Back in the spring, I ran out of malt extract, and with Ölvisholt promising to supply grain (and hops) to homebrewers, I thought it might be time to switch to all grain brewing. Except, that I'd had problems finding a suitable cooler/esky conversion cheaply. I could never quite find what I was looking for in Byko or Húsasmiðjan, and with it being summer, I simply did other things, and steadily drank down my stockpile. The horror of returning to buying normal beer at full retail, and having to pay bar prices for what I would normally consider to be just a "house beer" got rather tiring though, and so with autumn fast turning into winter, I decided to stop trying to skimp and save and simply get this thing DONE.
I took a trip to the nice gentlmen at Landvélar who've helped me before. They might not be as cheap as Vörukaup, but they're nice people all told. I even spoke only icelandic for the first half, until we ran into some issues and options. (Who really wants to learn the names for obscure plumbing parts in more than one language?) Anyway, 4310 ISK, problem solved.
- 1/2" Brass nipple, "extra long" (Nippill, kopar)
- 1/4" ball valve (kúluloki)
- 2 x 1/4" by 8mm hose barbs (slönguengi)
- 2 x 1/2" -> 1/4" reducers (nippilmúffa)
- 2 x "special" washers. (stainless rings with rubber insets?) They were the recommendation for water sealing. (Usit HR.Rörg ?)
Yay! I would have gone for 1/4" throughout, but they didn't have 1/4" long nipples. Maybe 1/2" will drain faster, but that's not a critical item in my mind. It has to drain through the hose braid anyway. Oh yeah, I already had some hosebraid from some salvage. I'd had the cooler for a while, bought during the summer from Rúmfatalagerinn for 1990 ISK
The closest holesaw I had was a little bit too tight, but with some elbow grease, and being thankful for the plastic nature of plastic, I forced some threads into the plastic and wound it all together. Some teflon tape for the outside joints up to the ball valve, and it was time for some testing! And hooray! no leaks! Now I'm ready for action! I'll try and brew my first all grain batch over the weekend, see how it all goes. (This is mostly setup following Denny Conn's methods...
