Posts Tagged ‘garage brewery’
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Building a 45 Litre Igloo Mash Tun
Each piece of the soldered manifold is made from 22mm copper pipe with un-soldered joints to allow disassembly and cleaning with a ‘cask tap cleaning brush’, the underside 1/3-1/2 of the copper tube is slotted with a 1mm Angle grinder disk.
The hole in the coolbox was made with a 21mm Q-max cutter, the tank connector was drilled out with a 15mm Blacksmiths drill (this would have been a lot easier with a Pillar drill and a Vice, but all I have is a crappy woodworking vice clamped to a wobbly table and a Cordless drill!)
Tools used were:
Pipe cutter
Solder, Flux, and Blow lamp
Round file
Flat file
Angle Grinder with 1mm Cutting disks
Scotch Brite pad
21mm Q-max cutter, with 8mm pilot drill
15mm Blacksmith’s drill
Cordless Drill / driver
Parts used were:
45litre Igloo coolbox
22mm Copper pipe
15mm copper pipe
6-off 22mm Equal Elbows
4-off 22mm Equal Tees
1-off 15x22x22mm Un-equal Tee
15mm Brass compression tank connector
15mm Brass Ball Valve
The Igloo coolbox which came from an ebay seller:
Some of the manifold pieces cut and arranged:
Soldered and separated:
Soldered and attached:
15mm Ball Valve tap fitted approx 11mm up from the inside base of the coolbox:
Cleaned manifold:
I found while fitting everything together that the Elbows were a bit more acute than 90 degrees which made it look all out of parallel, I fixed this by soldering it up with the removable end pieces on.
Everything was filled clean of burrs inside and out, excess solder removed, then scotch-brite pad used to polish up the copper. A thorough clean with a mild soda crystal solution gave it a final internal clean out. I later added a short bent turn-down spout from the ball valve with a 8mm reducer soldered to it.
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Liquorice & Treacle Stout – I’ve been thinking about both liquorice and treacle in a stout for a while. This is going to be V.1 (proceed with caution) and next weekend I will do a V.2 (less cautious) with a lot more Treacle in it, somewhere between 2-5% of the malt bill.
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 1990g – 70.3%
Flaked Barley – 280g – 10%
Caramalt – 280g – 10%
Roasted Barley – 125g – 4.5%
Chocolate Malt – 125g – 4.5%
Sugar, Black Treacle – 21g – 0.7%
Hops:
Centennial @ 60 mins – 17g
Centennial @ 5 mins – 9g
Copper Additions:
Liquorice Powder @ 5mins – 10.4g
Protafloc Tablet @ 15-20mins – Half a Tablet
Final Volume: 12 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.055
Final Gravity: 1.016
Alcohol Content: 5% ABV
Total Liquor: 19 Litres
Mash Liquor: 7 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 80 %
Bitterness: 37 EBU
Colour: 235 EBC
Water treatment to the Stout Profile in the GW Calc, added to the Malts and blended / Mashing in.
Mash for 90mins and Boil for 60mins.
Yeast probably just Safale S-04.
The malts, pale malt; caramalt; roasted barley; chocolate malt; flaked barley:
Mini Mash Tun in use for the first time in ages, it just manages this brew length:
Treacle weighed out:
Liquorice Powder weighed out:
First batch sparge:
In go the Bittering hops, Centennial:
its 1054/55, so near as damn it on the money:
I cooled a bit far, oops, popped it by the radiator in the Kitchen to warm up:
Kind of a drawn out brewday as I was finishing off the 50L brewery I was making.
*Bottled 15th Dec ’10 with 30g White Sugar, tasting plenty liquorice and hints of the Treacle still in there 🙂
AG#27 – Dark Wheat WB06
Posted on: May 22, 2010
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Hops are the end of a bag of Perle, pre-dry hopped Mittlefruh kept in the Freezer, and the end of a bag of Hersbrucker.
The yeast needed using up too 😉
No intentions of using any water treatments other than to kill the Chlorine and not going to be using protafloc as I want to keep this beer cloudy.
Dark Wheat WB06
Fermentables:
Wheat Malt 2000g 45.4%
Maris Otter 2000g 45.4%
Crystal Wheat Malt 200g 4.6%
Carafa Special III 100g 2.3%
Chocolate Wheat Malt 100g 2.3%
Hops:
Perle @ 60 mins 26g
Hallertauer Mittlefruh @ 20 mins 20g
Hallertauer Hersbrucker @ 10 mins 34g
Final Volume: 19 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.052
Final Gravity: 1.014
Alcohol Content: 5% ABV
Total Liquor: 28.3 Litres
Mash Liquor: 11 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 36 EBU
Colour: 96 EBC
Mash for 90mins, Boil for 60mins, pitch and attempt to keep as cool as possible in the garage (I’m going to need a fermenting fridge sometime!)
The Malts; 50:50 Maris Otter & Wheat Malt, Carafa Special 3, Chocolate Wheat malt, Crystal Wheat malt, NO Gypsum or other water treatments today:
Mash at 67c, which is probably 66c on my thermometer:
FWH:
Coming to a boil, even so it was only a 19L brew it was close to boil over, a full 23L would have needed a bit of stirring etc:
1052:
Muddy water:
Safbrew WB-06 dry sprinkled:
Another no fuss brewday, kind of had a bit of a break in the middle before starting the boil but still finished up for about 1pm 🙂
Weird not using Protafloc (or other copper finings) the total lack of any cold break material and instead just muddy looking wort, all in the sake of Cloudiness.
*Bottled 3rd Jun ’10 with 100g Sugar priming.
Mango Chutney HLT
Posted on: May 5, 2010
- In: Brewing
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The making of my Hot Liquor Tank (HLT), this is going to be the upper-most stage of my gravity-fed garage brewery, holding up-to 50 Litres with 2 heating elements, sight tube and ball-valve tap. This will eventually be Insulated and temperature controlled.
This first shot shows the first Element, a budget Kettle Element from Curry’s:
The Inside with element and other side of the Ball-Valve Tank connector with soldered-in copper pipe:
Both elements now fitted and doing a leak / heating up test:
The Polycarbonate sight glass tube fixed at the bottom with a Compression fitting and another Tank Connector, clipped on higher up with a 15mm Plastic pipe clip drilled and tapped out to screw onto a length of M10 Stainless studding (including nuts and washers):
I cut two holes in the lid, one for filling and another for sticking a spoon through to give it a stir. I decided I’d heat / Boil with the lid in place as it keeps the barrel’s shape better along with keeping the heat in, I shall eventually insulate the sides with Foil-backed Camping mats or something:
Element splash shrouds (and good for keeping fingers away) made from used Silicone Sealant tubes, I Just need to ‘seal’ them round with something.. maybe Silicone Sealant!:
The parts for this are as follows:
The Mango Chutney Barrels came from http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/Smiths-of-the-Forest-of-Dean-Ltd__W0QQ_armrsZ1 I bought 2 as I’m sure I’ll find a use for the other even if its just storing malt.
I got the Polycarbonate tube from – http://www.theonestopplasticsshop.co.uk I have about 1.5m left over which I suppose I could sell but might just hang onto for a while in case I find any other uses.
The little white Pipe clip and Tank connectors was from ebay.
The Stainless nuts, stud and washers came from – http://www.a2stainless.co.uk
The Compression Elbow was from – http://www.tradingdepot.co.uk as it seemed to be the cheapest place.
🙂 I Just had to bend a little bit of copper pipe to join from the Tank connector to the Elbow 🙂
Copper pipe from the Local Plumbers merchants.
Temperature Controller on order from Hong Kong, so I can control 1 element and keep the liquor at a constant 80°C ideal for Mash & Sparge:
I got a couple of long ‘Hot Condition’ Kettle leads and a Temp Sensor from RS:
461-159 NTCH Liquid Probe. SS. Silicon Cable
406-219 Hot condition straight plug w/cordset,2m
Brewery Build ‘Cobblers Fine Ales’
Posted on: May 3, 2010
OK, so this isn’t just going to be my little garage brewery, we’ll be living here… in fact we are 🙂
The plan was to think ahead for what I was going to need in the garage for my hobby of All Grain Brewing…
It started like this:
And this is me, stood in the brewery 😉
Approx predicted location of 3 tier brewery:
One of the builders floating out my brewery floor:
Walls up:
More progress on the garage area, we moved in end of March 🙂
Now I’m starting to do the plumbing (below) ready for when I build the stand for the brewing gear, we had the basics all plumbed in to the garage to start with of Hot and Cold water, Natural Gas, Lots of Electric with room for expansion and a drain outlet should I decide to use it:
Next is to build the Brewery Stand out of timber, screwing some 2″x3″ to the walls for the back support and then building up some front legs to form a good sturdy support in case I ever want to brew a bit longer length to what I do at present. I need to finish painting the walls and ceiling, and seal the floor with floor paint before I start the timber work.
The brewery, if a name is in order, will be named after my grandad’s old trade as a Cobbler, quite fitting as we are now living in his old house and still have some of his old Cobbling equipment.
The first few brews have already been done, the above Rye Stout being the first 🙂
During building work its been a busy time, I’ve gone from Engineering and building Escalators to being made redundant and on the dole for two months… and now… I’m working for a Brewery “Living the Dream” so to speak – www.saltairebrewery.co.uk which has much more promise than staying in Engineering these days 🙂
*Update*
Not a lot has happened lately…
Just finished paining the Brewery area, the floor paint is supposed to be ‘Chocolate’ looks like a lighter shade of Black to me!:
🙂 Should have bought grey! I haven’t bothered with the recommended concrete primer, there’s only so much I’ll spend on painting a garage floor!
*Another Update!*
Altered pipework, replaced the plastic JG ball valves with metal ones, hot feed on the Quick disconnect with hose for cleaning down. Cold feed plumbed around the big grey down pipe to a ball valve to feed the IC via a JG Pushfit-to-1/2″ tail to fit a bit of silicone hose:
Finally the basic of my 3 tier (4 with the FV) brewery stand, all my malts under the stand (I’ll get the sacks into containers soon), one or two storage shelves to fix under the main stand for bits ‘n bobs. Just the HLT to calibrate and I’ll be good to brew:
The other aspect of the garage, next to build is a short bench next to the boiler for doing the prep stuff on brewdays, which should use up most of the remaining timber:
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I had plans of doing some Hop gardening today, I got as far as screwing some Rawl Eye Bolts into the house then it started to rain and hail.
Paul over at BarleyBottom mentioned it was National Home Brew Day or something… so what the heck! Its a Mayday brew 🙂
I’m using mostly Lager hops, Perle & Saaz with a small addition of Cascade in the final Flame out steep, I had a bag of Mild Ale malt that I thought I’d find a use for with a couple of small additions of Crystal-malt-esque things and a tad of wheat malt for head retention.
May Day
Fermentables:
Golden Promise 4000g 74.1%
Mild Ale Malt 1000g 18.5%
Wheat Malt 200g 3.7%
Cara Red 100g 1.9%
Aromatic Malt 100g 1.9%
Hops:
Perle 60 mins 50g (split 50:50 between FWH & Start of Boil)
Saaz 15 mins 50g
Saaz 0 mins 50g (20min steep)
Cascade 0 mins 10g (20min steep)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.052
Final Gravity: 1.012
Alcohol Content: 5.3% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.7 Litres
Mash Liquor: 13.5 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 48 EBU
Colour: 12 EBC
Mashing for 1 hour, Boiling for 1 hour. Good healthy Teaspoon of Gypsum to the Mash.
Yeast to be Whitelabs Edinburgh Ale yeast which might be nice 🙂
Mashing:
Mash Temp at start:
Hops all weighed and ready:
Did a pH just to see if I still don’t need to bother:
Sparge:
FWH, I split the bittering addition between FWH and Start of boil:
Start of boil hops:
Predicted 1052, maybe a little over:
Really tasty wort, pitched a couple of splits of a Whitelabs Edinburgh Ale yeast
🙂 Will clean my copper tomorrow.
Dry Hopping with 20g of Mittlefruh 10th May ’10 for 3 days.
*Bottled 16th May ’10 with 70g Sugar priming, tasting very good with a nice floral edge 🙂
Probably Due To Network Congestion 