March is pump month

Pump! up the wort; Pump it up, a little more; Getcha wort moving on the kitchen floor

What more fitting month than March to receive a March pump for your birthday? No matter that my birthday was in February, because the birthday present didn't arrive until today. And what a bitchin' birthday present to receive also. This was from my girlfriend (who rocks), and proves that she truly wants me to be happy. Or at least proves that she doesn't DISapprove of my brewing habit. Anyway Atsuko, you rock indeed, and I will take a moment to reflect on what a lucky guy I am every time I use it (even if the hose pops off and boiling wort shoots all over my arm).


[Whew, made it this far with no off-color pump jokes!]


So what am I going to use this for, you may be asking? Why the big to-do over a pump? Well, basically the pump moves liquids around so that you don't have to. One application is to move the freshly extracted wort from the mash tun up into the boil kettle (rather than down, using a gravity feed, after which you have to hoist the heavy kettle up to the burner), and another is moving it from the boil kettle through a plate chiller and into the fermenter. Both of these mean no lifting of heavy containers full of liquid, and potentially spilling them, breaking your back, scalding yourself, or contaminating it with your cooties, all of which can happen when you're hefting mash tuns, brew kettles and carboys around on a busy brew day. So yeah, I'm pretty stoked.


At first, to get familiar with it, I'll just use it to recirculate ice water through the immersion chiller. Hopefully I'll have the inevitable mishaps doing that--aforementioned hose disasters, etc. which will be a lot more tolerable with two degree water than with scalding wort. Also, I will be really happy to only waste say 3 or 4 gallons of water chilling my wort than however ungodly many I waste running the faucet for an hour. After I get more comfortable with it, I'll move on to using it for everything else: MT to BK transfer mainly, and perhaps whirlpooling if I can get that set up properly. More on what that is later, because now it's time to finish this and get on to the next post:


CDA tasting!!!