Evolution Part 1 - MMMMM.... BEER!

4 Gallon Brew Kettle  -  First Brew Day

I love good beer!  I love to enjoy it, talk about it, make it and talk about making it!   I am also a very technical problem solver who loves to learn and be challenged.   I think this is why I have been having so much fun brewing and working on my brewery.

My brewing adventure took root at a local bar about a year ago.  One of my best friends Kurtis and I had just finished off a few good beers and solved all the worlds problems (as usual) when the topic switched to beer.  I told Kurtis that I had been wanting to try brewing for years and how there are simple kits to get you started.   He said he felt the same way and in fact he had a kit collecting dust in his basement.  Before we left the bar, we set a date for our first brew day!   As it turned out you can't really leave beer ingredients in your basement for over two years and expect to use them.  So I started doing some research and asking around where I could buy an ingredient kit locally.  To my surprise I found out that my cousin Dan and his son Jake had brewed a few batches and that they would like to join us!  We went to the local brewing supply (LBS) called St. Louis Wine and BeerMaking where we picked up a couple of recipe kits.  It was amazing how things started to fall into place after the first brew day! FYI. Our first brews were a Kolsch and Irish Stout!

Second Brew Day - The Whole Crew

Our second brew day I upgraded to an 8.5 gallon brew kettle which allowed us to do what they call a full volume boil.  That is, you can boil down the entire volume of wort before it goes into the fermenter as opposed to only boiling half and adding water.  As I look back, this was the beginning of the never ending brewery upgrade obsession.  FYI... Our second brew day was an Irish Red and a Sweet Stout.

Preliminary Setup of New Gear

Now that I had the upgrade fever the next logical step was to go all-grain.  By all grain I mean that you actually Mash or soak the barely malt in hot water to create the wort instead of adding malt extract to water.  This was a big undertaking but with a lot of help from the guys and a lot of searching google and amazon, we got by without breaking the bank and made some very passable beer.  We actually used some tiny food grade pumps and a wort chiller to do a poor man's Heat Exchange Recirculating Mash System (HERMS).  The beer, an Irish Stout, came out Ok but the tiny pumps were just not good enough.  They couldn't pump enough volume and we had to take elaborate steps to keep them from clogging.

First HERMS Brew Day

There were more upgrades for the next brew day including two new Chugger pumps, a temperature controller and a bucket heater to give better control over the HLT temperature.  The two brews we made that day were the best yet!  We brewed a Vanilla Porter and an Irish Red that were very clear and hit their respective OG projections.  I used MoreBeer Best of Both Worlds yeast which made for very clean finishing beers.  The only real problem we had with these two batches was that the 1000 watt bucket heater was not powerful enough to do the job.

First Brew With Insulated HLT

Kurtis' brother Jeremy (who just happens to be an engineer), suggested that I find some insulation material that would stand up to the heat from the propane burner and insulate the HLT.  The only thing that I could find that might work was a fiberglass welding blanket.  It did the trick!  The system worked perfectly for the East Coast Cream Ale we made that day.  We also used this same system for brewing a Scottish Wee Heavy which was the first really big beer we brewed.  This was my favorite of all of our beers.  Although this system worked well, it also had it's drawbacks.  The bucket heater was still underpowered for the job, the welding blanket was getting very scorched from burner, the blanket fasteners kept melting through, wind kept blowing out the burners, brew days kept getting further apart due to the weather and using hose barbs without shutoffs was messy and painful (literally) when changing from Mash to Sparge.

 Having made some fairly respectable beers to this point and knowing that I plan to keep this hobby for some years to come, I decided to make larger investment.  So here are the goals I wanted to meet with the upgrade:

1. Not be a slave to the weather and wind
2. Fix the HLT so I can not only maintain temperature but raise it 
3. Make it easier to switch between Mash and Sparge
4. Make the system easier to use from my wheelchair

To eliminate the weather/wind issue I needed to move the system into the basement.  I determined my best route to this end was to go all electric due to the venting and cost associated with the gas options.  Going all electric using permanent heating elements in the Boil Kettle and HLT would allow better control with more wattage/heating power eliminating my HERMS issues at a reasonable cost.  I also needed to invest in a good quick connect hose system with plenty of shutoff valves.

In my next post I will go through my thought process and what led me to the choices I made.