Recent content by hermsfun

Brewing 25 gallons tonight, halfway through the mash... Beautiful color so far!

I did something similar this past year with a new 55 gallon barrel. My friends and I brewed a higher gravity beer fermented primary in the barrel and sampled it until it was getting too oaky. We pulled that and added a Flanders red. So far it has been sitting there for 4 months and hasn't picked...

I couldn't handle waiting on my Flanders. I sampled often and I think it helped having all of the oxygen exposure. My Flanders has a nice twang to it now its about a year old. A friend of mine did a Flanders in a better bottle and kept opening for samples (because it tasted so good). He ended...

Valves came from oscsys.com and they can run anywhere from 12 to 24V DC. They have been working great... We're up to 150 gallons so far this year!

So I have been brewing with a bunch of friends and we have 25 gallons of Flanders red ready to be put into a barrel. We plan on brewing the last 25 this week. So we found some old whiskey barrels and they just don't smell right... Like poop. I was up in northern Michigan this weekend and came...

Up to 75 gallons done so far... We did a nut brown American wheat and a sweet stout. Software is still being tweaked as we learn what is needed at our finger tips and what can be buried a few tabs deep.

I brewed a Flanders red in November and it is just now getting tasty...(the sour is getting complex). My plan is to pick raspberries this month, freeze them, then throw them in August sometime. I'll prolly let that sit till September and bottle that. Don't bottle too fast because the bugs in...

The hop basket worked ... Kept the hops out but didn't really circulate wort through the basket very well. We need to get a bigger more porous screen!

Dumping the mash... Worked great!

There are three way valves out there... We are using an electronic ball valve but mcmaster and others do carry manual three ways. They basically switch between a common source. They cost a bit more but are cheaper than three two ways...

I made up a quick schematic for the plumbing. It doesn't include the fuel controls or the temperature sensing points. The HLT is still mounted above the mash tun to allow for gravity sparging and pumping to the boil kettle simultaneously.

What about a strong scotch ale. We want something we can enjoy soon and maybe the other barrel can age for the long haul...

My friends and I have two full size whiskey barrels. One we want to eventually want to sour after we use it a few times to get rid of the whiskey essence. We were thinking of a stout but I was wondering if anyone had some good ideas. We can brew 35 gallons of 1.060 because of the size of our...

We only did a 25 gallon batch this time but definitely only think it is 40 gallons like you said. The boil would be pretty exciting at 40 gallons too!

Brewing!!!! Awesome!!!!