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Here's an album of my homebrewing-related pictures. Mostly very boring, really, and somewhat repetitive. http://imgur.com/a/p1AWT Here are a few highlights: The rig, packed, rear:  Front:  The rig, fully deployed and pumping first runnings to the boiler:  There have been some changes since then, though, namely that I finally got around to building a better and more permanent mount for the pump and plate chiller: 
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Jan 14, 2012 06:01
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 04:54 |
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This is the stand I built a little while ago. It's stagnant right now though, being broke as hell.    http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3437782&userid=114296#post395897590 Since those pictures, I've added a second pump. I still have a control panel and a RIMS tube setup that I haven't finished building. I honestly don't know if I'll ever bother. Full control is awesome, but 3 burners and direct fired mash is just stupidly easy and easier to clean. I really want to brew soon 
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Jan 14, 2012 06:08
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BIAB setup
deebo fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Jan 14, 2012 |
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Jan 14, 2012 10:10
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I don't get you BIAB guys that take it that far. I get people that do it because throwing a mesh bag in your existing brew kettle is easier/cheaper than buying and modifying a cooler but what you've made definitely looks like more work than taking 20 minutes to modify a cooler and it's messier and harder to clean.
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Jan 14, 2012 10:20
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Josh Wow posted:I don't get you BIAB guys that take it that far. I get people that do it because throwing a mesh bag in your existing brew kettle is easier/cheaper than buying and modifying a cooler but what you've made definitely looks like more work than taking 20 minutes to modify a cooler and it's messier and harder to clean. It's just an urn, a ladder and pulley? (I didnt have a brew kettle). I dont think rinsing out a bag is any harder than rinsing out a mash tun really? The price to buy a pot + element + cooler + bits for cooler would have been far more, this way I can use the urn as HLT if I decide to go 3V later.
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Jan 14, 2012 10:34
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What's an urn? From the picture it looked like you were mashing in a big plastic container so I assumed you'd be transferring it to a boil kettle of some sort.
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Jan 14, 2012 11:03
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Basically just a stainless steel container with an element and tap (usually heats water for coffee/tea in catering places). It's handy as I can use a temp controller and electrical timer to preheat my strike water before I wake up, also use it to heat for mashout and then pull bag and boil. I wrapped a cheap camping mat around it to see how it insulates but have since pulled it off as bits of wort would drip in between it and the urn and get sticky. Edit: This looks like a small 10L one, the one I use is 40l 
deebo fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Jan 14, 2012 |
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Jan 14, 2012 11:18
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deebo posted:Basically just a stainless steel container with an element and tap (usually heats water for coffee/tea in catering places). It's handy as I can use a temp controller and electrical timer to preheat my strike water before I wake up, also use it to heat for mashout and then pull bag and boil. I think he's just saying that it looks more expensive and complicated than just making a mash tun.
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Jan 14, 2012 15:12
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 I usually do my brewing on my back patio under ye-olde popup canopy. Brewing two batches next weekend, its going to be cold
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Jan 14, 2012 17:29
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Homemade stir plate Grain Mill  Immersion chiller, 10 gallon Blichmann Boilermaker mash tun, mash paddle  15 gallon hot liquor tank / boil kettle and burner  Prep station and supplies  Mash tun, immersion chiller, scaffolding brew stand, carboys  Fermentation fridge / kegerator that I am finishing today 
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Jan 14, 2012 17:41
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I've been having some really frustrating low attenuation problems lately despite perfect temperature controls, good mineral levels, low amounts of caramel malts, 50 seconds of pure O2, and lowish mash temperatures. As a result, I think I'm going to experiment with different mash schedules. Does anyone have any recommendations? I was thinking of doing about 45 minutes at 142*, 45 minutes at 162* and then mash out.
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Jan 14, 2012 17:45
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45 at 162* is unnecessarily long as I believe most of the amylase will be denatured by that point. Some other things you could try that lead to a (slightly, in some cases) more fermentable wort are increasing the water/grain ratio, not mashing out, making sure your pH is in the right range, and making sure you add nutrients to the end of the boil.
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Jan 14, 2012 18:20
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What mash thickness would you recommend? I usually just do the standard 1.25 but thinning that out was another thing I was thinking about doing. I have some yeast nutrient but it's from a couple years ago, I don't know if that stuff has a shelf life or not.
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Jan 14, 2012 18:34
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RiggenBlaque posted:I've been having some really frustrating low attenuation problems lately despite perfect temperature controls, good mineral levels, low amounts of caramel malts, 50 seconds of pure O2, and lowish mash temperatures. As a result, I think I'm going to experiment with different mash schedules. What's your current mash program like? For any kind of grist based on English or American malts, a single infusion held for 90 minutes at 149-151, followed by a mashout, should get you ridiculously good attenuation - my recent IPA started at 1.074 and finished at 1.009, for example. Jo3sh fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jan 14, 2012 |
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Jan 14, 2012 18:50
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RiggenBlaque posted:What mash thickness would you recommend? I usually just do the standard 1.25 but thinning that out was another thing I was thinking about doing. 2 qt/lb could help, I think 3 is the limit to where the sugars get too dilute for the enzymes to do much more. This is probably the lowest on the list in terms of how much it could impact fermentability, though. I'd bet some yeast nutrient would help as much if not more. Get the cheap stuff from Wyeast, it lasts forever.
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Jan 14, 2012 19:18
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My latest problem beer was held at 150* for 80 minutes or so at 1.25 mash thickness. Using a 1.4 liter WYeast 1028 starter (with stirplate) it went loving crazy after 12 hours of yeast reproduction and was down to 1.022 after 4 days @ 62*. Recipe: 6# marris otter 2# munich 1# Roasted Barley .5# Crystal 80 .5# Chocolate Malt .5# Lactose BeerSmith said it should come out to 1.014 but maybe I overdid it with the roast/crystal/chocolate malts. Not to mention the lactose. I ALWAYS have trouble getting beers down the the FG's I want, though. Even beers like 8# 2-row, 1# crystal with US-05 I struggle to get down as low as I want. It's rare I get a beer below 1.012
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Jan 14, 2012 19:20
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RiggenBlaque posted:My latest problem beer was held at 150* for 80 minutes or so at 1.25 mash thickness. Using a 1.4 liter WYeast 1028 starter (with stirplate) it went loving crazy after 12 hours of yeast reproduction and was down to 1.022 after 4 days @ 62*. Did it ever go lower than 1.022? 4 days may not have been enough for it to get to its final gravity. Are you using a hydrometer or a refractometer to measure your gravities after the ferment has started? If a refractometer, are you reading it straight off the scale, or are you correcting for the alcohol in solution? Whichever you're using, have you calibrated lately?
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Jan 14, 2012 20:42
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Jo3sh posted:Whichever you're using, have you calibrated lately? Have you calibrated your thermometer, too? I got crap attenuation for a couple batches til I decided to check mine, and it was reading like 5 degrees too low. So that 151 mash was really 156. Accounted for that in the next batch and I was back to getting down to more like 1.012 than 1.020, it's kind of ridiculous how much mash temp can change things.
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Jan 14, 2012 21:00
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Im pretty sure the beer was done fermenting, it had been the same gravity for 4 days. I use a hydrometer which reads tap water as 1.002 so at most I'm .002 points off and I use one of those awesome thermapen thermometers so I'm pretty confident it's reading accurately. edit: Just checked my thermapen, both freezing and boiling are reading perfectly. PoopShipDestroyer fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Jan 14, 2012 |
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Jan 14, 2012 21:07
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a brewing question, I normally work with crushed fruit and just wing it all in a fermenter and let it do its own thing, now that I'm trying something new just looking for a little input. I picked up 62 cans of pure frozen juice and a 10pound sack of raw brown cane sugar. I have these carboys empty. -2- 44L carboys -1- 20L carboy I was wondering if i split it 31 cans and 5 pounds of sugar for a 44L carboy, What do you think it would come out as? Would I be better off just making it all into 1 batch? If i split it evenly between the 2 44l carboys, and added a few pounds of honey in a month later would that give it some substantial booze content? I also have about 20pounds of white sugar on hand but I heard it doesn't ferment well. I have some lavlin ec1118 packs and yeast nutrients already. Cheers, any input would be nice!
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Jan 15, 2012 00:03
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Holy crap. Did you get any odd looks buying 62 cans of juice concentrate? How much juice is each can supposed to make if you reconstituted it per the directions on the label? The ones I am used to make 1.5 quarts, I think, so call it 1.5L for the sake of rational measurement systems. A WAG at juice SG is around 1.050. SO. 31 cans of juice concentrate would in theory ordinarily make 46.5L of juice - actually not terribly far off the 44L carboys you have. For the sake of argument, let's the juice is indeed designed to dilute to a SG of 1.050, and that you restrict the volume to 40L to leave some headroom. An effective 46.5L of juice, incompletely diluted to 40L, would therefore give you an expected OG of about 1.058. If you then added 5 pounds (suddenly, we're no longer in the metric system) of brown sugar, that ought to add another 4 to 5 points in 40L, bringing us to about 1.062. An additional five pounds of honey, added now or later, might bring us to (theoretically speaking) something like 1.067. Depending on what kind of yeast you are using, this concoction could ferment down as low as 1.000 or even 0.995. If you saw a final gravity of 1.000 (off-dry), you could expect something like So based on WAGs and best guesses, yes, your juice concentrate will make some fairly serious amounts of ethanol. If your result is anything like the fortified ciders I have made, it will also be dangerously easy to drink. Jo3sh fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Jan 15, 2012 |
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Jan 15, 2012 00:37
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I make 4 gallon batches of cider with this recipe. 4 gallons Juice 1 lbs brown sugar 2 lbs honey I cut down the sugars because it was insanely alcoholic for how easy to drink it was. Especially with cranberry. I've found Champagne yeast is the best, and have tried several others. Don't ever use Belgium yeast. loving horrible.
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Jan 15, 2012 01:44
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Thanks for the input! Funny looks indeed happened, someone commented that I must drink alot of juice, when I told him I was going to make it into wine, he looked away instantly. The girl at the counter had to ring them in 1 at a time also, good times were had by all. Something that didn't get answered and it seems like it should be a easy question, but can you add plain white sugar into the mix to kick it up a notch? Some of the locals who I asked said Yes, but they add it into fresh pressed juice to make there wines and ciders, perhaps the enzymes in the fresh juice help?
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Jan 15, 2012 02:08
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White sugar ferments fine. Adding that in addition to all the stuff you have mentioned would make some serious rocket fuel, though. My usual recipe is one pound of added sugar per gallon of juice (500g per four liters), and that's mainly because I like to freeze-concentrate the stuff to make applejack.
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Jan 15, 2012 02:29
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grass posted:Something that didn't get answered and it seems like it should be a easy question, but can you add plain white sugar into the mix to kick it up a notch? Some of the locals who I asked said Yes, but they add it into fresh pressed juice to make there wines and ciders, perhaps the enzymes in the fresh juice help? Normal white cane sugar needs to be boiled in order for yeasties to be able to eat them.
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Jan 15, 2012 02:57
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Jo3sh posted:I like to freeze-concentrate the stuff to make applejack. Hmmmm...freeze concentration might be the key to fixing my ESB I made Wednesday night. I messed up my water volumes and ended up with 6 gallons at the end of my boil instead of five. I didn't want to keep boiling though due to the hop schedule. Is it possible that once it's done fermenting, I could siphon off a gallon or two, freeze them, and then re-add the remaining liquid back into the beer?
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Jan 15, 2012 03:23
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Given how the icing process amplifies flavor I'd say just pretend when you serve it to friends or family that you meant to make an Ordinary or Special Bitter all along but hey I definitely don't think it's a terrible idea.
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Jan 15, 2012 04:30
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LeeMajors posted:I think he's just saying that it looks more expensive and complicated than just making a mash tun. It is a boiler and a mash tun in one. I dont see how buying a mash tun and boiler/heat source would be cheaper or less complicated?
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Jan 15, 2012 04:47
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Last winter I made a 44L plastic carboy full of fresh pressed apple juice and honey mead / cider, It was delicious and on a drunken whim I decided to just place it in the waist high snow for a week, When I took it inside and poured some off it was drat strong but the flavor was awful, it took on the flavor of the plastic carboy. So just keep this in mind if your going to do the same thing.
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Jan 15, 2012 05:18
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RodShaft posted:
how dare you. sup man, long time  we used to play Halo on Live
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Jan 15, 2012 05:58
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TenjouUtena posted:Normal white cane sugar needs to be boiled in order for yeasties to be able to eat them. Yeast can ferment sucrose (Table sugar) fine, invert sugar eliminates the need for the yeast to break down the longer sucrose chains but is almost academic in its differences
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Jan 15, 2012 06:10
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Daedalus Esquire posted:Hmmmm...freeze concentration might be the key to fixing my ESB I made Wednesday night. I messed up my water volumes and ended up with 6 gallons at the end of my boil instead of five. I didn't want to keep boiling though due to the hop schedule. Well, freeze concentrating works best when the raw material is pretty strong. Above 8 or 9% is best. Even then, it's pretty inefficient, at least by the methods I have used. If you're going to freeze concentrate beer, I think an ESB is probably mild enough that you would have trouble with the process - you'd want to start with a barleywine or something. If the alcohol content is low, you won't really get any fractioning at household freezer temperatures - there won't be any unfrozen portion, just a block of beer ice. What I usually do is to put half a gallon or so of carbonated cider in a 1 gallon plastic tub with an airtight lid, and chuck it in the freezer. The carbonation keeps the cider from freezing into a monolithic block, instead making a sort of fractured mass. This fragmentation plus the normal expansion of water as it freezes is the reason for the large proportion of headspace. The block gets inverted in a colander over another tub, and I collect the liquid that drips out of it until the remaining ice loses most of its color. The leftover ice I generally just let melt away in the sink, but I have on a whim put it in the fridge to melt, and it still had a thin cider flavor and a touch of alcohol in it.
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Jan 15, 2012 07:05
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drat...I really wish there was a way I could knock this batch down by a gallon.
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Jan 15, 2012 07:09
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Thinking of brewing an Imperial Blackberry Wit. I don't really like fruit beers, would someone who does be able to weigh in on the following?code:
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Jan 15, 2012 18:56
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Plastic Jesus posted:Thinking of brewing an Imperial Blackberry Wit. I don't really like fruit beers, would someone who does be able to weigh in on the following? Can't really comment on the blackberries, but I wouldn't use Irish Moss in a wit. Irish Moss is a clarifier, and cloudiness is a good characteristic of a wit.
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Jan 15, 2012 19:13
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Plastic Jesus posted:Thinking of brewing an Imperial Blackberry Wit. I don't really like fruit beers, would someone who does be able to weigh in on the following? What size batch is this? AlsoI'm curious on how the malted wheat would behave as a steeping grain, which is what I'm assuming you're using it for. But the idea itself is solid as hell. Hate to admit it but I love me some Sam Adams Blackberry witbeer.
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Jan 15, 2012 20:29
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Batch size is ~5.75G. I intend to mash the malted wheat, mainly just so I feel like i'm doing more than stirring. Silly, perhaps. Irish moss is because I'm using whole blackberries and want to make sure everything settles out. Would it be better to hold off and add pectinase if ithe fruit patriculates fail to fall out naturally?
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Jan 15, 2012 21:16
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Irish moss fines out particulates in the boil. Wits are cloudy from high wheat content (wheat is much higher in protein and much more likely to stay cloudy) and from yeast.
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Jan 16, 2012 02:53
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Plastic Jesus posted:Thinking of brewing an Imperial Blackberry Wit. I don't really like fruit beers, would someone who does be able to weigh in on the following? Add them to secondary.
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Jan 16, 2012 03:07
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Posting my brewing setup. I bought the brewstand from https://www.brewersequipment.com whom also made the eRIMS tube and control panel arm mount. I made the control panel based mostly off the designs that http://theelectricbrewery.com/ put together, modified to my own spec.  I do an initial strike heating with both propane and the RIMs tube, gets me up to strike temp in about 5 minutes, then I turn off the propane and let the Auber PID tune in and stabilize the mash temp to what I want it to be. I recirculate during the entire mash after I do a 10 minute rest and on most beer styles I'll step the temperature up to 165f for 10 minutes for a mashout.  After my mash is done I drain off to the kettle by moving the lid and then batch sparge since I don't have a third fancy pot with a drain valve etc. I recirculate for another 20 minutes and then drain to the kettle again.  Boil for 90 minutes or so while recirculating through my plate heat exchanger and then start cooling. First with some (generally lukewarm) ground water from a hose that I spliced the QDs I use into, and then with some cold water & ice to get it down to temp nice and fast. I have a copper tube drilled in through some pipe elbows with a QD on it to get a nice whirlpool going in the kettle and once I get down to temp I let it rest for 5 minutes to let the trub cone form and get a pretty clean draining to my fermenter.  Just move the hose and turn the pump back in, letting it run nice and slow as to not disturb the trub cone. I ferment in a 7g Blichmann conical that I regulate in a chest freezer with a Ranco dual stage temp controller. After that I keg and put it in this bad boy.  I can fit about 8 kegs in there, a little free space for whatever and about 220-240 commercial bottles. I just put a 3 line and 4 line co2 distributor in there because all the hoses were a huge mess, cleaned things up a lot. I hope sometime in the coming year to finally get my last 15g Blichmann kettle and have a 15/15/10 setup that I can do all kinds of fun stuff with, the least of which is getting back to fly sparging which should reduce my overall brew time.
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Jan 16, 2012 05:55
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