100qt Cooler - phase 1

This time around, Nick wanted to do this "right" so we were going to do this in two phases so as to avoid some of the cobjobbery of the past. The plan here was simple; replace the plug that came with the cooler with a 1/2in ball lock valve and attach that to a PVC false bottom.

Fist off the logic behind PVC over copper. While to date, copper has been the primary false bottom for me, two major factors contributed to the move to PVC - price and workability. Copper has gotten pretty expensive in the last few months so I have been less inclined to use it than in the past. Also, the problems we have had with the soldiering have led me to think that I am not much of a plumber.

With PVC we will glue, cut and puncture with 1/2 of the effort and time of copper. Plus the PVC we got is rated at over 180f so it should hold up without a problem. So we're off:

First off was taking out the plug and putting in the ball valve. It turned out that the hole that was left from the plug was 3/4in instead of the 1/2in we planned on so we used a 3/4in pipe (2" in length) that was threaded on both sided to fill the hole.





We ended up using copper fittings that drew down the 3/4in to 1/2in for the ball valve and for the part that was going to connect to the PVC.




Sealing was obviously a big part of this and it's an imperfect science at best. The key to sealing is to keep an open mind. With this we had a gasket on the inside and one on the outside. It leaked so I removed the one on the inside and used some gasket making stuff and it is now sealed. To test it, I put 5 gallons of water in over night. About 1tbs of water leaked out over the 12 hrs so I figure that' "good enough for government".

Finally Nick built the PVC false bottom. The design is pretty self explanatory and he used a dermal tool to make the cuts for draining holes. All the parts are glued and the whole thing sits inside of the other PVC fitting that is connected to the copper. We are waiting on gluing that until we know that the whole thing is going to work properly.

Rebuild on my kegerator

Last week the brown mini fridge that cooled my kegerator finally died. This little warrior went through many years of college and then to my cold plate cooler, and finally was the engine to my kegerator. Now it's gone. God's speed little Buddy.


On to the future. My father had a mini fridge that he was willing to donate to the cause, so I decided to give this design another shot. After reading a few kegerator ideas on Adam's blog, I saw this idea where the fridge has the door removed and a fan inside it to circulate the air. After some measurements and a little planning, I decided this was the way to go moving forward.





In the process of taking apart the kegerator, I was able to explore some of the issues that I had had with it, like the fact that it only fit 2 kegs and the tap I hod could work 3 beers. In making room on the sidewall for the new dorm fridge, I was able to make some adjustments to make space for the 3rd keg.

Now three kegs fit into the kegerator. After a lot of time sealing and taping, I have the kegerator down to a steady 47f. I am not sure if the fridge is running constantly, but when I was testing it, it got down to 39f and was kicking on and off so I feel pretty good about the potential for this one.


Finally, because I did not have to mount the fridge on the top of the box, I was able to move the tap back and utilize one of the holes that the fridge used before. This will allow me to have a bar runner on there so that I'm not dripping into a bucket. I know what you're thinking, I decided to avoid the drip tray and go for the bar runner because of the price difference, I am getting a bar runner for $6 with shipping, a drip tray that is big enough for 3 taps is over $50. Plus standing beer stinks no matter what's holding it. IMHO anyway.

In other news, as I've been mentioning on Twitter, our 100qt cooler came in and it was WELL worth the $38 (with shipping) I paid. These things go for over $100 and this one was listed as "used", but it looks pretty new to me. The size difference is pretty staggering - Look at the other two mash tuns I was using next to it.

Big score on kegs!!!

Tonight I hit a big score on kegs. After Bryan - who started brewing with us last weekend - indicated he was wanted to skip bottling all together and go right into kegging because with an easy conversion he could have his kegerator serving homebrew. Because of his need for kegs and my getting close to full occupancy on my current keg supply, I decided to get out and start hunting kegs a little more seriously that I usually do.

I placed a "wanted" ad up on Craigslist offering $10-$15 per keg for soda kegs. Initially I considered trying to trade beer for kegs, but quickly realized that that was not kosher with ATF so halted that. I got a response in the first few days with someone offering 10 to 15 kegs if I was interested. I told him I would take 10 and he asked for $120. Shown below is what I got.



I really lucked out because these kegs were in very good shape. They all still had remnants of soda in them, but for $12 a piece that's what you get.

Tonight I cracked them all open and freed them of the sweet carbonated monster of soda. I started by dumping and rinsing each of them out, sure to keep like caps with one another (some get bent and only create a good seal with the keg they were bent with). After talking with Nick and doing a little research, I decided to give bleach a chance. I used 1.5 cups of bleach per 2 gallons of water on four of the kegs. The other six kegs I used one gallon of one step




My hope is to get a better idea of which is going to work better in the future. However, already bleach and I did not get off to a good start as I think I got some on my good jeans.

Per Nick's suggestion, I pressurized all of them with the cleaning solution in there and I am going to shake them up once or twice a day for the next few days. In the meantime I am going to get some gaskets for the nipples, but not the large cap for the top as I don't think those matter as much. When I get to changing the gaskets, I am going to take all of them apart and clean them out thoroughly.

***UPDATE - After the messages from Trout I went home and dumped all the bleach filled kegs. They were fine and all the soda smells were gone so no harm no foul. The ones that I used one-step with did not work. They still stunk of soda so I made up some of the beer line cleaning solution that I got from Ed a while back and used that for the six kegs that had the One-Step. It worked like a champ! All smells were gone and they are airing out as we speak. It makes the beer line cleaning solution the most desirable solution because it's quick (don't soak it over night because it's capable of stripping chrome and stainless) it's meant for drinking and it's not all that corrosive to the hands or clothes. Win win in my book.

This made for a good night - The bad news is that I think my mini-fridge finally died. I talked to my father and he has an old dorm fridge at the house they are not using that he said I could have so I will be onto other project, but old brown fridge will me missed...

Oh yea, big grab!

I just won this 100qt hoss on eBay for a steal at $38 with shipping. These things go for upwards of $100 new. This is going to allow us to brew up some BIG batches without the problems we have had in the past.

More to come on this little treasure...

Extra Mash Tun

After brewing outside the capacity of our current mash tun, Nick and I have been looking for a way to build out. After surfing around for a 100+qt cooler, I was looking Craig's List and saw a five gallon water jug for $10. I couldn't resist.

I picked up this hoss with the intention of having it be the reservoir for our sparge, but last weekend, Nick mentioned that with a little work, we could make this guy duel porpoise - mash tun and sparge reserve.

First off, we had to remove the water spout that was on it already. For this model (and most others to my knowledge) it's just a matter of unscrewing the plastic nut on the back and it's off. Easy stuff.

After getting that off, I had widen the hole a little bit to fit the 3/4" ball valve (with threads)through. Don't go too big though, as you want to have as tight a fit as possible. With two gaskets and some silicone, I was able to seal things up (this is a process, but it's worth continuing to do until you get it right). I have a gasket on the outside and one on the inside. On the inside is a plastic nut from my bottling bucket - works great!

This false bottom was Nick's idea. It's a 1/2" piece of copper tube that has slits sawed into it with a small piece of stainless steal (feed grade from a cheap strainer) on the end. The copper tube is connected to a 1/2" spur via a piece of rubber tube (it was a lot of work to get it over that). All parts are held in place by screw clamps.



This false bottom (1/2" spur and nut) connects to the ball valve (3/4") through a brass 3/4" to 1/2" connection.



So in the end, we have a false bottom for a mash tun using odds and ends pieces I have lying all over. Having a keg system helps me to have a lot of odds and end parts so we were able to make something pretty basic for about $15.

To everyone out there worried about the expenses involved in going all-grain (Adam I am looking in your direction!), here is a way that is cheap - so much so that it will pay for itself in the first batch you do.

Cheers!

Oktoberfest in March

In the true spirit of a Marzen, we are going to be brewing an Oktoberfest this weekend. With hopes of matching the success of the fall 2007 Oktoberfest party, the plan is to brew up 10 gallons of this delicious brew and let it age till late September when we can have friends over to drink it all with us.

The brew is in the spirit of the 2007 Oktoberfest which was a rousing success at our Oktoberfest party;

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 10.50 gal
Boil Size: 13.12 gal
Estimated OG: 1.054 SG
Estimated Color: 6.3 SRM
Estimated IBU: 28.1 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
18.00 lb Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 70.0 %
4.70 lb Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM) Grain 18.3 %
3.00 lb Munich Malt - 20L (11.0 SRM) Grain 11.7 %
1.00 oz Brewer's Gold [8.00%] (60 min) Hops 14.0 IBU
1.00 oz Liberty [4.30%] (60 min) Hops 7.5 IBU
0.50 oz Liberty [4.30%] (60 min) Hops 3.7 IBU
0.50 oz Liberty [4.30%] (30 min) Hops 2.9 IBU
1 Pkgs Munich Lager (Wyeast Labs #2308) Yeast-Lager


Mash Schedule: Decoction Mash, Single
Total Grain Weight: 25.70 lb
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temp Step Time
Protein Rest Add 8.85 gal of water at 128.6 F122.0 F 35 min
Saccharification Decoct 3.98 gal of mash and boil155.0 F 45 min
Mash Out Add 3.50 gal of water at 205.2 F168.0 F 10 min

We will be brewing this Sunday and for the day I have a new toy. In the process of picking up some cheese cloth from Home Depot so that I could use it for dry hopping our Celebration Ale I saw this beauty;

This hos hooks in like a 3/8 drill bit into a drill and is normally used to mix paint, but for us, it will act as our mash mixer. For the $8 it cost me, it was well worth it (assuming it works). The cheese cloth was used as a way to dry hop with out sacrificing a lot of volume. It's a less than perfect solution if you ask me, but it works for now.

I had hoped to run all the wort from my racking cane through the hops into the carboy, but that didn't work. Good idea, but failed just the same.

Finally I had lunch at Empire Brewing Company today and thoroughly enjoyed the smoked porter and saison they had on tap. Great job by Tim the master brewer.

Cheers!

And the winner is...

Brewing this weekend wound up getting canceled because it was Nick's brew-girlfriend's birthday. Keeping the brew-significant others appeased is ALWAYS a worthy reason to delay a brew weekend. God knows they put up with enough craziness.

With my new found extra time, I decided to take care of a few odds and ends.

$20 Gift Certificate

With the $20 gift certificate that I got for valentines day, there were a lot of opinions on how the money should be spent. It seemed that the funnel was prone to clogging so that was a "no-go", but the stainless steel spoon and the carboy carrier were both winners. So as you can see in the picture below, I got one of each and used the leftover money to get 1lb of extra light DME for my starters.

Racking Samuel Jackson

Even though Nick couldn't dedicate the necessary 5hrs to a brew day on Sunday, he was able to come over and give me a hand racking over my Samuel Jackson. I need a hand lifting things for the next few weeks since my surgery so Nick came over and did a little (much appreciated) heavy lifting for me. He also came baring the gift of home-made pasta that ended up being our delicious dinner.

The Samuel Jackson is going to be a heck of a beer. We dry hopped it in the secondary with a 1/2 oz of Amarillo leaf hops which really gave this a great finish. It tastes a lot like Samuel Adams, but I will wait to give a verdict after I do a little head-to-head. Nonetheless, it's going to be a great beer.

CO2 Stuff

So finally I had to make a run to Lowes to do some "home-owner" duties and on my way, I go right past Harbor Freight so I figured two birds with one stone. Since I made a trade with my brother in law (1 case of cream ale for his 5lb CO2 tank) I needed a regulator for my new tank in order to start using it with the jockey box. I had been eyeing up a dual gage gas regulator that they have there for $34 (such a good price), but wasn't sure if it was too good to be true. Well Saturday I broke down and got it.

As you can see from the picture below, once I figured out that it would work, I decided to put the new regulator on my 25lb CO2 tank instead of the new 5lb one because I use the 25lb tank all the time.

Now with the 5lb tank, since I use the air compressor release fittings, I picked up the necessary parts to have my small tank work with the other parts of my system. With my normal system I used these fittings and had an extra gas ball lock with a hose connected to a air compressor release fitting (male) and my large tank connects to the 4way manifold via a release fitting (female). The manifold has gas shutoffs so I can disconnect the CO2 and reconnect it to the single line.

With my new setup, there are 3 quick releases that will go to 3 gas ball locks and I will be able to power the two tap jockey box plus one other keg. I am officially king of the tailgate.

Even though we didn't brew, I still got a lot done. No complaints here.

Cheers!

$20 in brew bucks burning a hole in my pocket

So for Valentines Day, my brew wife got me an AWESOME gift certificate for my LHBS! This is $20 that HAS to be spent on brew supplies. While it's tempting to put it towards a brew session, I decided that I am going to spend it on a few odds and ends items I have been eying there at Ed's.


Since it's $20, I am looking for a little feedback on things that I am considering getting. Here are the contenders:

First up is this 12" funnel with a screen for my buckets (yea I am not rolling in a pre-civil war cotton fortune like the guys at MNB and I still use the modest bucket) - My thought on this is that I have not been crazy about the method that we use for our hops which is steeping them in the brew. With this I would like to filter the wort as it comes out to catch as much of the hops as possible and we could just dump the hops directly into the kettle.







Yea, I know, everyone has carboy handles. Well not me. Since I now have three 5 gallon glass carboys and one 3 gallon glass carboy, I was thinking about not tempting fate anymore and getting some decent handles for them.










The ever important brew spoon. My current brew spoon is plastic and I have been using is for a good 4 years and I think it may be time to retire it. Now on his website Ed only has plastic spoons, but I know he has stainless steal ones at the shop so I was thinking about a 18" stainless steal spoon as another option.









In the end, I am probably going to get all this stuff and just using the gift certificate towards it, why? Why not? I am still interested in hearing some arguments for or against any of the items listed.

Cheers!

Jackpot!

So last night on my way home I figured I would make a few stops, one by the redemption center to get some Chimay bottles for my Tripel Nipple and second by Harbor Freight for a wire brush to clean my burner.

I couldn't find the redemption center, so still on a mission, I stopped by my old faithful. Now for the sake of the place, in case their distributors give them a hard time about this, they will remain nameless. Anyway, I go to my super secret location and ask about Chimay bottles, but they have none. However, they do have a "ton of Grolsch flip top bottles" so I ask to have a look. It turns out they also have a ton of Schwelmer flip top bottles as well (amber glass and 11.5oz each as opposed to the larger green Grolsch bottles), 35 to be exact.



I of course volunteered to take all those bottles as well as a Budweiser Brewmaster's Select flip top bottle (you will suffer no more my poor innocent awesome bottle) for the awesome price of $7.50! (To make things better, I get them home and they are CLEAN!!! Nothing inside any of them. All I did was de-label them and they were ready!)

In a good mood, I continued onward to Harbor Freight to get my wire brushes for cleaning my burner. While there, I stumbled on an awesome pack of "pipe cleaning" brushed for $4. I can now lean every crack and crevasse of my beer stuff with a whole variety of tools (yes, it was not an accident to link the word tools to it's definition).

Now as if things could get any better, I got home to find that my brand new refractometer had arrived!!! WOOO-FREAKING-HOOO!!!(my wife thinks I am crazy about being fired up about this, but I don't care, it's bad ass)



So I spent last night de-labeling my clean bottles, playing with my refractometer (contrary to belief, playing with your refractometer too much will not cause hairy palms or blindness, however it will cause awesomeness) and cleaning my burner. For all the stuff I did, it was a pretty easy night.

In other news...

As noted in the picture below, I have some over pressurization on my stout bottles. I don't think that bottle conditioning in growlers is going to work. It's just not been a very good experience to date. I will see how the others turnout, but I think it's a failed plan.

This weekend we are going to be back on schedule and brewing our Sam Adams Boston Lager clone. If anyone knows of a recipe for this one, we are all ears. While there are a lot of clones out there, none of them are alike. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

The second beer fridge project

After the success (eventually) of the beer fridge I made with a dorm fridge and a cold plate, Nick decided he was ready to make the plunge into kegging and wanted one himself.

For this project, Nick had a bigger dorm fridge than I had previously used. The fridge that he used looked like a 4.6 cu. ft. fridge where mine was a 1.7 cu. ft. fridge. This will allow him to also store beer, yeast and any other items in it he wants to keep cold in addition to the cold plate.



The setup was very similar to what I had setup before the box and tap which is what I am currently using. The plan was simple; hole in the front of the fridge for 1/2in spur and tap, hose to cold plate, house out of cold plate, house out of fridge to keg, hose from keg to CO2. Pretty simple.

We started with the small hole from the keg into the fridge.



Sorry about the crappy photo. The hole was in the lower part of the fridge near where the motor is. This is a pretty convenient place to drill as long as you are careful. However, it doesn't really matter where you drill with this size fridge because the colling element is the freezer, no freon in the walls like a large fridge.

From here we hooked up the CO2 and ran the line through to the cold plate.



He got the tubes, gages and CO2 tank from EJ Wren. Finally we drilled the hole through the front of the fridge using my handy dandy step drill bit. After we screwed in the tap and ran the hose, we were all done. Easy enough.

Nick said that the system has been working perfectly. He lucked out and was able to tweak the CO2 pressure so that there were no aggressive foam issues.

Again, sorry about the bad pics, next time I will get a real camera, not my camera phone.

Cheers!

Tweaking my bru wear

So the title is in reference to the Wu Tang Clan and the Wu Wear they made famous. Though I am am not a crazy Wu fan, I do appreciate their shaolin style, but I digress.

This weekend I spent doing some "fixer uppers" on my brew house. While all this was going on, I kicked the Pumpkin Ale and the Brown Ale. Both will be missed, but the dobblebock is now on tap and that is worth writing about. This post is going to be a mishmash of my projects and drinking so away we go.

Mash Tun

First off, after all of the problems I had with the mash tun, I knew it was time for some adjustments. The way that the false bottom had previously worked was a barbed nut going to a very short piece of rubber hose, from there a small piece of copper slid into a hole in the 1/2in copper tubing that made up the false bottom.

The plan to improve this was to was to create a more permanent connection from the false bottom to the ball lock valve. I started by moving the location of where the liquid exits the false bottom.

As pictured, I relocated the exit point of the runoff from the front of the false bottom to the center. This was to allow me to runner full copper with soldering from the false bottom to the ball valve.

From here, I created a connection from the ball valve to the newly relocated false bottom exit point. For this, I used a 1/2in copper fitting nut and a piece of 1/2in copper pipe. I connected the copper tube to a copper corner piece with solder to create a permanent connection. I did not solder the connection from the corner piece to the false bottom because I wanted to maintain some wiggle room.

In the end, I had a new connection between the ball lock and the false bottom that could still be taken out of the mash tun and properly cleaned.

Sparge Arm...One more time

So after my many, many failed attempts at building a sparge arm that would work, I think I have have something now. In the process of creating a successful sparge arm, I still managed to fail at an attempt to save the previous copper sparge arm that did not work because of the hose. In the long term though, i established that a hanging sparge arm would not work because we are now brewing 10 gallon batches and there is not as much room in the mash tun there once was.

As you can see in the picture below, I attempted to make the copper sparge arm a floating sparge arm instead of the hanging sparge arm it currently is. This was a failed attempt. The foam that I used to make it float was glued on, but the glue did not hold and got all over the copper. There was not saving it.




Starting with a clear slate, I decided to use my bottling bucket for the reservoir, high temp hose to run the water from the reservoir to the sparge arm, and PVC pipe for the actual sparge arm. With the bottling bucket, I had to get a 3/4 ball valve and i used the plastic nut from the bottling setup to secure the ball valve into the bucket. I used 5/8 in inside diameter hot water hose that is rated at boiling temp for the hose. I used barbed nuts for the connection to the ball valve and the connection from the new PVC sparge arm.



Finally I made the sparge arm out of PVC with small holes in it. It's pretty simple, a square with holes in it that goes to a T. PVC is cheaper and easier to work with than copper, I wish I had done this originally. It doesn't float above the water, but it should sit on top of the gain bed without sinking and slowly disburse water. The ball valve is clutch here because you can adjust the flow with relative ease.

In the end, this is what I have:



Beer

So now a quick update on my brewing situation. I have a Kolsch and the Yeti clone both in secondary. The Yeti was way too much on the oak side, this concurs with Nick's opinion that splitting the full pound for the 6 gallon batch was overkill. I would have to say that his opinion that we would be good with an ounce in each primary fermenter was correct.

Because of the overwhelming flavor on the yeti and the fact that I lost some quantity, I decided to top the yeti off in the secondary with about two quarts to a 1/2 gallon of water. Hopefully this take some of the extreme flavor off this brew. Otherwise it is close to undrinkable.

The kolsh is good, but cloudy. There was a lot of stuff still floating around. I topped this one off with water in the secondary as well. Currently it's still bubbling in the carboy so I think that I may need to cold store this one for a while to clear it out.



Finally I have my dopplebock on tap now and my red ale still waiting to fully carbonate. The dopplebock is OUTSTANDING. It's totally smooth. All of the roasty malt flavors are really smoothed over during the lagering process. This makes the whole experience really enjoyable. there is no alcohol burn on this brew at all and it about 7% abv, that's pretty impressive.

As you can see, great color, great head retention. I am very happy with how this turned out. It makes the wait all very worth while.

Since I kicked the pumpkin and the brown ale, I think it's time for a brew day!

Cheers

Loose Change

So since we are not brewing this weekend and I don't foresee myself doing any fun beer projects, I figured I would do a single post about a bunch of random odds and ends. Later this week I will post up the final recipe for the Pumpkin Ale Nick and I are going to brew up this weekend.

So here we go:

First, I have probably mentioned this in a previous post, but the Old Balls Ale is going strong. The pictures below are from when I took it from secondary into the keg. As you will note, there was some really odd "stuff" on the bottle that had me a little concerned at first, but in the end the beer was fine so it must just be traub or something.

The Old Balls Ale is hands down one of the best beers I have ever brewed. You will note that I used a double decoction on this brew as a way of dealing with raising the temperature in the process. I think the decoct gave the beer a very distinct, but complete malt profile. You can definitely tell that some of the malts were caramelized during the decoct and it made for a great beer.


I bottled up a couple of bottles of this to take to a competition because I think this one will do well and I am interested to hear what the judges will have to say.

This brings me to the second point of loose change, my first beer judging came back!!! Though I didn't place or get any awards (except the participation ribbon pictured below) I did get some really valuable feedback.

The beer that was judged was the California Common I brewed called Californication. All of the feedback I got said that the recipe was kind of bland and lacked character. Both judges recommended stepping up the hops and putting some more punch in the grain bill.

After getting the forms back, I revisited my recipe and noticed how simple it really was. It probably could use some spicing up. Although I have to say I really enjoyed it and I think it's a great session beer.


Finally, today I made some adjustments to my kegging setup. When Nick was over, he mentioned that I might get better cooling if I piped something directly from the coolest place in the fridge (the freezer) to the fan. We made some minor adjustments at the time, but I decided to go all the way and duct tape it all into place. This is what I have now.

You will also notice that I filled the fridge with foam insulation. This was also one of Nick's suggestions. He said that it would help keep the temperature where I want it if I fill the empty space. Ben from Ben's Homebrew has suggested this as well. We will see if all these changes work.

That's it for now, cheers!

Box and Tap (the final chapter)

So with out revisiting the background of all this, first there was a box and then there was a tap, and now there will be a box and tap together.

This idea is all the result of a great post I saw from my friend Ben at Ben's Homebrew. I have to thank him as always for the awesome innovation that I get to fuck all up in my upstate half ass way.

Here we go.

First off, I had to cut two hole in the bottom of my fridge to have the cold air flow two and from in. Ben used a tool that he said does this very early. I couldn't find anything like this and (considering the holes had to have 3" PVC pieces in it) I could not find something to drill a hole that big. So I did the next best thing. Tin snips. They worked great. I drilled a hole big enough to get the tin snips in and never looked back. It was a much easier process than I anticipated.



After getting the holes in the metal cut out, I had to get the foam insulation and the plastic from the inside the fridge cut. Initially I was using a box cutter for this, but it was a real pain so I used the sawzall, much easier. In the end, I had two holes with PVC coming through them.



After those hole were drilled I had to drill the same sized holes in the top of my box. This was a lot harder than I thought, it was not easy to line up (but I am not known for 'exact measurement' so I probably made my own problems). But in the end, it wasn't anything a little insulation from the basement couldn't fix.

You will note below, on the right is a computer fan that I am using to circulate the air from the mini fridge into the box with. The other picture is below the mini fridge what the view is from the box to the mini fridge.






Finally I had to get CO2 into the box. I also had to get a manifold for the CO2 distribution. I did this with yet another visit to harbor freight. I picked up a 4way splitter for a air compressor and some brass barbs. I picked up three ball lock valves and was ready to go.

This is a very simple manifold that does the trick. The manifold gets fed from the CO2 tank and has three ball locks that connect to the barbed fittings. Everything is 1/4". I used the thread sealing tape that I also used for the ball lock on the mash tun.




Once I had CO2 going into the box and a line going out to a tap, it was imperative that I test it to make sure that it was going to pour a glass of brew. As you can see here, the test was successful.

When it was all said and done, two of the three taps are ready to go, I need to work out some logistical issues with the cold plate and how the external keg is going to work, but I am in no rush with that until I get another couple kegs.

Upon Ben's advice, I placed a fan to blow on the back of the fridge. It's really working hard to get down to an equilibrium temp so it's important that I make sure there is plenty of air circulating.






It's not cooling all that quickly, but it's going. In a few days it's gone from 65f down to 56f. Ideally I would love to have it at a steady 52f, but I am questioning if that's going to be possible. it's not bad now though.






If you click on the image below you can see a drawing I did of how the finished product would work. Though it is wacky, I have to say I am pretty fired up that a) it's functional and b) it was a lot easier than I anticipated.

I think in my old age I have started to do a little more planning and a little less "I have 3 hours free, I should totally re-vamp my system" which has produced some better products. Either way I am always looking towards the next step in my gadget empire. I was reading some of Adam's posts about chest fridges and couldn't help but dream. I think I am going to stop and smell the flowers for a little while with this on though, plus the wife is quickly noticing my many beer projects and starting to ask questions. It's time to come out of the basement, for a few weeks anyway.

Cheers!

Mash Tun 2.0 - Sparge Arm

So now that I have a nice new false bottom for my mash tun, it's time to go ahead and make a sparge arm that works. No more shower heads, no more hoses with holes in them. It's time for the real deal.

After working with the copper on my false bottom, I decided to go ahead and make a sparge arm out of copper. It was pretty easy to work with and only took me an hour or so to get all put together. The supplies were actually quite reasonable as well. The copper was only like $3.99 and all the little parts were $.59 a piece. Total I would say it was about $10.

As you can see from the pictures above, it's a pretty simple design. There are 3 T's all in the middle and 4 corners. Everything is 1/2 inch again. the square is 6" x 6". This makes two 6" long pieces on the sides pictured and 6 2 3/4" pieces (something like that) that fit the T's together.

As you can see from the pictures, I used a 3-way connector to make a PVC support bracket for the sparge arm. It's pretty much that simple. Cut 3 chunks of 1/2" PKC and connect them via a 3way connector. The sparge arm is pictured with rope holding it in place, but I wound up using a coat hanger. If I get a butane torch and some solder, I will make the end of the sparge arm into a hook shape so it will attach to the PVC, but this will work for now.

If you reference back to the picture at the top, you will notice that I put 1/2" rubber hose over the copper. I did this via bruit force and hot water. I am not all that confident in this aspect of the setup, but as I type this, I remembered that there is a chunk of garden hos I have been planning on using for something that might work AWESOME for this. We will see.

either way, I ran water through it, works fine. I did the vinegar thing I had reference in the previous post. Things should be pretty good. Here is the shopping list:

2' Copper 1/2" tube (should have gotten more, luckily I had some left over) $3.99
4 Corner pieces $2.20
3 T's $1.79
PVC 3 way $.20
3' 1/2" PVC (Had it, but it ain't expensive)

Total - Umm, ~$7

Feel free to shoot me a note if you have any questions.

Mash Tun 2.0 - False Bottom

So as always, as soon as I have something all dialed in, I get the itch. In this case, it was to build a copper false bottom like the ones I have seen online.

Now as much as my "bazooka screen el chepo" is working, there are obvious limitations and I can't help but feel like I am leaving something back in the mash tun at the end of the day. This little project is hopefully going to change all of that.

Now to start, I am going to review the tools and the costs that are associated with this project. This is actually a great little project for new home owners (me) and apartment folks. the reason that I say that is while this project does require some random tools, they are all inexpensive and are good to have (assuming you don't already). I say this because when I moved into our new house, I had no tools. So every time I would go and work on my beer projects, I was usually buying parts and tools. This is why with every project I try and say "do I need this?" and make something that makes sense for me. In this case, it was easy:

Tools

Hacksaw $2.50 (harbor freight)

Extra blades $4
Pipe cutter $5

Parts

5' of 1/2" copper $8.50

4 copper corners $2

4 copper T's $2.80

Cooler - Had it, but anywhere from $18-$25

Ball valve or hose nozzle - $5

So, for this project, I was making a 10" by 10" false bottom for my mash tun. So I cut the 5' copper into 4 10" pieces. After doing this, I would put the copper tube into my vice and put one of the T's on the end (so I knew where to start cutting). Next I hack sawed 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through the tube with the cuts being 1/4 to 1/2 inches apart. I actually started doing 1/4" apart (below right) and moved to 1/2" (below left) because it was needlessly time consuming with a hacksaw to do all this.

After making the slices in my long tubes, I cut 6 more pieces 2 3/4" long. These will be the pieces between the T's. I made three hacksaw cuts in all but one of them and pieced it together.

Next I had to come up with a way to connect this to my spout from before. To do this, I used a very small piece of hose (I think it was from my racking cane, but I don't recall the exact size). This connects to a smaller piece of copper coming out of a hole in the side of one of the 2 3/4" pieces I cut (the one without the slices). These are all held in place with screw tight rings.

Finally to get the whole thing up to snuff I spent a lot of time cleaning it. Obviously you don't want copper in your beer, though it will improve your Hugh, it's going to hurt coming out the other side. With my immersion chiller, the directions I found said to soak it in vinegar, so since this is copper, I did the same. Better safe than sorry.

Now I considered doing the soldering, but noticed that a few of the people I saw on the new did not do this. the more I thought about it, I realized that it was not really necessary. You see, it's sucking in liquid and not grain. That's what you want right? Why make it water tight then if you want liquid to get in? Makes sense to me. If anyone has experience in this, I am open to suggestion, but I am going to at least try it this way.

In the end, this is it. I tested it and it's tighter than a dolphin's butt-hole so we are a go!!!

When I started to drain it, the flow was slower than with my bazooka screen knockoff, but I have a feeling that the flow will be consistent and pull from a broader area of the mash. that's the hope anyway.

Next up, a real deal, no holds bard sparge arm!!! This is a long time coming and this one is hear to stay.

Tap

So since the last post was titled "Box" it's only appropriate to title this one "Tap". Hopefully someday I will have a "Tab Box" post, but that's in the future.

So I cracked open the tower that I wrote about here that I got off of eBay (for $14!) and I have to say, the news is good.

After a struggle I got it all dismantled and it looks as though all the parts are there. Plus it looks like all the parts are in working order. Pictured here is the tower with the taps taken out of it. It was a really messy jot to get it all cleaned out, but now that it's clean, it does not look too bad.

There are three brass taps with 2 or 3 in shanks and all the necessary hardware. The come apart with out a problem and all the rubber seals look decent.

The one issue that I did run into is the main screw that holds the whole thing together. It as pretty stripped out and I had to drill holes in the head to break it free. I am going to have to have it back in there at some point to keep the basketball together, but I think that I will be able to come up with some solution (suggestions are welcomed).

Overall I am quite pleased still. I was a little concerned that I would get it open and not like what I saw; however, on the contrary, I was quite pleased. A little TLC and this thing will be in tip-top shape. It looks as though I am going to need to purchase some insulation for the tower (to wrap around the hoses), some daft lines, a few ball lock valves, brass polish, some paint, and I should have everything I need.

I will be posting about this one more as I get into it.

Cheers!

Box (wish I could come up with a better name for this post)

After a long time of thinking about doing this, I decided to get things started. Let me begin by explaining that I got this inspiration (and a lot of the logistics) from Ben's Homebrew and a project that he has had working with a dorm fridge. I loved the idea and happened to have a dorm fridge that I have been using for my current setup. So it seemed like a natural fit.

So, to the best of my recollection, this is how it all went:

I had the corner table (built out of old counter top donated from my in-laws) and I wanted to make something out of that instead of building something from scratch. Now because I just threw the corner table together out of wood pieces I had lying around, it's not exactly a piece of wood working perfection, but it works. Anyway, because everything on the table was a little odd, the box that I was going to build would have to be a little odd.

In the picture above is the finished product. I used most of a sheet of 1/2" plywood and a couple of 8' 2x4's as my supplies. I had wood screws lying around so it was really just a matter of measuring and cutting.

I bought a sheet of 2" foam insulation for the inside and some of the stuff you use to stick it to things (insert technical correction here). For the most part I didn't really need it, the insulation fit pretty snug (by snug I mean I was jamming crap everywhere) and I only had to stick the piece for the door on. I till have to put the piece for the ceiling in, but the rest is done. Cutting insulation sucks.

It fits two kegs without a problem and seems to be pretty tight (I won't really know until I get the next step going). It took a few hours, but in the end I am glad I did it. Now I just have to get the rest of the stuff going.

Anyway, the next steps are going to be cutting the hole in the mini fridge and getting my CO2 setup for multi kegs. I think the way that I am going to set it up is to keep the cold plate working to keep a third beer on tap outside the box. I also am going to be cleaning up the new tower I got and getting that into working condition. My goal is to have this up and running (with 3 beers on tap of course) for basketball season...GO SU!!!

Cheers!

The Next Step!

So I have been working on a few things with my homebrew setup. A while back I had a post about the next big thing. This project was going to be based on somehting I saw on Ben's Homebrew and emailed Ben about. Well this past weekend I got quite a ways a long on that project.

I am going to put in a detailed outline of what it is that I made, but just moments ago I won this three tap beauty on eBay. She is old and pretty beat, but for $14 I feel like I made out like a bandit! This will be the crowning peice on my homebrew setup. I am pretty geeked up right now.

Anyway, more to come on this project, I just thought that I would share this little development.

Cheers!

I am the smartest man alive!

I decided that I was going to go out and get myself up to speed with a sparge setup that made sense. I wanted to use a cooler that held between 4 and 5 gallons of water, I wanted a sparge arm that had a nice spray and I wanted something that was in expensive.


So after some thinking, I remembered that I had an odd shaped cooler in the shed that my little brother used to use for motor cross races. I planned on drilling a hole and putting a tap in it, but I found that the drain plug pulled completely out and with a few gaskets it sealed up tighter than a dolphins butt hole.

After I had my water reservoir all sealed up, I decided to move to the sparge arm. I considered some PVC contraptions to float on the grain bed and I even thought about making a copper one. However in the process of looking online to see if there were easy DIY instructions on building something like this, I found a few posts with people deciding to use shower heads.


I went to Mr. Seconds and got myself a very basic shower head (that looked chrome but wound up being half plastic, a blessing in disguise it turns out) and used some of my odds and end hose items from my other projects to come up with this.



After I noticed that the shower head as it was did not work because there was not enough water pressure, I took the shower head apart (with the water running through it) and noticed that pressure should not be a big deal. The water was forced through a tiny hole and came through the inside with pretty good force.



After some brainstorming and a 22oz of Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye (awesome!) I decided to cut the shower head in half so that the tight straight stream hit a solid spot thus creating a outward spray. Amazingly it worked.

As you can see in this picture it puts off a nice wide spray (though you cannot see it from the side view).

I am pretty pumped to try out my new device this weekend on my Doppelbock I am brewing, I just hope the plastic can handle the 170f+ temps it's going to get.

Stonch's second fermentation video

For anyone like me who uses the plastic buckets, you love to hear and smell the hoppy burps coming out when your brew is fermenting. Well I have always wanted to sit and watch it all unfold, but don't have the time or patience, so Stonch has made it easy for me and everyone else to enjoy without quitting your job.

This video is awesome on so many levels, great addition to the blog Stonch!