really cuts down on the cooling time. i would dump out the first tub-full of water once it absorbed all the heat and refill with fresh cold water, sometimes adding ice to the second bath.
a buddy of mine would take half-gallon milk or OJ cartons, clean the hell outta them, sanitize, then fill with previously boiled water, and freeze to make a giant ice cube. he would then carefully cut open the carton and dump in the ice cube. you need to modify you recipe/process a big to accommodate that extra half or full gallon of water you're adding at the end.
but really, an immersion chiller that you hook up to your sink or garden spigot is the way to go.
Don't judge, but went straight extract kit/dry yeast packet for this first brew
wanted to get a feel for all the equipment
do0d, that's exactly what you should be doing. if you're figuring with new equipment, you don't want to deal with anything else. simplifying ingredients/recipe is a pro move. congrats!
Once I feel comfortable, I'll be BAIB'ing for a while
I'm not ready to set up the mash tun and such yet
I know that is the advantage of the two ports on the kettle...
sorry, i don't quite follow the "advantage of the two ports"... please explain
but for now I'm trying a little to future proof my equipment
you'll thank yourself later. trust me.
On that note. I got the Big Mouth Bubbler with the spigiot at the bottome
Didn't think about how that's kind of a liability in the brewjacket
how is it a liability? does it get in the way of the BJ?
I was thinking that I could easily take it from the fermentor to a sanizied brew kettle to add the priming sugars
then use the ball valve to connect a tube to bottle
that's a great idea, never thought of using a kettle for bottling!
i highly recommend getting a
bottling wand. makes bottling soooo much easier. you might need to mcguyver some way to attach it to your spigot.
