I’m getting ready to make the leap into all grain brewing and am pretty excited, but I want to do it right. I don’t want to buy things to turn around a few batches down the road and wish I had bought something else. So I want to either make sure the things I buy now will work for future upgrades. A couple of key things to keep in mind is that I am doing 5 gallon batches now, but might want to do 10 gallon batches in the future. Also, I like high gravity brews which requires more grain to get the more sugars, so again I need to think about the volume capability of the upgrades.
Key Items for all grain brewing
Hot Liquid Tank – HLT
Propane or Electric Burner
Mash/Lauder Tun – MLT
Mash Paddle
Kettle / brew pot
To get into all grain brewing from what I have now (see my tools here) I will need to get a mash/lauder tun (MLT), a mash paddle, and a large kettle. I’ll explain my logic as I go through each one.
Hot Liquid Tank – HLT
A HLT is a fancy brewers way of saying a pot or kettle for heating water. The hot water here will go into the MLT. I have an existing 5G stainless steel pot which will be sufficient for 5G batches. For 10G batches I’ll need a large pot, but my plan will be to buy a larger pot when time comes for this. At the very least I’m not buying something now that won’t be used later.
Propane or Electric Burner
I have an existing 38,000 BTU burner from the turkey fryer kit I bought to get into home brewing. From my calculations my burner should be good for batches up to ….TBD
To eventually do a 10G batch I have calculated that I’ll need about a TBD burner.
Mash/Luader Tun
Since a MLT isn’t needed for extract brewing I don’t have any existing equipment and will have to buy something new. Seems like when someone gets into a really fancy brewing setup the MLT is a stainless steel pot, but many successful and far cheaper options use a converted cooled as they can easily be converted into an MLT and are fairly inexpensive. Additionally, MLTs can be made for fly sparging or batch sparging. I’m going to plan to do batch sparging as it seems this is relatively foolproof and the advantages for fly sparging aren’t too great. I want to be sure that the MLT that I end up with will be good for 5G batches now and 10G batches in the future.
A high gravity (barleywine) 10G batch will have 45lbs amount of grain and at most 27.25 gal of water in the MLT at one time. Remember the space in lid usually counts as part of the volume for a cooler so plan for a slightly larger cooler. From this I get a cooler size with at least 94qt of internal space. Well a 100qt coleman extreme cooler is going to only have about 80.25qt of internal space, but I figure I won’t be making any 10G batches of barelywine and will call it good. Also, many poeple have recommended that a 70 qt (17.5G) is good for up to 10G batches. The coleman extreme cooler comes highly recommended since it has a drain groove through the bottom. With this cooler in mind a 5G batch will have a volume of 18 qt. So with that in mind a 70-100qt cooler should be good into the future.
So I received a 100qt coleman extereme cooler for my birthday, but I have some questions about it as it isn’t as I thought it would be. Read more on the Home Brew Talk Forums.
Mash Paddle
I’ll need a mash paddle. I’ve read to use a hardwoord such as maple makes a good paddle. Also, when making the paddle drill/cut good size holes in it to break up the dough balls well.
Kettle Upgrade
As I mentioned below I’m planning to use my existing kettle 7.5G kettle to become my HLT and then will purchase a new kettle. Since I want to to small brewing upgrades without having to discard things in the future I’m planning to buy a kettle that will work for 5G and 10G batches, but to save money now I’m going to pass on any of the extra gizmos (thermometers, valves, sight tubes) for now.
Other posts suggest that a 80 qt (20G) stainless steel pot/kettle can do 10G batches.
In my quest to selecting a kettle I asked for some help with the selection criteria on homebrewtalk.com forums (here).
I wanted to talk about a few new tools that I got to make beer and got a bit carried away and created a page of all the current tools I’m using now. Here is the page. I’m thinking that I’ll make additional posts as I get new tools because you can never have enough tools.
This is my first beer since making my fermentation chamber and using my improved process with a drill pump and paint mixer. Besides enjoying the beer I’ve had a lot of fun using my new toys and working on making better better.
The first sip was on new year’s eve which is a few days early for the 3 weeks in the bottle. The beer wasn’t very carbonated so I waited a few more weeks to 1/18/2014 see if it just needs more time or perhaps the bacon fat killed off my bubbles. Also, there appeared to be no bacon flavor which is kind of disappointing. I was really worried that it would be bacon-y so I’m much happier to err on this side of the line, but wish there was still a hint of bacon. I’m wondering if the flavors might come out a bit better after more time in the bottles.
Well the final taste test still doesn’t have much/any bacon flavors or aromas, but that’s okay. The beer has a really smokey flavor with a nice smooth mouth feel. The beer seems very clear, which I’m not too surprised as there was almost no trub in the carboy after transferring to the bottling bucket. There isn’t too much carbonation, but enough to say it isn’t flat. I’m wondering if the bacon has impacted that, I’ve read the bacon fat can kill the bubbles.
My Brew Notes
Ingredients
This recipe is a specialty brewing kit plus a few of my add ons. The kit is from Midwest Brewing Supply and is a Honey porter extract brewing kit which includes (I forgot to take notes on the specifics:
And for the bacon flavors I dry-hogged” as mentioned on BYO.com which suggests 5oz of bacon added like a normal dry hop schedule. To get there I started with
1lb of uncooked bacon
Execution Notes
Schedule
Brew day (0) – 11/9/2013
No boil over which is good.
Fermenting didn’t start for about 36 hours. Worried that yeast didn’t take, but I did see bubbles before pitching it so it should have been fine. Will look to yeast starter going forward as recommended by boydster in other post
Bubbles for quit after about 1.5 weeks. I was going to do a test but broke my hydrometer. I’ll probably update. my process to do hydro tests with the hydrometer attached to fishing line so that I don’t waste beer.
No or really slow bubbles on day 11.
waited a couple of days since I couldn’t do a hydro check for the moment.
Cold Crash Start (13) – 11/22/2013
Since the fermenting took longer than expected I delayed the cold crash a couple of days. Should look into taking measurements.
It took about 1 day for the chamber to reach the cold crash temp. I changed the cold crash temp to ~40 so that the A/C wouldn’t turn on every 3 hours. Probably get it closer to 36 for the next crash
Secondary Fermentation (16) – 11/25/2013
The auto-siphon had a gap at the siphon to tubing. I’m pretty sure I exposed the beer to a lot of oxygen. Need to get some clamps before the next transfer.
I left the chamber off for ~ 1 day for the beer to more naturally rise back to room temp. Near room temp I turned on the chamber which the heat pad did a bit of work for the last few degrees.
Chamber set for 19.5 +/- 2.0.
Dry “Hogging” (27) – 12/6/2013
In reading about how to do the bacon it was clear that I needed to remove as much fat as possible so that the beer doesn’t stay flat. I’m not sure why, but apparently the fat will cause the beer to not hold the carbonation or something. So to do this I started with my 1lb of bacon and trimmed off as much fat as I could with a knife. Then I cooked the bacon in the oven on a rack that would allow for the grease to drip out. A few times while is was cooking and while flipping the bacon I used a paper towel to absorb the standing grease on the bacon. When it was all cooked my 1lb of bacon was about 3.5oz which was short of the 5oz I was targeting. With the bacon cooked I simply open up the carboy and dropped them in.
Cold Crash 2 (31) – 12/10/2013
Gelatin (32) – 12/11/2013
Bottling Prep (35) – 12/14/2013
Bottling (36) – 12/15/2013
Very little trub in the carboy and I don’t think I sucked it up into the bottling bucket. I’m not sure if this is due to the gelatin (which I don’t really see at the bottom as much as I thought I would) or from doing the first cold crash.
Bottled 22 220z bombers, and 11.5 12oz bottles for a total of 588.5oz (22*21+11.5*11).
Set the fridge to 20+/- 2 for carbonating
Took about 3 hours to bottle and clean up. Need to track times for other steps to better understand how long it takes to do things.
Alcohol
Target Starting Gravity: 1.06
Starting Gravity: 1.059
Final Gravity: 1.011
Alcohol %: 6.49
Color: 35
Recommendations for next time
Look into using more bacon and/or stripping the bacon flavors out using vodka before brewing the beer
Might use a little less smoke, Weyermann grains, by ~1/4lb to allow more of the honey flavor to show.
After posting my beer making process to the Homebrew forums someone suggested that I look into yeast starters to ensure that I was getting enough yeast to ferment the wort. A sign of low yeast is a slow start and from my last beer I certainly saw that with the fermentation not starting for 2-3 days.
After looking to this a bit more it turns out that I haven’t had enough yeast for most of my beers (low pitch count). With my discovery being around Christmas time some of my wish list items were a 2000mL Ehrlenmeyer flask and a stir plate. You can do starters without these, but the flask makes the heating and cooling pretty simple and the stir plate pretty much ensures that you only need one step for most beers.
Well I got the flask to use for my first yeast starter, but the stir plate is on back order. For the beer I was making the OG is supposed to be 1.080 and according to the yeast calculators online I needed two steps. The first step could fit in the flask, but the second step needed 4.5L which is too much for my flask. I had a huge boil over here and it made quite the mess. In the end though my yeast starter went great and caked out nice.
For the second step I wanted to avoid the boil over and after reading several forums there is some stuff called Fermcap-S which is an anti-foaming agent. I went to the local home brew store and got a small bottle. With just a few drops of this stuff I had no risk of a boil over. This stuff is a must have. Well since the second step wouldn’t fit in my flask I got some of the new cooled wort and put it into the flask (after pouring out the liquid from the first step). I then shook it around real to break up the yeast cake and poured the whole thing into the cooled wort. After a good amount of mixing I poured the contents into two containers, the flask and a emtpy bottle. I followed the same steps and ended up with a really nice yeast cake in both.
When I used the starter for my beer I took some of the wort and gave each a good shake then pour the contents into the wort. After just a few hours the yeast was fermenting and it did it so vigorously that I got a block air lock and a big mess in the fermentation chamber. I had a good amount of foam on top of the wort when I packed it all up so hopefully with a bit more care I can avoid the air lock blockage, but my yeast starter sure worked great. Next time I hope to have the stir plate in hand to see how much easier (one less step) things go. If you are curious about the steps to make a starter I’ve written my process on a fixed page so that I can keep refining it.
Trying to start a project just as you become a dad isn’t the best plan, but I’ve finally completed my fermentation chamber after about 6 months. I’m already making a beer in it and so far it is working great. The ironic thing is that the temperature is about 70 degrees right now and the fermentation chamber doesn’t really have to do anything, but at least I’ve staying at a constant temperature.
First things first, here are pictures of the completed project (click an image for a larger view)
Supplies
I bought my things from four main places. The temperature controllers came from E-bay, the A/C unit was from craigslist, the 110VAC lights, switches and relays are from Allelectronics.com, and the rest of the material was from Home Depot. The box is made of 2x4s, 1/4 plywood, and 2 inch foam. I used foam glue to attach the plywood to the foam and 2″ screws to join all the 2x4s. To join the foam pieces together and cover holes I used Great Stuff. After I add up all the pieces I spent just a bit under $500. I bought a few tools, but was able to borrow most of the big tools from family and friends. The most surprising thing was how expensive outlets, outlet boxes, fuse holders, and the controller box were.
The Build
Overall the project came together pretty close to the plan. I can’t cut straight, follow my directions, or paint, but other than that I did pretty good. The borrowed tools really helped cutting relatively straight lines, not straight, but straight enough. When I built the controller box I had a few errors that needed correcting, but that was fine and not completely unexpected. I also didn’t like how my doors were going to seal so I added another foam border to help with that.
The control box almost was a disaster. I used a bremel to cut out the switches with no problem. The wiring went to plan. I did have a bit of difficult soldering the wires to the switch contact points, but eventually got it. the I used a few contact boards to provide a secure attach point for the external wires to the internal wires. At the very end I almost couldn’t get the lid to close. I had to move and twist the wires around and apply some pressure to finally seal things up. I had two mistakes during this build. First, my initial wiring for the relay looked really good, but upon testing I discovered that I did about 50% of the connections wrong and had to redo it all. Finally, once it was all sealed up I discovered that my compression did break a couple of contacts that I had to go in and fix. But in the end the controller works great and looks pretty good.
As an extra thing that I worked on while I couldn’t get down to the garage is that I converted two old cell phones into IP webcams, one to watch the control panel and the other inside the chamber to watch the fermenting process and to double check temperatures. To get my wifi signal to reach the garage I had to setup a wifi repeater. The two phones were android phones and I was able to use free apps to setup the webcams. I installed IP Webcam for the webcams, droid VNC server to get into the phone remotely along with Screen Widget to turn the screen off (if needed). Finally, I can watch the webcams with the built in webpages from IP Webcam and I also use IP CAM Controller to see things from my phone. I had planned for this which is why I have an outlet not controlled by the STC-1000s so that the internal cell phone could remain on all the time.
Here are several photos during the build (click an image for a larger view)
Looking Back
Now that I’ve build my project I think I’d do it a bit different next time.
I’d probably simplify all the cuts I have to do and make the outer plywood fit around the foam entirely then have the 2×4 brace around it. This would make the project cost just a bit more, but it would save so much time.
I’d make the doors fit flush with the outside edges rather than fit inside the openings to make the seals easier. I didn’t follow my original plan for the doors as I was worried they wouldn’t seal well.
I would make the A/C cutout a bit larger. This ould make it easier for the great stuff to get in the cracks. I didnt’ have much space and don’t really know how well I sealed this in. (I’m yet to do a dry ice test).
I was excited and cut the foam pieces first, but looking back I should have made the frame and then cut the foam to fit into it. I’m pretty sure my method is a rookie mistake, but I was excited to see the foam cut out.
Next Steps
I haven’t made the dividing section so that I can have two temperature zones inside. I have the controller and the wiring all done and all is left is to figure how I would do this. I’m thinking some type of relay to open and close a small opening and then a fan to circulate air. I also have to figure out how to make the section so that it can be moved around and then “expanded” to give it a tighte fit. I’ll have to think about this for a while, until then…
After my last batch of beer, Baby-T Double Trouble Belgium Dubble, came up short on the alcohol content I’ve decided that my problem is due to my fermentation temperatures…and possibly my aeration. I was also having a hard time using my wort chiller since the hose water that I’ve circulated through it wasn’t too cold. So I’m stepping it up a notch.
I got a drill off of Craiglist for about $20 and a drill water pump from Home Depot. Next time I chill the wort I’ll be circulating iced water from a cooler through the chiller which should bring the temps down right away. I also bought a large drill-attached paint mixer to help aerate the wort after it is chilled. One thing I’m slightly hesitant on is that while I plan to sanitize the mixer, I don’t know if I’ll run into any problems since it isn’t a food grade mixer. I guess I’ll learn soon enough.
Now to the main issue, temperature control. For all my batches to date I’ve simply left the beer to ferment in the back of the garage. The temperature usually stays around 60 degrees, but on really hot days it will rise to 70 and on consecutive cold days it will drop to low 50s. For my last batch I started fermenting right as a cold spell hit which I’m pretty sure caused the yeast to not ferment all the sugars. After a lot of reading the only way I’m going to get around the problem is to get some temperature regulation through a fermentation chamber.
I did a lot of reading in the http://www.homebrewtalk.com forums to get ideas of how to go about building a fermentation chamber. I think there are basically three types of chambers, those that use ice, those that use a fridge components, and those that use air conditioners. The ice ones are simple (1,), but if you ask me annoying to maintain. The fridge styles have many variations. Some work as is, some take some cutting of the interior to make room for a carboy (1,2,), some look to extend the fridges dimensions with some type of add on (1,), and others strip out the cooling component and then use a custom box (1,). For the AC styles they are pretty much the same, take an AC unit and build a custom box (examples below).
Our garage is already packed with stuff, so the custom box idea was the most attractive to me. The next part was to decide fridge or AC which is the single most expensive part. I simply trolled Craiglist for a while until I found something cheap. For me it ended up being a $30 Haier 5000BTU AC unit (HWF05XCK-1) which I learned was purchased from Target the year prior when we were having a huge summer heat wave and the person selling it was moving to Saudi Arabia. I joked with the person that they probably should have taken the unit with them, but assured them that I’d put it to good use. Anyways, just as noted in the Racer X design to override the temperature cutoff on the AC unit a simple loosening of the screw behind the temperature knob will do the trick.
AC Unit with my measurements (click the picture for a larger view)
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The screw is here (hard to see) [singlepic id=18 w=320 h=240 float=none]
This is the other side, do not mess with this screw [singlepic id=16 w=320 h=240 float=none]
With the screw loosening I rigged up a quick test to see that I did things just right
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The temperature is down to 36 degrees F! [singlepic id=20 w=320 h=240 float=none]
With the AC unit and the idea to make a custom box, I needed to sort out the temperature controller. I very very long forum about an aquarium temperature controller that can be bought on ebay seemed like the ticket for me. This controller usually can be bought for $15-$20 and I got my first one for $15.50 and the second for $18.25 (I’ll explain later…which if I knew how to do ebay better should have been $17, but I’ve wasted $1.25 on worse before). Here is a quick look at one with my measurements marked up on it: [singlepic id=28 w=320 h=240 float=none]
Now off to design the chamber. My design was strongly influenced one the 2 Tier, 2 Zone fermentation chamber (Racer X). It is a really nice build and as it turns out I ended up with the exact same AC unit as his (even though they are listed as different brands). This chamber is really nice as it allows for one cooling unit and two temperature controllers to create the two zones. There are a few others with similar ideas that I looked at too (1, 2, )
I decided that while I really like the 2 zone idea I don’t need that right now, but that I’d make my design with a future expansion in mind. I wanted to make sure that this could hold a keg plus kegging gear, 3 soda kegs plus gear, 4 carboys, or 4 5G buckets, or 2 buckets and all of my other brewing gear so that I’m not scattered all over the garage. With this in mind I settled on an interior dimension of 34″ x 36″ x 24.5″ (height, width, depth when looking at the front).
Additionally, here are a few design notes that I took from all my forum reading
Use the best (i.e. highest R-rated) rigid foam. A look at Home Depot says there is a 2″ foam with an R-10 value that is moisture resistant
Seal all the edges to avoid air leaks
A 2×4 is not 2″ by 4″. It is really 1.5″ x 3.5″
On the interior paint the inside with a mildew resistant paint and caulk the edges.
I want easy access to the interior. No top doors so that I can leave things on the top.
I messed around for a bit trying to figure out how I would go about designing this. When I did my bar a few (many) years back, which I’ll post about some other time, I did it all in excel where each cell represented 0.25″. that worked out well, because a quarter inch was the smallest thickness of wood that I used. For this design I plan to use 1/8″ plywood and excel just won’t work as there are too many cells needed. I ended up doing the design the simple way, engineering paper, a ruler, and a pencil. For the most part I had each square represent 2″. The 1/8″ is hard to draw clearly, but I made it work. I won’t go into all the effort spent making the design, but below are the drawing for the chamber. As in the Racer X design, the doors are the hardest part. I decided to have two doors that swing open from the sides. If you look carefully at the design, I’ve staggered the plywood and foam cutting one inch from the sides, the top, and between the doors. With this staggered approach the doors actually don’t come together in the middle, but I have a door cover that makes it appear as if it does. I need to sort out how to add the weather stripping, but for now I’m planning on just slicing a bit of foam away from the edges for it. The other thing that I know I have left off is the hole for the AC unit. I’m planning to simply cut as needed and figure the support required to keep it at the proper angle (note the AC unit isn’t supposed to be level.).
Once I had the design drafted I determined how much wood and foam I’d need. I was able to get it down to 13 2x4s, 2 foam sheets, and 3 plywood sheets.
[singlepic id=26 w=320 h=240 float=none]
The next thing I needed to sort out was how I was going to wire the chamber up. The temperature controller forum had a lot of good ideas. I decided that I’d have one outlet for the hot, one for the cold, and two for either hot or cold. I also wanted to be able to turn the outlets on and off without unplugging them so I needed a switch. I added some indicator lights. I added another switch for another outlet that I can keep on the outside of the chamber. I’m going to wire up the second temperature controller to just be a simple thermometer since the temperature probe on the beer will be slightly different due to the exothermic reaction of the yeast fermenting beer. I plan to have this whole circuit plugged into a 20A circuit, but the temp probes are only rated for 10A so I’ve added a 10A fuse to each circuit. 10A will be plenty as the AC unit is only ~4A and I don’t intend to pull a full 20A at once. As I mentioned above I got the temperature controllers off of ebay. I found a really good deal on switches, relays and indicators from allelectronics.com and now just need to get the outlets, wire, and boxes.
[singlepic id=21 w=320 h=240 float=none]
So that is all the planning which I did before my birthday. In hopes of getting some home depot gift cards I’ve waited a while to actually get going on this. In my free time which is very limited now that we have baby Chase on our hands I modeled the design in Sketchup. This took me a bit of learning to be effective at this, but after a short while I got the hang of it and was able to put together the plans. Good thing too as I learned a few things that caused me to make some adjustments in the design.
Click the link to see the animated sketchup of the design
