Update: Mash Tun Done

I pulled apart the valve assembly on my mash and switched out a couple seals and put it all back together on Tuesday.  After doing a half-hour leak test, it looks like it is holding a much better seal and I am good to go.  As promised, here are a couple pictures of the finished product.  If all go as planned this weekend, I should be breaking this baby in on Saturday and/or Sunday!

The plastic spigot that was originally on this cooler was replaced with a 3/8" ball valve.

An inside view: I built a little screen filter out of the stainless steel mesh from a washer connector hose.  This should keep the grains out of boil kettle.

Song of the Day: "Good People" by Jack Johnson
Beer of the Day:  Sam Adams Summer Ale

DIY Homebrew Gear Update

Homemade wort chiller and mash tun.  Done and done.  Sort of. 

I spent a decent chunk of my free time this weekend building a couple new additions to my homebrew kit, as I discussed in my last post.  With a shopping list of parts and hardware in hand, I set off to Home Depot to get all the materials I needed.  A couple hours later (it took me forever to find all the stuff I needed and some of the staff their seemed like they were covering areas they don’t normally cover, making it take way longer to find what I needed), I was back in my apartment ready to go. 

The wort (unfermented beer) chiller went pretty smooth.  I ended up getting a 20ft. coil of 3/8” copper to mold into my chiller.  Since the copper came in a nice coil, a lot of the work was done – I only needed to shape it into the size chiller that would fit in my brew kettle.  My 8 qt. stock pot worked like a charm as a nice mold.  After that, all I had to do was bend up the intake and the outtake (so they will be sticking out of the kettle to be able to hook hoses to) to the top of the chiller.  This was where I had to be a little delicate to not kink the piping (which would disrupt water flow through the piping and make the chiller much less efficient) while bending the two ends up.  Since Home Depot did not have the proper size bending tool for me to use (which allow you to bend pipes without kinking), I had to do this by hand.  No worries though, I was able to bend it up fine without kinking the pipe.  After clamping on the hoses and the sink fitting, I was all set to give it a test run.  After a quick leak test and tightening the clamps a bit, I was ready to give it test to see how fast this puppy would cool down a kettle. 

Ready to chill :-)

Fast forward to Sunday.  For the chilling test, I put about three gallons (my normal boil volume) of water into my brew kettle, brought it up to a full boil, then took it off the burner, hooked up the chiller, and started the timer.  This chiller took the boiling water down under 100F in about 10 minutes, which I was very happy about (this will carve a whole lot of time off the ice bath method).  The one tough part was that it only got it down to the mid 70s after 20 or so minutes.  However, after a little investigating, I realized my tap water would only go down to around 74 or 75 this time of the year.  A little problematic if I want to pitch my yeast in the 60s.  Looks like I may have to use an ice bath at the end of the chilling to get it down the last 10 or so degrees.  The other option would be to build a pre-chiller (basically a smaller version of the chiller that you can put in an ice bath that would be upstream from the wort chiller to chill the water further before going into the chiller).  Either way though, this chiller will definitely help me out a lot and cut down the time of my brew day.  The only part I don’t like much is the sink fitting that I used to hook the intake hose up to the sink.  It’s clamped straight to the tubing which makes hooking it up to the sink kind of a pain.  I may end up looking into getting a couple extra pieces that would make this easier but for now I just went with a little bit of a cheaper method.  No biggie though – I can definitely make do with it as is.  Here is the link to the site that I used as my rough design.

One piece of equipment done.  Now, on to the mash tun.  For those unaware, a mash tun is basically a heated or insulated container that you “mash” your malted grains with hot water to extract the fermentable sugars from the grains.  The solution that a lot of homebrewers employ is to convert a water cooler into a mash tun since it is very well insulated.  The basic idea is to swap out the plastic spigot for a ball valve, put a mesh screen or false bottom on the inside opening to keep the grains out of the runnings, and you’re good to go.  Add grain and hot water, let it rest, rinse the grains with more hot water, and you have wort. 

Get home from Home Depot on Saturday.  Take off plastic spigot.  Done.  Start assembling ball valve.  Correctly sized hardware?  No?  Bunk.  Pause until Sunday. 

After going back to Home Depot on Sunday to get the right size washers and o-rings, I was able to finish up the build on the mash tun and do a couple tests.  First test was without the screen on the inside with room temperature water.  Not even a hint of a leak.  Next, I put on the mesh screen I put together from the stainless mesh off of a washing machine connector hose.  Time for a hot water test with the final assembly.  After adding in a couple gallons of hot water into the tun, I noticed a little leaking around the outside of the washer and o-ring on the outside.  Nothing big though – should be easily remedied by either tightening the assembly a bit better (I didn’t have the right size wrench for the ball valve so it is only hand-tightened) or by playing with the o-rings and washers a little bit to get a combo that seals up a little tighter.  Either way, I should be able to fix this up and get a pretty sturdy mash tun for use in all-grain and partial mash batches.  Here is the link to the design that I roughly based my mash tun off of.  They also have a design over there for converting a rectangular cooler into a mash tun.  I'll post a picture of my finished mash tun soon.

I ended up going with a 5 gallon water cooler (which is actually only big enough for enough grain to produce a beer around 6% ABV if you’re doing an all-grain 5 gallon batch of homebrew) for my mash tun due to space, price, and use issues.  No big deal though – since I am still restricted to brewing in my apartment’s kitchen, I will mostly be doing partial mashes and all-grain half batches in this mash tun, giving me plenty of space in this tun.  Occassionally, I will do a full-sized all-grain brew, but this will be pretty rare since I would have to split the wort into two boils since I am brewing on my stove.  In light of this, I am fine with the restrictions of a 5 gallon mash tun for now.  I’ll probably upgrade to a bigger size when I have more space to have a proper all-grain set up.

Song of the Day: “Lay Me Down” by The Dirty Heads (ft. Rome from Sublime with Rome)

Beer of the Day: Sam Adams’ Blackened Hops (Sam Adams Longshot Homebrew Contest Winner) 

Brewing To-Do List

I’m taking a slight break from brewing to regroup, get organized, and plan out some new stuff.  Here’s a peak at what I’ll be working on for the next couple weeks on the brewing front:

New Hops: Sonnet and Calypso

In a stroke of inspiration from Stone Brewery’s blog, I decided to order some new hop varieties a week or so ago to try them out.  Sonnet hops are very new, and don’t even have an official pedigree yet over at Hops Direct.  It sounds like they are similar to a UK Golding and weigh in at around 4% Alpha.  Calypso’s aren’t quite as new but are a new-ish dual-purpose (bittering and aroma) variety of hops that weigh in around 12% Alpha.  Since I ordered from Hops Direct, I had to order in one-pound quantities so I decided to get a pound of each.  I’m pretty excited to try these two varieties out and see what I can do with them.  To start, I am going to do two small batches of standard pale ale with each hop for all additions (i.e. a pale ale with all Calypso and a pale ale with all Sonnet) to get an idea of the flavor and aroma that each impart.  From there, I should be able to tell what styles of beer I want to use the hops in. 

New residents in my freezer: a pound each of Calypso and Sonnet Hops

DIY Homebrew Equipment: Wort Chiller

One of the pieces of equipment that has been towards the top of my wish list for quite some time now is a wort chiller.  A wort chiller will help cool my wort much more efficiently than the ice bath method I have been using and will help clear up my beer also.  From what I hear, once I have a wort chiller, I should be able to substantially reduce the amount of time it takes to reduce the temperature from boiling to around the mid-60s (depending on the yeast strain) in order to pitch the yeast at the most optimum temperature.  Instead of shelling out the money to buy a pre-made chiller, I am looking into embracing the DIY nature of homebrewing and making my own chiller out of copper tubing.  This may be a project for this coming weekend. :-)

DIY Homebrew Equipment: 5 Gallon Cooler Mash Tun

Since I have been doing primarily extract batches (due to space constraints) until now, I have never really had a need for a separate mash tun.  However, I am seriously considering getting one because I have been doing more partial-mash batches (which still uses malt extract but does a mash on up to 5lb. of grain in the boil kettle) and I would like to start doing all-grain half-batches (or even full batches split into two boils).  The way I figure it, since I can pretty comfortably do a 3-gallon boil in my kettle, there is nothing to stop me from doing an all-grain batch that will yield 2.5 gallons or so (about a case of beer) of finished beer.  This will allow me to practice full mashing techniques and allow me to have more control over my beer.  However, in order for me to do this, I will need a mash tun that is better insulated and has a larger capacity than my kettle.  This will allow me to do all-grain half batches, as well as, more accurate mashes when doing partial-mash batches.  Once again embracing the homebrewing DIY spirit, I am looking into building my own mash tun, using a 5 gallon water cooler and some hardware to assemble a screen filter and valve. 

Next Full Batch: Fork ‘N Knife Oatmeal Stout

I’m also pretty excited for my next 5-gallon batch that I will probably be doing in the next couple months.  Looking back through my brew log, I realized the other day that I had not brewed a stout yet.  I was taken aback by this quite a bit since this is one of my favorite styles of beer.  Taking on the challenge to add an oatmeal stout into my annual rotation, I wrote up a partial-mash recipe to have a delicious, low-alcohol stout to enjoy on its own, or in black and tans.  Can’t wait to try this one out!

Online Recipes

As some of you may or may not have noticed, there’s a couple new tabs at the top of this page which I have added some homebrewing info to.  To start, I have added a tab for my own homebrewery (Black Walnut) and the collaboration homebrewery (Two Guys and a Barrel) that I do with my buddy Keith.  The main purpose of these tabs is to act as a mechanism for me to post my homebrew recipes online so that you fine people can use them to your hearts’ content.  The idea will be to post some notes about what worked well for each recipe, as well as what didn’t, so that others can benefit from my experiences.  I’m not exactly what you would call an expert brewer (in fact, I’m still a bit of a newbie), but I am hoping that my experiences will benefit other like-minded brewers.  As you can tell by looking at these pages, they’re a bit sparse at this point but I will be posting recipes up there very shortly.  These pages are static but I will be updating them periodically with new recipes, notes, tips, tricks, and other goodies, so check back once in awhile.  There will probably be a few more tabs to come also. 

Label Art

Like most other homebrewers, I don’t add colorful, ornate labels to my bottles that get tossed into my fridge at home; a simple numbered sticker slapped on the cap does the trick just fine for my purposes.  The reason for this is simple – I’m the one who has to de-label the empties prior to sanitizing and filling the bottles for the next batch of beer.  This is typically more hassle than it’s worth for beer that I drink at home.  However, I would like to start developing label designs for some of my beers that will be seeing their way into my regular rotation, as well as special beers that I give away as gifts around the holidays, etc.  I also think it would be fun to get some solid logos for my beers to add some depth to the story and meaning of these beers to me.  I have already been working with Theresa’s brother Harry to design a brewery logo (which is already looking pretty sweet after only a couple passes) and will be looking to do label designs for specific beers in the next few months.  Let’s be honest, I’m not exactly the best graphic designer.  In light of this, I will be looking to work with other, more artistic folks on these label designs.  More to come on this, but if you are fairly artistic and are interested in collaborating on labels for my beers, let me know (primarily looking for those of you interested in accepting homebrew as currency :-P)!

Homebrewery Organization

Each time I add a new piece of kit to my homebrewery, images of hoarders with stuff piled floor to ceiling flash through my head.  Ok, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the back corner of my second bedroom where I stash all of my gear, fermenters, and bottles is starting to get a bit cramped.  As a homebrewer living in an apartment, my biggest constraint to space.  This break from brewing will give me an opportunity to re-organize my gear a bit and figure out some ways to store everything a little more efficiently.  It will also give me a chance to do some other odds and ends while I have everything out, such as de-label some empties so that they are ready the next time I bottle.  This is by no means a fun task, but it is a necessary evil for any homebrewer that bottles using empties that once contained commercial brews.  All this organizing should make the next few brews go a bit smoother. 

Alright, less typing, more doing.  Until next time, cheers!

Song of the Day: “Rascal King” by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones

Beer of the Day: Stone Brewery’s Imperial Russian Stout