Category: contraptions of brewing

On beer brewing and being frugal

In the year 2007 I had a pretty good June, I sold my first house… paid off a bunch of bills accumulated because I was selling a house…. bought my first MAC…. and bought my first home brew kit.

One of those three items is still with me today… go ahead guess… I’ll wait.

Jeopardy Theme plays in background

If you guessed the MAC, you would be close but after 5 years the old laptop couldn’t keep up. Almost all of that first beer brewing kit is still with me and still used in some shape or form. The only casualty has been a glass carboy that cracked when cleaning. For 10 years to still be using most all of the stuff is pretty impressive in my world. Which now 10 years on I’m to a point where I want to step up my brewing operations by don’t want to piecemeal the deal.

So here is the outline of what will become the brew setup 2.0

  • Overall the system will use a “HERMS” process https://youtu.be/PNKcQoGZOpQ though mine won’t be nearly that fancy.
  • Hot liquor heating will come from a second propane stove I have
  • One pump for the entire setup which means I’ll be moving hoses
  • which means quick connects for hoses
  • And I need to get a counter flow chiller

I do have a diagram someplace in one of my cloud drives, but it is not ready for prime time.

So in the mean time… I keep plotting and planning.

And there was a kind of Yellow King Kolsch…

And the last of the extract brews is in the keg… It’s for the Super Bow…. BIG GAME in February… Any whoo it’s a Kolsch style ale so by far the lightest I’ve ever done.  And by light I mean I can’t hide any screw ups in the brewing process.

IMG_2227.JPG

 

With the restart of the brewing hobby (3 batches in the last two months) I’ve moved to a bucket for a primary fermenter (heck of a lot easier to clean) and have moved the carboy to secondary fermenter status.  Previously I was using the keg as the secondary fermenter and ager which led to some funkiness (and not in a good way) to the beer.  The last two batches have employed the carboy for secondary fermentation and the keg for aging with distinctly better results.

And because I’m always looking for a excuse to use my iPhone… here is a time lapse of transfering the Yellow King Kolsch from the carboy to the keg.

The sediment on the bottom of the carboy? That’s after a 24 cold crash…. and I wonder why the other beers tasted kind of funky.

 

Well other then the lines.

Summer Project…

I’ve been thinking recently about what kind of projects I want to do when the weather gets to warm to really brew beer well.

Greg sent me a couple of emails with a idea and I think this just may be what I do.

http://www.oregonbrewcrew.com/freezer/freezer.html

As I look around the internet there are a few more like this one, but the basic concept is the same.

The freezer I have hooked up is only 7C.F. so that I means I will probally forgo the fermentation chamber. I should be able to fit 3 Corny kegs in my freezer if I put the CO2 on the outside.

Of course if I do it right I could also put half and pony kegs in there…. mmmmm Fat Tire on tap.

OK bad thoughts… this could be deadly.

Stay tuned this could be fun.

Can’t drill the bottom…

OK so I planned on this post being all about how I got a freezer hooked up a thermo regulator, drilled a few holes and bam! Had a insta kegarator, well my plans got foiled in a few resepects.

I had planned on going through the compressor compartment… which was to tight for a drill bit and I couldn’t gurantee that I wouldn’t hit the compressor and not break something when I broke through. And on top of that how do you explain to lowes the 4 or 5 holes in a freezer when you bring it back?

Exactly….

So for the time being in true do it yourself fashion, I’ve duct taped the thermo lead to the inside of the freezer and put the CO2 tank and keg in there.

When I actually get around to doing holes I will take pictures…