Anyone brew their own BEER??

[forgeblast]

I have the wort chiller, but when doing big batches 10 gallons I need to be able to cool to pitching time. Normal pitching time is somewhere in the 80's for me. I hit the hot wort with 3-4 seconds of o2 and then pitch. I have never had a stuck batch.
I started with a normal stock pot, and boiled a gallon or two at a time, and had my water in my fermenting bucket, and chilled in my tub. But as i started doing mini-mashes, and all grain I wanted a bit more control over my temps. I bought a bigger pot (instawares.com has some good deals, mine are all aluminium), and a wort chiller. This helped out a lot. Next I went to kegging due to how long it was taking to bottle. I used to use pin/ball (soda) kegs but I have now been reusing my sixtel kegs.

is my system. Its called a brutus 10. The plans were free in a homebrew magazine and I spent a few years building it.

show some of my hops

I have about 12 plants, I get gallon bag's full of them every year. My plants I bought from thymegarden.com and they are easy to take care of. Put in ground and add something for it to grow on.

When fermenting, there is a big range to where you can ferment in. I use safeale s-04 its an ale yeast. I ferment in the basement to make sure I dont have temp fluxes. 64-72 is the normal recommended (for s-04), but you can find some like the s-05 which can handle from 59-75 degrees. The bucket you ferment in will be sealed so no fishtank heaters, they do sell a carboy belt that will let you keep the wort at a higher temp.

 

[RobertN]

Brutus!

The thought has crossed my mind, since my brew kegs and some hardware from my current setup could be used on the Brutus system. I just do not brew enough any more to justify. My gravity feed 10gal system works fine for now.

is my system. Its called a brutus 10. The plans were free in a homebrew magazine and I spent a few years building it.

 

[cqaigy2]

Wow some nice setup! My neighbor grows his own hops as well. I've only help with the brewing, well that's not true, i also will help with the drinking too.

 

[dmccarty]

dmccarty, I watch a lot of "Good Eats" and Alton Brown will by bags of ice. All you have to remember is "A Pints a pound the world around"

Wedge

Alton used ice and I have thought about it, but remember you don't want to contaminate the wort. Alton bought ice, I would have to use what the freezer makes. I am a bit paranoid about using my freezer ice because of contamination but it is most likely an unwarranted worry. Our ice, especially in the winter, can sit unused so another concern was off flavors in the ice.

Later,
Dan

 

[dmccarty]

Great info-- thanks much Dan. Do I understand correctly that you have your own brew store? You sell brewing equipment and/or ingredients?

When I read your description of temperature control, I was reminded of my old photo darkroom days when I used to process all my own color film & slides. Kept everything at correct temperature with fish tanks and heater. Wonder if that might be a possiblity...

Sorry, no I don't own a brew store. I should have phrased that a bit better. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

Speaking of temperature, I used one of those fancy dancy electronic thermometers with alarms and such. POS. I have used 2-3 of these things over the years and they either die or give false readings. The brew kit I bought had an old fashion mercury thermometer that works just fine.

Later,
Dan

 

[dmccarty]

jymbee,

Get on youtube and search for brewing. There is a Canadian who has a channel about making beer and cider. I watched a few of this guys videos and figured if he could do it with his very modest setup, so could I. There are also quite a few other good videos out there was well. I would really like to keg the beer but we don't have a good place to put the keg fridge. The advantage of bottling is that you can have a bunch of different brews waiting to drink but with a keg it gets problematic to have 4-5 different beers. Bottling is a bit time consuming but not bad. To make it go faster I use 22 ounce bottles for the majority of a brew and fill a few 12 ounce bottles to try first and to give away if someone asks. I have taken over two base cabinets to store the beer and I need more space. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

Later,
Dan

 

[Lou66]

My granddad and dad made home brew or choc beer and also made moonshine,, I would carry the sugar to the stills for them and others that were in the business,, I have tasted alot of home brew in my days and have never found one that tasted worth a crap but they did do the job.. I have found that whom ever makes it,, will think it's the best that was ever brewed.. same with the moonshine.. I leave it to the pros.. can you say bud wise er?.:laughing:. Lou

 

[forgeblast]

RobertN, nice set up. I used a cooler for a couple of years, they work great at holding the temp.
If i didnt get a deal on the pumps I was going gravity also.

Dan I forgot to tell you I found some flip top bottles at ....Ikea. They were cheap. I cant remember what I paid for them but they were no where near the price I paid for smaller bottles. Ill have to post a pic of them.

 

[RobertN]

Sheesh, when I started brewing, had no choice but to read the best books of the time. There was no WWW. We did, have email digest; I was on the original Home Brew Digest. Came out once a day. TBN and it's creators weren't even born then There were some of the .net forums, but few people had a computer, much less access to them.

Get on youtube and search for brewing. There is a Canadian who has a channel about making beer and cider. I watched a few of this guys videos and figured if he could do it with his very modest setup, so could I. There are also quite a few other good videos out there was well.
Later,
Dan

 

[dmccarty]

RobertN, nice set up. I used a cooler for a couple of years, they work great at holding the temp.
If i didnt get a deal on the pumps I was going gravity also.

Dan I forgot to tell you I found some flip top bottles at ....Ikea. They were cheap. I cant remember what I paid for them but they were no where near the price I paid for smaller bottles. Ill have to post a pic of them.

I have some of those bottles the only problem is that they are clear and not colored. I think they are around a liter in size. I bought them for some reason, plus the price was too good to pass up, :laughing:, but I put them up in a cabinet and promptly forgot about them. I saw them over the weekend and was wondering WHAT I bought them for?

As I started up brewing, I started buying flip top bottles at a beer store located too closely to the brew store. :laughing::laughing::laughing: The bottle were full of German beer, rather expensive, but given the cost of empty bottles the beer was pretty cheap. :licking: Funny thing is that I have not used on them to hold beer! I was going to use them for cider but never got around to it.

Later,
Dan