Robobrew video question!

Never seen so many gash videos pop up on youtube, watch most of em so far but a few things popped into mind.

In your robo #4 video you mention that there's 3 liters of dead space. How come you don't drain that into your fermentor? The hop gunk is kept into the basket and bag, is this because of the 19lt capacity of the kegs?

Leading into another question: My last two brew-days; I did whirlpool/steep to keep as much shit at the bottom as possible, I also use a strainer over my cooling bucket (I drain my keggle into two smaller stock-pots for cooling, going to rig a new keg soon maybe so I don't have to do this) to strain all the hop shit, but some of it still gets in.

Leading to....: how unimportant is keeping all this gunk out of your fermentor? I try to keep the hop shit out, but some of it still remains and I just don't know if I should care or not.


Also, an unrelated question. Brewed a rye IPA variant of a brew I brewed last year two weeks ago (cold crashing half of it atm), now this was probably the better brew day I have had so far, for the first time I found myself with spare time, no worries and a beer in my hand enjoying a hot Sydney day.

Until.

Boil time.

My keg has the kegking 2200w heating element (the new one), and I could NOT get a good boil on it. It boiled, sure, but I lost (in 1hr30min) about maybe half a litre. The boil was so bad that I extended my boil by thirty min just to get more loss. It looked like a simmer.
Then earlier tonight I thought about it, could I not be cleaning the heating element properly after I use it? Could there be shit on it I haven't got off that could cause it the boil to not be so rigorous? It is absolutely not the same boil as the first few boils the element went through! (boil size was about 28lt).

Thoughts?


p.s I haven't posted in ages, so there's a lot of updates

I did a thing.

I bought a chest freezer off gumtree from a guy, and made arrangements to turn it into a 4 tap keezer (2x19lt and 2x 9.5lt).

The missus is not impressed.

The extention cable is about 3m in length, but I didn't have an issue with past boils as well, in december I managed to get a violent boil (with a stock pot lid over kettle), so not sure where the issue could lie.

Also I have a few questions regarding a keezer.

So I bought this fridge off gumtree and sent an email to the guy who owns the fridge for inner dimensions, here's the pic I sent him:

imgur.com/DjXuBvx

I wanted to know those dimensions, his reply:
X = 43.5cm exactly, &

Y = 30cm

I calculated the cross-Z axis would be 50cm approx.

I measured a keg at the brew shop and the kegs are approx 21cm in diameter, so I should have no problem fitting two kegs, but I was looking as some kegs on ebay and found these kegs:

www.ebay.com.au/itm/Brand-New-19L-Ball-L...1:g:NNMAAOSwfcVUKVgY

www.ebay.com.au/itm/19L-Second-Hand-Ball...7:g:638AAOSwhkRWg02X

www.ebay.com.au/itm/19L-BALL-LOCK-KEG-CO...7:g:6FoAAOSw9mFWLvKI

All three seem to be the same keg, but all three quote 3 different diameter measurements from 21.5cm to 23cm, wtf?

Which is it? I thought about buying some second hand kegs, but I can't if these kegs are greater than 21cm as I only have 43.5cm in width to play with.

But could I fit two kegs diagonal, would it fit? I think it would, but now I am worried that the fridge is going to be too small.

I haven't actually bought the fridge yet, I am going on sunday afternoon to get it and pay for it.

I should have enough room, the dimensions he gave me seem smaller then they are in actual.

The build is going well, the collar is made and the fridge painted, but i havent bought the fittings just yet.

I am looking for a fan, was going to buy a 240v to 12v converter to run a fan inside the cooler, then I found this:

www.jaycar.com.au/Electromechanical-Comp...AC-Thin-Fan/p/YX2509

Think that is over kill? Should that fan be fine? I would wire it to the mains power supply as to have it going all the time, then connect it to the collar inside somewhere