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All Grain Vs. Extract
Around January of 2001 I got back into homebrewing. I was doing extract (from a can) brewing at the time. I joined the local homebrew club
http://hbd.org/clubs/franklin/public_html/index.html
and got interested in All Grain Brewing. I have outlined the basic construction fo the brewery here.
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Frame Layout, with casters for mobility.
I made the frame from 1" Angle Iron. I was lucky enough to have a set of four casters on box rail to use as the rollers for the brewery.
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Completed frame
This is the completed frame with LP tank, burner supports, Burners and counterflow chiller in place.
The Burners are what are called "Jet" burners. They put out a flame about three feet high without the kettles in place.
The CounterFlow Chiller is two pieces of copper tubing with the smaller (3/8") tubing inside the larger (3/4") tubing. The outer tubing carries cooling water while the hot wort(beer) flows in the opposite direction. This counterflow, allows for rapid cooling of the freshly boiled wort to get it down cool enough to pitch the yeast into it. |
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Whenceforth the Kettles?
Ok, we have a frame, plumbing, and burners. Where does the actual mash and beer go? Kettles.
I got my kettles from the local beer retailer (1-Stop) for 23.00ea. I heard that they have since quit selling empty ones due to pressure from the beer distributors.
I made a jig for my air powered die grinder, and used a fiber cut-off disk to cut the openings in the kettles.
It took almost two hours on the first one. The later ones took less time.
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Test Run
The first "Test Run" was with water and cleaner to clean the plumbing. I found about five leaks in the plumbing that had to be repared.
All the basic plumbing is completed, but the final controls are not finished.
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Timer Running, waiting for the mash.
Making beer from grain consists of (1) griding the grain, (2) mashing the grain with hot water (the extract is called wort), (3) Boiling the extract from the mash with hops(this becomes hopped wort), and (4) fermenting the wort with special brewers yeast to produce the beer.
The Mash is done in temperature steps to allow various enzymes to break down proteins that cause haze, and to convert the starches to less complex sugars, and to break down some gums and proteins.
Beer is made from the mashed extract from malted barley. To this is added hops for bittering to balance the sweetness of the barley, and as a preservative. Hops are the cone or flower of Humulus Lupulus.
Differnet styles of beer are made by varying the ingredinents.The ingredients may include:
Malts like: English Pale malt, Even Lightter Pilsen Malt, Wheat Malt, Darker malt like Vienna and Munich, and specialty malts like Crystal (light and dark), Roasted Barley, Special B, And many others.
Ajuncts like: Corn, Unmalted wheat, Rice, and various sugars.
And finally Hops, which comes in different varieties like:Fugle, Goldings, Hallertau, Tettenanger, Saaz, Cascades, Nugget, and many more. |
Counter Pressure Bottle Filler and Fermenter
The Plywood assembly is a Counter Pressure Bottle Filler I made. It follows the design of Steve Jones at the State Of Franklin Homebrewer site. It is a pretty functional design that is easy to build. It uses standard hardware store ball valves, vinyl tubing, copper tubing and hose clamps.
The station works buy using a sliding door which holds the vlaves and hoses for the actual bottling operation(seen protruding about half an inch on the right side at the top).
The station includes a capper for applying bottle caps to the bottled beer.
The two hose ends at the top of the plywood attach to a corny keg which contains pressurized beer. There is an attachment on one hose for the CO2 connection.
The ball jar is placed under the right bottom hose to catch foam overflow, and the bottle to be filled it placed under the copper tube at the lower right (in the ball jar in the pix).
I start with all valves closed. The bottle is filled with CO2 by opening and then closing the upper right valve. The lower right valve is opened and then closed to release the CO2 air. The upper right valve is opened and closed to fill the bottle with CO2 at the same pressure as the beer. The top left valve is opened to allow beer into the bottle, and the lower right valve is carefully opened just a bit to let the gasses slowly escape from the bottle, and let beer flow in without distrubing it enough to let it foam up and loose CO2. Once the bottle is full, the beer in valve is closed, and the remaining execss gass in the bottle is allowed to escape through the lower right valve.
The slide can then be lifted up and the bottle swapped with an empty one. The bottle is capped onthe left, and the procedure repeted with the new bottle. |
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Cylindro-Conical Fermenter
This is a 17 Gallon Cylindro-Conical Fermenter. It has enough capacity to ferment 15 gallons of beer with headspace for the foam that forms on top during active fermentation. It is really nice for bigger batches of beer. Smaller batches (normally 5.5 gallons) are fermented in 6.5 gallon Carboys (water bottles).
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Making a Starter
Yeast is purchased form various sources like WYeast Labs in small samples. Or, it can be recovered from some beer in bottles (like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, one of my favorites). The samples are advertised as adequate for a 5 gallon batch, but it is much better to step up the yeast before adding it to the wort. Generally, the more yeast the better. I use a stir plate with a 2L erlynmeyer flask to make a mini batch of beer to step up the yeast. I have begun trying to propigate yeast by allowing it to blowoff from the fermenter into a catch container (ball jar on right).
The advantage of adding lots of yeast are:
1. The beer ferments more rapidly.
There is less chance of wild yeast or other microroganism contaminating the beer.
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Image title would go here.
These are a few of my favorite photographs from my different travels. Feel free to browse them as you like. If you want one click your right mouse button and choose "Save As" from the menu. |
Too much Oxigen may be a bad thing!
Oops, I guess I need to rotate this image. This is what happens when you forget to turn off the oxigen supply to the wort when you add yeast. I add oxigen for about two minutes to help the yeast get started when I first pitch them in the wort. I forgot to turn off the O2 and accidently let it run for near a half hour resulting in a big mess.
The beer was fine. |
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Hot food goes good with beer.
Hot sauce goes well with beer.
This is made from 8 Habaniros, 10 Jalapinos, 24 Saniros, and four Anchos with a pint of white vinigar. The Jalipnos were smoked for a half hour on the grill. |
Out for a beer with a Friend
One of the side effects of getting back into brewing was getting involved in the internet group SKOTRATs BrewRAT Chat. I've become friends with a lot of people from around the world, and even meet a few while on trips. Scott and I were out for dinner and a beer at 'The Rocky River Grill' while he was down teaching a class at Eastman in Kingsport. |
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Lactic Starter
I started four batches of pLambic beer that didn't develop any lactic acid. Lactic acid is a necessary component of this beer and without it the beer is out of balance.
So, I decided to try making my own by culturing the bacteria that are normally present on malted barley. It seems to be working. I'll add the starter to the main batch of beer and hopefully will know... in about a year.
Yes, a year. It is a really slow process! |
Peache!
Part of the lambic experiment is to make Peache pLambic. I used 8# of South Carolina Freestone Peaches for about 4 gallons.
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