A Home for my Brew

Well, this isn't the beginning of my brewing experience. I have 15 Gal of mead & melowmels as well as 5 Gal of an extract Amber and 10 Gal of All Grain beers behind me. Somehow all of them have came out sucessfuly, knock on wood of course. But, up-til-now, I've been brewing 5 Gal batches and working in a kitchen using not much more than a 10 Gal brew pot and a 17 Gal dimijon. This Christmas I began the process to upgrade to a 10 Gal system.

So this is the beginning of a whole new experiance, as far as I'm concerned. I thought it would be good to chronicle the process. Maybe some other beginners can learn from my mistakes along the way.

To start with, I should thank my wife. She "gifted" me all of the materials needed to upgrade my system. I use the term "gifted" losely, as I picked everything out and said "thank you" on Christmas morning as I tore into the packages. She did get to see me squirm for weeks before hand knowing that all those new parts were there and I didn't get to touch them until Christmas...

So here we go. I may eventualy move to a pump system, but for now I'm running on gravity. But there is no reason not to have a good looking set-up. So here is what I built, with the help of my teen age son. A side effect was that it was a fun project for us to do together.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/75911552@N04/6817292523/in/photostream]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/75911552@N04/6817292449/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/75911552@N04/6817292571/in/photostream

It's heavy plywood on a 2 x 6 frame. It is 5 ft tall and a total of 7 ft long. Because I plan to ferment in my basement it had to be aesthetically pleasing. It also had to be moble. So, I tiled the top, stained the wood to match other funiture in the basment, and for kicks mounted a dart board on the front. It has five inch caster wheels rated at 300lb each so it can be moved out to my patio for brewing.

Pros: It's moble, has room for everything, fits through standard doorways, is very stable.

Cons: It's very heavy, takes two people to move it, I have to manualy lift sparge water to the top tier.

Part 2, Brew Pots commimg soon.