Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Keg Trackers

HomeBrewing is all about creating gadgets to make our hobby better.  For me the simplest of tasks is always the most procrastinated.  Like taking notes on what beer is in what carboy.  Over time I have created logs with the carboy #'s to track cleaning, beer styles and hopping schedules.  The only real thing I have to show for my tracking system is a couple missed dry hopped beers including my IPA hopped Porter currently in the keggor.

Sometimes the best solution just comes to you when you are not really looking for it.  While cleaning our shop I stumbled into a 500 pack of clear shirt tags.  After thinking about the possible work uses for these I launched them over my head into the dumpster.  About halfway in the air my brewing side of the mind kicked in an idea.  Keg Trackers....  With the help of some neatly crafted brewing slips I could wire tie them onto the carboy, then to 2ndary and onto the keg for final storage/serving.  This wire tie idea morphed into using old Cat5 cable that has been striped.  A neat trick a buddy told me about when I wired our new shop.

So the layout was easy, create something that can track all the information that the brewer needs during the fermentation to kegging.  My 1st idea was layout this to the right.

After using the tracker for a couple of months and about 6 brews, I have added a OG and FG area on the tracker.  If I need more information I just pull it out and write on the back of the Keg Tracker. 

I love it so far.  I have lost all the notepads and booklets that tracked my homebrew by keg and carboy #'s.  I try to update this blog for keg information and serving tap numbers but this Keg Tracker is now my ultimate beer tracking system. 

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