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All Grain Upgrade Plan

April 19, 2014 in Beer Projects, Beer Topics by Brian Thompson | No comments

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).

 

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Brewing Tools

February 1, 2014 in Beer Projects, Beer Topics by Brian Thompson | No comments

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.

Tool Time

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Beer 5 – Honey Bacon Smoked Porter

January 19, 2014 in Beer Topics, Beers by Brian Thompson | No comments

Final Beer Name:  Where’s the Bacon???

Style:  Smoked Bacon Honey Porter

Alcohol: 6.49%

Color: 35

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.

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Yeast Plan
Yeast Inputs

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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:

  • some specialty grains, maybe?
  • Some extract
  • Honey (30 mins)
  • 1oz Kent Goldings hops (60min)
  • 1oz Cascade hops (2 mins)
  • priming sugar

then to get some smoke flavor I added

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

  1. Look into using more bacon and/or stripping the bacon flavors out using vodka before brewing the beer
  2. Might use a little less smoke, Weyermann grains, by ~1/4lb to allow more of the honey flavor to show.

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First Yeast Starter

January 12, 2014 in Beer Projects, Beer Topics by Brian Thompson | No comments

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.

 

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Fermentation Chamber – Completed

November 17, 2013 in Beer Projects, Beer Topics by Brian Thompson | No comments

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)

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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)

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Looking Back

Now that I’ve build my project I think I’d do it a bit different next time.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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).
  4. 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…

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