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Post by Alex Bullock on Feb 9, 2016 17:30:13 GMT -5
Hey guys, Our next meeting will be on March 1st. Again, we'll be meeting at Sam's Percolator at 87 Thames St.Our subject for the second meeting was Brewing Equipment. We're interested in the following: - List of equipment and rough costs
- General description of your process (extract, partial mash, all grain, fly or batch sparge, no-chill or immersion chiller etc)
- Average brew day length
- Future improvements
- Pictures
Feel free to post pictures of your setup in this thread! That way we don't have to look on your tiny smartphone screen. I will be posting a new thread to go over who is bringing samples. More details to follow.
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Post by Alex Bullock on Feb 17, 2016 9:56:12 GMT -5
I brewed an American Pale Ale this past Monday so I've got some pictures to share. I live in a rental and brew in the unfinished (and uninsulated) garage. I'll preface my post with the fact that I'm a bit of a nerd and like to geek out on my homebrew set up. A lot of it is unnecessary to make good beer, but I try to limit the amount of actual work I have to do and make my process more consistent and predictable. My apologies for novel below, I sometimes get out of hand when talking about my set up. My equipment list is: - Hot Liquor Tank: Regular 5 Gallon cylindrical igloo cooler (used to be my old mash tun)
- Mash Tun: ~12 Gallon rectangular Coleman cooler w/ homemade copper lautering manifold and homemade copper sparging manifold
- Boil Kettle: 15 Gallon OBKettle w/ Thermometer, 3 piece ball valve, 1/2" side pick up tube and a sight glass
- Pump: 110VAC Brew pump (in my experience this pump is pretty bad. I have priming issues and can never get it to work)
- Fermenters: lots and lots of glass carboys. 6-6 gallon, 2-5 gallon and 1-3 gallon. I have some buckets too that I use sometimes.
- Homemade brew stand, 3 tier gravity fed.
- Bayou Classic KAB6 "Banjo" Burner (210,000 BTU)
- Homemade 25' 3/8" copper immersion chiller
This is my system and I get consistent beer out of it. I regularly brew 10 gallon all-grain batches, but sometimes do 5 gallons. When I first started I was batch sparging and it works great, but I decided to switch to continuous sparging because I can more or less set it and forget it. I also love fiddling around and building stuff so it was also a good excuse to make my own copper manifolds. I chill with an immersion chiller and can get 11 gallons of boiling wort down to 66F in about 20 minutes in the winter, but during the summer it can take up to 45 minutes.
An average brew day length is 7 hours for me. I usually have to wait about an hour for my strike/sparge water to get up to 180F, then fill my mash tun with the strike water and wait for the tun to heat up and the water to reach strike temp. I mash for an hour almost always (I get full starch conversion after about 30 minutes but continue for another 30 minutes to keep my process consistent). I always start heating the runoff in the kettle once I get an inch or two of liquid in there so I can denature the enzymes and lock in the sugar profile as well as reduce the time spent to reach a boil. I boil as normal and stick my chiller in at the 15-20 minute mark. Once chilled, I'll use the chiller or my stainless spoon to get a whirlpool going and let it sit for 15-20 minutes to let all the trub settle out in a cone. I designed my brew stand so everything can be gravity fed, so I can go directly from the kettle into a 6 gallon carboy. From there I'll oxygenate with my 2 micron stone (I don't have a flow meter to measure the amount of oxygen, but I just use experience and have good luck with about 1 min of oxygen for 1.060ish ales.
I have a converted mini-fridge as a fermentation chamber, however I will only use it on big beers, lagers or 5 gallon batches. My house is almost always 68-70F upstairs and anywhere from 57-65F in the basement. For my typical ales I have good results chilling to 66F, pitching and letting it ferment upstairs until complete, then sometimes I'll move the carboy downstairs for some cold conditioning. I'll use my ferm chamber if I have a beer I want to ferment cool, like really big beers or lagers. I will alternate using dry yeast, liquid yeast, starters, harvesting and repitching but my preferred method nowadays is to use dry yeast, then harvest and repitch into another batch.
Improvements.. I want to make a 50' 1/2" immersion chiller with a whirlpool attachment so I can whirlpool and chill at the same time. This way I can put the lid on the pot and let it chill without stirring it and exposing to air. I currently have to lift the 5 gal hot liquor tank from the ground to the top level and it's a huge PITA and pretty dangerous considering it's HOT liquor. Ultimately I want an electrically heated hot liquor tank and a direct-fire mash tun to add more control and, frankly, reduce the amount of work.
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Post by Christy on Feb 27, 2016 19:10:33 GMT -5
I also took a few pictures while brewing last weekend. After starting out with just a Cooper's DIY brewing kit almost 2 years ago, I've added to and experimented with a few things. I am still in the process of figuring out my ideal setup, but I'm getting closer. My equipment: - Victoria grain mill (It's a pretty good workout with 6-8 pounds of grain)
- New addition: converted Rubbermaid 5 gallon square(ish) cooler mash tun
- 7 gallon enamel canner for my boil kettle and a couple of large pots for heating strike/sparge water
- Homemade 30' x 3/8" copper immersion chiller
- 7 gallon fermenter (from Cooper's kit) with drop tube. Doubles as my reservoir for de-chlorinated water while brewing.
I brew 6 gallon batches in my kitchen and use the stove which is why I'm limited to extract or partial mash...anything over 4 gallons just doesn't boil. Currently I do a partial mash and brew days are around 6 hours. This last batch, I tried a 3 gallon almost-all-grain, just to see if I could do smaller all grain batches. It is possible, but for basically the same time investment, I'll probably stick with the larger partial mash batches. While the water is heating up, I grind my grain and get the cooler in place. After only one use, I think my new MLT is awesome and doubt I'll ever go back to BIAB. I use the mash profile (length of time and temperature) from BeerSmith to match the type of beer I'm aiming for. I batch sparge with 2 equal volumes rather than one larger one (for no real reason other than that's what I like to do). I also start heating the runnings right away, for the same reasons as Alex. The boil is pretty standard, with any malt extract added near the end to avoid poor hop utilization. Instead of boiling my chiller with the wort, I just sanitize it really well. It usually takes less than 10 minutes to cool 3-4 gallons to 20C (68F) or so. Once cool, the wort gets carried down to my "clean room" in the basement (another reason not to exceed 4 gallons or so) where it's poured/strained into the fermenter and topped up to the batch volume. So far, I've only used dry yeast, sometimes pitching another batch (or cider) onto the yeast cake. The room is between 64F (winter) and 73F (summer). I have no way to control temperature except to put the fermenter right by the heating vent to warm it up in the winter or in my cool room if needed in the summer. Seems to have worked out so far. Improvements: I definitely see a better grain mill in my future, and a "real" boil kettle would be nice but isn't necessary yet.
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Post by Christy on Feb 27, 2016 19:13:48 GMT -5
A couple more pictures...
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Post by erieshoresbrewery on Feb 29, 2016 6:22:29 GMT -5
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Post by crumudgeon on Mar 4, 2016 13:40:00 GMT -5
The weather kept me from the meeting this month. Looking forward to next month's meeting.
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