I have a great opportunity to brew, and I need your advice.

I've been a lurker here for quite some time and I would really appreciate any comments or suggestions.

Basically here's the situation, my uncle is a pro winemaker and has asked me to brew beer for his winery. I've only brewed extract a couple of times and he drank some and liked it, but I am by no means a pro. I've read almost all of Papazian's book, and have listened to about 2 years worth of The Sunday Session. I'm a college student, don't have the space to brew during the school year, but have been planning on transitioning to all-grain as shown in the all-grain brewing with extract brewing equipment post by this summer.

The only equipment that my uncle has that would be useful for brewing the amount of beer he wants is a couple of old 55 gallon plastic containers that I think were old wine fermenters (he has awesome 400 or 500 gallon fermenters now). Other than that, I'd have to get his help in assembling the pieces. I was thinking of making a 1 barrel system and using 55 gallon food grade steel barrels as a mash tun and another one as a boil kettle.

I do not have the knowledge and the skill to do this yet, I didn't commit to anything and basically delayed the issue by saying something to the effect of "I need to wait until I get more batches under my belt." It would be nice to be able to do this this summer, and if not, then next summer. Starting this summer, I would be able to brew once or twice per week, and would be able to get experience with all-grain.

What do I need to do/know to get ready; do you think this is possible; if this does happen, what styles do you think I should brew (most of his customers would be the bud/coors crowd and this would be a transition into good (I hope) beer); and what equipment do we need to get in order to start on this amazing opportunity?

I appreciate any feedback, and thank you for your time.

Damn, I wish I had an uncle like that.


Why don't you just brew extract batches?

Double damn, I wish I had your uncle.

Brewer's Association has a good book about starting a brewery. It's called something like "The Brewers Association's Guide to Starting Your Own Brewery". There's a number of good books to read up on. Having an uncle who can help you with some fermentation issues will help (beer and wine aren't the same though). Also read Brewing Classic Styles; each recipe in there is super-solid for a good start in that style. Designing Great Beers is another good one.

There's a LOT to learn, but the biggest suggestion I have is: make sure you've got good fermentation temperature control. Without that, your beers will taste like ass, and brewing at the 1bbl+ level seems to require active temp control.

So I guess that I'll do extract, would a 55 gallon stainless steel drum be an ok boil kettle, I would put a valve at the bottom right? Also to cool would I just make an immersion chiller, and pbw and star san to clean and sanitize right?

Yes, my uncle is pretty cool.

practice cleaning!!!!!!
what burners and pump are you going to use?

A 50 gallon batch of extract is going to be VERY expensive on ingredients. I would highly recommend gearing up towards all grain and get the hardware needed to do batches of that size. Probably a better idea to get your feet wet with some 5 or 10 gallon batches first.

Make sure the 55 gallon drum, you're thinking of making into a kettle, is thick enough. I would also make sure there's no coating on the inside before even thinking about using it. You'll want a large ball valve fitted 1-3" from the bottom in order to drain it right. Probably looking at least a 1" ball valve in order to do it in a decent amount of time... If you have some 55 gallon SS drums that are good for conversion, make one into a MLT, insulate the hell out of it, and then use ball valves, pumps, etc to move the wort and fill it up again for the sparge.

Still, I think starting with smaller batch sizes will do you better. That way you can work on the recipe's and get your processes down before you invest in filling a 55 gallon primary. You will want to have some kind of temperature control for the wort too (while fermenting).

For cooling the wort, at that size level you'll need to get something really efficient. While you could do it with a IC, you might want to get/make a long CFC chiller. DON'T use StarSan on the IC. Clean it well (hot water spray usually gets the bits off of it, if you don't let it sit for X days and get nasty) and then just put it into the wort during the last 5-15 minutes of the boil...

Is he going to set you up with some 60-70 gallon kettles to boil in?

I think you're skimming over the hardware aspect of this venture, where you really need to consider it more. If he's really willing to support you in this, then make sure you're ready to do it right/proper, as well as most cost effective. If you mess up an extract batch (for that 55 gallon primary) that's going to be expensive to toss. Messing up a batch brewed with all grain is far, far cheaper. Asking for his help in switching over to all grain on a small scale (5 or 10 gallon) will be a proper step. If he has a place for you to brew while still in school, go there at least every other weekend, or as often as possible to get the processes nailed. Visit some local breweries to see how they do things, so you know what you're looking at moving forward. Read, read, read, and then read some more on how people that are doing this for a living do it. I seriously doubt that they would do an extract batch above 5 or 10 gallons. Even 10 gallons gets to be very expensive. Even if you buy DME in bulk, it's easily 3-4x the cost of all grain.

Just more to think about... I also wish I had an uncle, or family member, that was looking to have me do the same thing. Of course, I'm already brewing all grain batches.

thanks so much Golddiggie

Wow, that's a heck of an opportunity!

Going from extract to all-grain 1bbl batches would be a huge step. Also, if you mess something up you've ruined a considerable amount of money's worth of grain/hops/etc. My advice would be to switch over to a 10 gallon (3 keggles or similar) system and get a number of brews under your belt. In fact, you could very easily start by selling the fruits of those labors. I'd start with something simple like pale ale, cream ale, bitter, wheat, etc. (those would be my recommendations for converting the BMC crowd).

Good luck! Sounds like a great opportunity, but you're right - you've got alot to learn. You've come to the right place though, I've learned alot from the time I spent on HBT.

Dude, get yourself to some breweries for advice. The scale your talking about is a bit large for standard homebrew techniques, I guess, because I don't know. I do know that 10 gallons takes a long time to heat and cool, and that 30+ gallons is going to take more than 3 times as long. I would be very surprised if a brewer with experience with what you want to do would recommend an immersion chiller.

Maybe some here do know and would say I'm wrong. I'd be glad to here it.

If you got the BMC crowd to brew for, then keep the styles crisp and refreshing.

Pils, kolsch, helles bock, vienna lager, alt bier, cream ale or hefeweizen would be some of your best bets.

Everyone is going pro and I'm just sitting here....interneting.

+1 on fermentation temp control, starting a little smaller, and using a plate chiller.

Being able to control your temps year round leads to consistency, fermenting the exact same recipe at 75* will lead to a completely different taste profile than at 65*. For any batch you want to bring it down from a boil to pitching temps as quickly as possible, I believe plate chillers are prefered for large batches. Finally, getting set up to start with smaller batches not only cuts initial costs, but also the expense of having to dump a failed batch. Then when you are ready to scale up a batch that you have developed a good market for, you retain the capability to use the small batch equipment to experiment and develop new recipes.

The local breweries here in WV usually have 4 standard year round brews. A light blonde ale to compete with the BL crowd, a medium bodied pale ale or amber ale, an IPA for hop heads, and a stout or porter for the full-bodied crew.

Good luck.

At this point you don't even know what you don't know. I would look at 15 gallon batches and might as well buy stout or blichman kettles. Set up a direct fire single tier system. You need 2 pumps. You need space in a. Walk in cooler for fermentation. This system will be useful as a pilot system in the future for small or test batches. I would budget $15k for your initial hardware setup, plumbing, etc. good luck it's a nice opportunity


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Blichman's new BrewEasy is still fairly new to the market. 20-gal setup looks to run about $2500, add one of their modular Fermentors for around $1000,might be a good start. If your uncle already has a fair amount of equipment for winemaking you will be able to save a lot on hardware.

I'm less experienced than the other posters, because I'm still relatively new but... If you want to go down this road, you really should think up a 3-5 year plan on how to get there. That means studying (which you seem to be doing), brewing (which everyone will help with,) getting comfortable and precise with your methods. Along the way you can play with equipment builds, recipes, and ect... But you're going to want to sit down and seriously consider the time, money, and effort piece.

Also if you're still in college some lab science courses like chem or bio might come in handy. Good luck!!

Has no one noticed, that this thread is three years old?

He hasn't been around for awhile...

jperry said:

Has no one noticed, that this thread is three years old?

He hasn't been around for awhile...

Click to expand...

Well now I just feel stupid.

fsr_racer said:

Well now I just feel stupid.

Click to expand...

It's all good. I've done it too , we're all so quick to help each other out(why I love HBT), that sometimes we don't notice the dates.

I wonder how he made out


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whoops..my bad. It must have been a link in the Similar Threads down below and I didn't notice the date.