making the most of my small garage

What is your opinions of my setup? Criticism is welcome, always looking for some suggestions.

The bottle rack looks pretty nice, is it attached to the bench support or is it just balanced on those tippy single legs?

i dig it, but i'd deff use more shelving.
i have roughly 300-400 bottles that i use. so i'd need like 40 of those racks lol
my only suggestion would be additional shelving :thumbup: or even a peg board for some of your hanging items (spoon, tubing, hydrometer, thermometer etc)

Since I have never bottled, I could just slide the kegs under the bench. I keep most of the small bits in a couple storage bins to keep the dust out. I just stack and slide under the bench in the garage. my turkey fryer pot that I use for sparge water fits into my keggle, the IC fits into the pot, as does my pump and mash paddle, it all gets set on top of the burner in a corner as well.

looks great. I would say go more vertical. it also looks as if you don't have small kids. my kids would be all over that stuff.

Right on, ya I have it attached with some l clips into the wall, it's a start , my first batch is a cream ale that's fermenting in the pics .

is your garage temp controlled? that fermentation might be a bit high if not. Plus, get that carboy out of the light!

Nickv3444 said:

Right on, ya I have it attached with some l clips into the wall, it's a start , my first batch is a cream ale that's fermenting in the pics .

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Best keep that beer covered to avoid skunking from the light, toss a dark t-shirt over it.

azscoob said:

Best keep that beer covered to avoid skunking from the light, toss a dark t-shirt over it.

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beat you to it. HA!

Is the compressor on the left for forced carbonation?

I made a rookie mistake and didn't have the carboy covered from light. I threw a dark t shirt over it right when I read your comments. I won't make that mistake again. Now, 99% of the time it is in complete darkness with the garage door shut. The times I have the garage open or the light on the garage on while I was in there, would that be enough to skunk up my beer? It has never been in direct sunlight ???? Hopefully it's all good

Nickv3444 said:

I made a rookie mistake and didn't have the carboy covered from light. I threw a dark t shirt over it right when I read your comments. I won't make that mistake again. Now, 99% of the time it is in complete darkness with the garage door shut. The times I have the garage open or the light on the garage on while I was in there, would that be enough to skunk up my beer? It has never been in direct sunlight ???? Hopefully it's all good

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The bigger concern is the temperature in your garage. The point is to try and keep it out of the light as much as possible, but sometime it's inevitable. What temp is your garage?

those bottles are empty... <sheds a tear>

During the hotter part of the day it's about 70 or so and then it gets down to the mid 60s at night

I personally think you need to find a way to keep the beer below 70 when it's fermenting. 70 during the day in the garage is going to put your beer between 75 and 80 when in full ferment. You will eventually get funky flavors or hot alcohol and there's nothing worse than trying one of your first beers and having it taste like @ss. Might want to research ferm chambers or swamp coolers or just take your chances.

Good luck and looks good!

Prob with that. Primary fermentation can hit 10th or so over ambient. So you're fermenting at like 80 or over. So you may get some off flavors from that