We are doing another house sit in Emu Park QLD, the man of the house
showed me through his shed and said help your self. I don't think he dose to much work in there
I can guarantee that won't happen here.
I'm far more interested in how to make a good brew than setting up a bar.
Got a gummy contact selling off a pile of all grain stuff near me.
Large Stainless Pots are not cheap. You want a 50L pot to make a 20L wort.
Add the heaters, SS valves connectors, sight glasses etc etc.
A new 50L pot all set up by you is close to $400 easy.
You would need 3 of them plus 2 pumps. Hot liquid food grade.
We are doing another house sit in Emu Park QLD, the man of the house
showed me through his shed and said help your self. I don't think he dose to much work in there
So I got the 30 year old coleman esky out of the shed. Built up a mash maifold, put in a ball valve and we have a mash tun. Not initially realising I had the tools to solder copper tube I built a fly sparge arm for the esky.
My mate Gumtree showed me the way to a 48 litre urn to supply hot water and a used keg which I have cut the top out, installed a heater, taps and gauges and turned it into a wort boiler ( full of cleaner in pic ) and I also got a pump to move boiling liquids around. Add hoses and connectors and we got a Brew House. It seems you treat it as food once it's in the boiler. Kegs are stainless steel as are all the fittings.
Found out over that last few days that the 30year old cooler is 30 years old. It drops about 0.3 degrees every 10 minutes or 3 degrees an hour. That's way too much. Mash temp needs to be stable or the mash starts to transform different sugars strings and the beer tastes like arse.
I got a coil of copper here and put it in the hot water tank. pump the mash through that and you get a stable temp. This isn't going to be as easy as I thought.
[edit]
Or maybe it is that easy. Suspended the 8Kg 15meter copper coil in the Urn with a pair of SS turnbuckles and lowered it as far as I could without sitting on the element. Dumped 12L of 74C water into the cooler which quickly dropped to 68C. Started pumping cooler water though the coil with the Urn at 70.7C, back to to cooler and got 69C in the cooler. It drifted from 68.9 to 69,3 over an hour and a half. WooHoo, fixed. The mash temperature dictates what the beer feels like in the mouth. A full body beer is maltier and is mashed at a higher temp, a light body beer is stronger alcohol and tastes lighter with less after taste. They are mashed at a lower temp. The mash temp dictates which sugar strings are converted for fermentation. Not far to go now. Cooling it after the boil and keeping it sanitised is the next.
Done, got all the bugs out, done 2 test runs for brewing and one for cleanup. All the connectors are there, got a pair of heat proof gloves to manage the connectors when it gets to temp. Moved the vessels around to better suit the setup. Got the beersmith software setup with the right numbers for the gear and have designed my first 3 brews. It's all go now,
Just need an empty fermenter to put the wort into. That'll be next tuesday or wednesday I think.
I can't believe the plate chiller in the bottom right of the pic. Put boiling water in one port, counterflow tap water into another port. The boiling water comes out cool to the touch and the tap water comes out hot. Amazing.
i have a 3v RIMS setup as well that i still use for bigger beers and double batches.
beersmith is the way to go.
if you get stuck with anything shoot me a pm
Cheers mate, I'm pretty sure I got all bases covered. Just need the fermentor free to do a cook and I put the current brew on cold crash tonight so it should be in a keg on Monday.
Eventual plan is to do 40L batches concentrated to 30L. That's probably the biggest boil I can get going with this gear. 15L into the fermentor, add 5L water plus yeast with the other 15L into a cube for the next batch.
I need a fermenting fridge that fits a 60L bucket.
I had to buy beer for a party last weekend. The stuff I'm brewing is 150% better than that rubbish. I've recently found out they brew commercial beer with rice and corn which adds fermentable sugars but adds no flavour. It's just to reduce cost.
So first all grain brew day was last Monday. Got strike water in the esky up to temp and circulating, switched off the pump and added 5Kg of grain and stirred it in. Waited a while for it to settle and flicked the pump back on to recirculate the mash. Bugger, all the valves where wide open so got no flow as the pump sucked grain through everything.
Took almost an hour to clear that and the mash temp dropped a lot but eventually got back on track. drained it, boiled it and cooled it and got it in the bucket with yeast. It's still fermenting. Lesson learned. Got some stainless 100 mesh coming to cover the esky manifold in an attempt to keep it clear.
Gearing up for the next brew now , a 150 lashes clone, and I've used this yeast before. It needs a double dose or a starter else it stalls. I opted for the starter and didn't that work well. Made 800ml of starter and dosed it with a packet of yeast. I made a plate stirrer from an old pc fan, a couple of magnets and a voltage regulator. I dropped a stirrer stick in the starter and it was bubbling in an hour.
Drained off the spent starter liquid after 12 hours and poured 3/4 of the yeast residue into a sterile jar. Kicked off another 800ml dose and harvested that as well. Got lots of yeast for this brew.
It went so well I decided to upscale X3 for the next brew. It uses a German Kolsch liquid yeast which must have a starter. It's not cheap to buy so I'll keep some in the fridge.
I don't think he dose to much work in there 
