Tuesday, July 24, 2012

The 5th broken temperature controller

I have been blogging/posting so much about our new beer releases that I often forget that I could be sharing some brewery experiences with our readers.

When I came to Yak and Yeti Brewpub over a year ago, I noticed we had four fermentors, but only two worked due to failed temperature controllers and faulty automatic valves.  So I quickly fixed one using a Ranco controller.  These three fermentors did me well until late this spring when I really needed the 4th up and running.  I bit more work and money to get this one working but with another Ranco, I got it running very well.  

One day I noticed the numbers jumping all around and a chirping noise on the older “Refrigeration Tech” brand controller and assumed it was a capacitor or the memory, either way, probably cheaper to replace than to repair so I bought a replacement Ranco.   The day the Ranco was delivered, the last “Refrigeration Tech” brand controller completely went bad, so I had to use this replacement instead and buy, yet another, replacement.   I was hanging on to the last replacement and yesterday the constant chirping noise and numbers jumping occurred on my fermentor that was lagering our Pilsner.  If the beer warmed up too much the batch could have flavor issues.  I quickly changed out the controller with a Ranco (by now I was getting pretty fast at this job) and the beer had only risen 3degF, whew!  All four fixed and onto more important things.

This morning when I came in I heard the same chirping noise and was perplexed because I don’t own a 5th “Refrigeration Tech” controller.  How could the Ranco make this same faulty noise?!  So I went to investigate and all my controllers were working properly.  So I closed my eyes and crept towards the noise and after a bit of searching I found a cricket in the corner doing a “spot-on” impression of the failed controllers.    Jiminy Crickets, I’m glad it wasn’t another controller!

Prost!

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