mmccurdy
Well-Known Member
It's been about a month since my first extract batch, and I've been itching to go all-grain. Fueled by the determination that my first beer is actually turning out pretty well, I decided to give it a shot today.
In the meantime, I picked up ton of stuff on craigslist from a guy who had just moved to NorCal into a small apartment and realized he had no space to brew or store what turned out to be a full pickup truck worth of gear.
Part of this score was pre-cut steel to build a Brutus stand, which seemed perfect since I was planning to go roughly that route anyway. However, before I broke out the welder to build it to spec, I wanted to get a feel for the process to see if I wanted to tweak it in terms of ergonomics or placement of controls, etc.
Here's the result... pretty damn ugly, but it basically served as a mockup for what I'm planning to build:
Because I want to do a HERMS build, I think I'm going to go with another 15 gallon pot for the HLT (vs. the keggle) and the mash tun will sit on the end of the stand behind a heat shield. The cinder blocks prevented me from mocking it up this way, and I realized I'll probably need longer cross members to accommodate everything.
Here's how the day started... bench full of new/used fittings from which I cobbled together my HLT and mash tun:
Since I had previously brewed two IPA's, and I have Guinness on draught, I wanted something light and crisp. Eventually I hope to be good enough to brew up nice crispy Munich Helles type lagers, but I don't think I'm there yet. Besides, at this point in the hobby I don't have the patience to wait 3-4 months to see if I screwed up. I ended up with a kölsch recipe that is heavily based on a few that I found around here (Black Widow Kölsch, Bier Muncher's Krisper Kölsch) and tweaked slightly in Beersmith:
Here's my janky lautering process. I don't have a cool swirly sparge arm, so I inverted my hop strainer thing and used a little wort aerator tip to sprinkle the sparge water semi-evenly over the surface. I also made a little copper nozzle thing to gently swirl my wort into the kettle without upsetting it. The whole thing worked surprisingly well, but next time I definitely need a cool swirly arm that I can watch to pass the time while this whole thing goes down.
Here's a sweet action shot of the boil. If this were animated, you would see slight fluctuations in the steam above the kettle, but alas it's not so you'll have to use your imagination:
Here I am using that very same aerator thing to empty the boil kettle into the carboy.
And here's my plate chiller that I'm still super happy with (thanks Keg Cowboy). I added a thermometer so I could dial in the flow rate to hit exactly 68 degrees (or whatever temp I wanted) at the outlet. Seems to work really well.
Okay, all tucked away in the fermenter and fingers crossed... I did note that the wort is a lot darker than I expected for a very light beer, but I guess this may change during the fermentation and pseudo-lagering that kölsches like? In any case, I'm calling the day a succes.
In the meantime, I picked up ton of stuff on craigslist from a guy who had just moved to NorCal into a small apartment and realized he had no space to brew or store what turned out to be a full pickup truck worth of gear.
Part of this score was pre-cut steel to build a Brutus stand, which seemed perfect since I was planning to go roughly that route anyway. However, before I broke out the welder to build it to spec, I wanted to get a feel for the process to see if I wanted to tweak it in terms of ergonomics or placement of controls, etc.
Here's the result... pretty damn ugly, but it basically served as a mockup for what I'm planning to build:
Because I want to do a HERMS build, I think I'm going to go with another 15 gallon pot for the HLT (vs. the keggle) and the mash tun will sit on the end of the stand behind a heat shield. The cinder blocks prevented me from mocking it up this way, and I realized I'll probably need longer cross members to accommodate everything.
Here's how the day started... bench full of new/used fittings from which I cobbled together my HLT and mash tun:
Since I had previously brewed two IPA's, and I have Guinness on draught, I wanted something light and crisp. Eventually I hope to be good enough to brew up nice crispy Munich Helles type lagers, but I don't think I'm there yet. Besides, at this point in the hobby I don't have the patience to wait 3-4 months to see if I screwed up. I ended up with a kölsch recipe that is heavily based on a few that I found around here (Black Widow Kölsch, Bier Muncher's Krisper Kölsch) and tweaked slightly in Beersmith:
Here's my janky lautering process. I don't have a cool swirly sparge arm, so I inverted my hop strainer thing and used a little wort aerator tip to sprinkle the sparge water semi-evenly over the surface. I also made a little copper nozzle thing to gently swirl my wort into the kettle without upsetting it. The whole thing worked surprisingly well, but next time I definitely need a cool swirly arm that I can watch to pass the time while this whole thing goes down.
Here's a sweet action shot of the boil. If this were animated, you would see slight fluctuations in the steam above the kettle, but alas it's not so you'll have to use your imagination:
Here I am using that very same aerator thing to empty the boil kettle into the carboy.
And here's my plate chiller that I'm still super happy with (thanks Keg Cowboy). I added a thermometer so I could dial in the flow rate to hit exactly 68 degrees (or whatever temp I wanted) at the outlet. Seems to work really well.
Okay, all tucked away in the fermenter and fingers crossed... I did note that the wort is a lot darker than I expected for a very light beer, but I guess this may change during the fermentation and pseudo-lagering that kölsches like? In any case, I'm calling the day a succes.
