I found a 225 cfm range hood in stainless steel for a good price. I’m going to make a short run through the window with 7" rigid duct. Whether it works or not I won’t know until I try it. Yes my dehumidifier will also be extra insurance.
One thing I failed to remember is I have to have space when I pull the grain basket up and then fully out after mashing. Right now my work bench is at countertop height. I will have to build a frame to lower the hood to get duct work out of the top and over to the window. Maybe a stainless steel table on wheels that I pull out from under hood. Or I wonder if this would work.
Does your brew stand have wheels? You could just pull out the cart, hoist the grist then scoot it back under the hood… You’ll need to have something to catch the drips…
A couple Brewers I know do this with their exhaust/range hoods… They claim the hood works so well, their wives can’t smell when they brew!
Sneezles61
When we had a basement (crawl space at house, slab at condo now) I used a hand me down stove hood vent from my dads remodel. Think it was harvest gold. I just pulled the dryer vent hose temporarily while brewing. Your setup make that look pretty lame.
Major downside is my work bench is wood but I think I’ve come up with a plan to be able to pull the basket out. I made a platform on wheels with a couple tracks. I will make a couple end pieces and a couple moveable stops. I can hang my pulley from the ceiling to the left to hoist basket. I think it should work. My element cord should be long enough.
A wooden proto type… I hope to redesign my brew room this coming winter… and that’s how I’ll handle the pulley problem… Just pull the cart from under the vent hood, lift out the basket and push the cart back under…
It just the way it’s going to be… Right?
Sneezles61
So the rolling platform worked great. Using an IC not so great. Really killed the boil. Now propane system that is a no problem as it ramps back up quickly. I pulled the hop basket out and threw the grain basket back in to keep the chiller off the element. Then threw in last hop addition. My sink is about 30 ft from brew area. So I bought a 27 gallon container to keep the hot water for cleaning. Well I put that next to my bench. I didn’t really have a long enough hose to run it back to the sink area. It filled up fast before reaching my pitching temp. So I had to shut off water. I decided to recirc while chilling to speed it up back into the basket. So then when I used the pump to transfer into my conical it the wort stopped before the kettle was empty. There was about a gallon or so stuck in the grain basket. Which was a pain to pull out and pour into the kettle.
So I have a couple things I need to change. First I need to use my Jaded straight counterflow chiller and recirculate until I reach pitching temp or use the included plate chiller (which I don’t really like not knowing how clean it is even though it works really well). I also need to either run a copper water supply to my area from the nearby water heater or make some sort of pvc setup that runs water to my brew room at the floor to sink and has garden hose connectors on either end to attach to faucet and chiller. Some kind of hot water return back to the sink area or just throw the discharge hose out the window and skip saving the water (which doesn’t make me feel great).
It’s not like you are throwing contaminated water out the window… I believe it will soak back into the ground and be used again… Now if you were in California… That’d be a different story…
Sneezles61
Water usage is always a concern of mine but it’s just a part of brewing unfortunately. Chilling is the wrost part just watching all that water flow, unless you want to do it the Aussie way and just let it sit overnight and chill naturally.
In the spring and summer I’ll run a hose from my plate chiller(which I love and think you’re overthinking) to the pool. Otherwise it goes on the ground or into the floor drain to be pumped out by my sump pump. We live in a rural area and have a well so I feel like @sneezles61 it will filter back into the aquifer and become drinking water again. Please don’t burst my bubble.
Your probably right I’ll just end up using the plate chiller. I normally save a 5 gallon bucket or two of the hottest water for some cleaning and “water the grass” with the rest.
We had a one dusting of snow and one minor ice storm this winter. The rest was just rain. Very mild winter. I think the average temp in February has been about 20 degrees above normal.
Flushed out my plate chiller pretty well last night. Going a little further today. Threw it into a 2 gallon bucket with some ABW and hooked up my pump to flush for some time. Clean my pump and hoses at the same time. Switching the inlet and outlet every so often. Then I’ll flush it with a couple buckets of hot water. How do you drain them well? Seems like I can shake it even after it seems empty and hear some water in there.
