BREAKTHROUGH! How to brew beer in 5 days!

sirsloop said:

I have a 1.080 or bigger big beer night in three weeks for our homebrew club. Maybe i'll try to have it brewed, bottled, and carbed by then! HAHAH

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LOL - that would be too good. Imagine the looks you'd get after explaining it all.

Ok, here's the game plan. Some of the numbers look a little screwy, but i'm gonna sparge until I get roughly 1.85g of wort, then boil for an hour. That should leave me around .5gal of wort.

http://www.jdhaesloop.com/coffee_pot_beer.pdf

Looks good to me. I don't think we are going to have a problem extracting all the sugars. I'll put mine up tomorrow. I gotta hit the sack - talk to you tomorrow.

i wonder if this can be done more efficiently with an old commercial coffee maker, you know, the big ones in diners that have the two heating pads on top. I also wonder if our more technically inclined members would be able to adjust the wiring on those pads to be adjustable for mash temps. While a few things would need to be modified, you could essentially take the mechanics of a coffeemaker and make it into a rather efficient brewery.

The wheels turn

MikeRLynch said:

i wonder if this can be done more efficiently with an old commercial coffee maker, you know, the big ones in diners that have the two heating pads on top. I also wonder if our more technically inclined members would be able to adjust the wiring on those pads to be adjustable for mash temps. While a few things would need to be modified, you could essentially take the mechanics of a coffeemaker and make it into a rather efficient brewery.

The wheels turn

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There's actually a few threads on here discussiong using large coffee urns to brew beers...Evidently some people do use 5 and 10 gallon urns with the heating elements in theirs systems. There was a woman on here about 3 months ago from Scotland talking about building a pico system she could take to senior and community centers to demo brewing for them...And at least one member of the Michigan Masher's scored a large coffee urn a couple weeks ago at a goodwill who is playing around with it...

Here's the one about the Burco Coffee Urns in Scotland
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/smallest-fastest-all-grain-rig-world-91914/


https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/coffee-urn-hlt-89901/

coffee pot brew is under way. Mash is at 156...not gonna muck with it. As long as I get decent efficiency I can fudge the rest with the refractometer. Im shooting for a Belgian IPA.

keeping the temps is proving to be pretty troublesome. The burner heats real unevenly, and the edges are losing heat really fast.

Pics?

and a two and a three...

I dont want it to take me 5 days to brew a beer.

My wife gets pissed at the fact that it takes several hours to do a batch.
-Me

1.027 at 2 gallons going into the pot. The malt should hit me around ~1.080 at 1/2 gallon!! WOot! I'll add corn sugar in a few days.

sirsloop said:

1.027 at 2 gallons going into the pot. The malt should hit me around ~1.080 at 1/2 gallon!! WOot! I'll add corn sugar in a few days.

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So just to clear up, you are using real brewing methods (none of this cheesecloth over mason jar ****) except you mashed in a coffee pot? How was the temp stability?

temp stability was a ****ing mess, but the rest of the stuff is generally the same. I used a strainer and a couple pots to do the sparge, but I mashed in the coffee pot in my coffee maker. The rest is pretty much the same as any other brew. Its still boiling... its at about 1.045 now so I have a bit longer to go.

What's a "20oz Pint Glass"? A f*cking pint is a pint-16oz!! What a joke...

Revvy said:

There's actually a few threads on here discussiong using large coffee urns to brew beers...Evidently some people do use 5 and 10 gallon urns with the heating elements in theirs systems. There was a woman on here about 3 months ago from Scotland talking about building a pico system she could take to senior and community centers to demo brewing for them...And at least one member of the Michigan Masher's scored a large coffee urn a couple weeks ago at a goodwill who is playing around with it...

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I think we all suffer from the "can I use that in my brewhouse" syndrome after awhile... but that one never crossed my mind.

*&@# Revvy, now I'm going to be going around to Goodwill stores looking for a used coffee urn.

Saccharomyces said:

I think we all suffer from the "can I use that in my brewhouse" syndrome after awhile...

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An all night fever of 102.7 probably helped me in thinking about it.

I'm back from the eagle hunting trip. Saw 9 today. Also ran across a herd of 19 elk. Pretty good day.

I had the same issue with keeping the temps. I could hold the mash right around 152-153 pretty easily. It was the sparging that was a pain. My maker pretty much does a really nice fly sparge (for something not intended for that use) The problem was the temp - I kept having to drizzle colder water in with it. I ended up doing a 20 minute rest (I was curious) and two 10's. I came 20 oz short of a gallon. Also - I could only get 1/3 of a pound in at a time - so I had to do it 3 times. 40 minutes left in boil.

Pics in a sec

Here's some pics Grain and mash temp:

Preboil, hop addition and boil with Orfyy's Mild

1.5# of grain



barley crusher action, and gizmo the 19yr old cat.



Grain is larger in volume when its crushed, until its gets wet. I have like 1/2 of the grain in here gettin wet. I added the other half when it fill up more.



All the grain is in there, but the temp coming out of the coffee maker was like 165ish, so I put it in an ice batch to crash it down like 10 degrees.

I'll remember that if I ever go to jail for the rest of my life

Grain got down to high 140s, so I cranked the heat up. The thing stuck at like 149 for a while, then shot up suddenly when the heat hit the thermostat.



Sparging in a strainer. I did two pots through the strainer, then dumped the grains in a seperate container with a 3rd pot of water and soaked for like 10 minutes. I dumped the sparge I already collected in the brew pot, drained the grains in the empty bucket, then reran the second runnings through the grain. I ued ~4 pots total.



sweet wort, hops added when I started sparging.



BEER! I ended up at 1.062 OG, and the volume is a little high so I'm right about on for my OG. Efficiency was around 60% which isnt bad considering I'm using a strainer. I'm gonna add corn sugar to this to juice up the %. WLP565 Saison slurry went in... should be good to go!

Sitting in Chuckanut Brewery growler - added 1/4 lb light DME during boil finished at 1.53 - just short of 1/2 gallon

DME!??!? CHEATER! Hahah!

Thoughts - You can follow the correct steps and make beer in a coffee maker - we'll just have to wait to see if it's any good. I found that cleanup was a little easier. The process took a little more babysitting than I thought. It was fun experimenting. Would I do it again? Maybe, just to see if I couldn't tweak the process some. How about you?

ehh... it was less of a hassle than normal cause the volume was less. It was about as easy as an extract brew, except I only got like 3 beers worth out of all the effort. I wouldn't do it again, but then again nobody else here can say they brewed beer outta a coffee pot.

True. I'll let you know how it ends up tasting. Thanks for jumping in with me. That was pretty weird that I woke up wondering about it and you posted it at the same time.

anyone else wanna coffee pot brew?

Maybe with a bigger coffee pot?

WE HAVE LIFTOFF!!

ChshreCat said:

Maybe with a bigger coffee pot?

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Sure - let us know how it goes

Mine took off around 10:30 (I work from home) I would take a picture but that growler is dark.

I guess if I had never brewed beer before reading that, it would be cool and I might just try it, but seriously I think it would just be easier the current way.

It goes to show that you shouldn't believe everything you read in a magazine. While the general principal is correct, the execution is horribly off.

sirsloop said:

DME!??!? CHEATER! Hahah!

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I missed this the other day

I had to do it I. I didn't have any sugar around and I wanted my SG in the low 1.05's.

damn... you should have boiled it down more. I ended up doing a 90 minute boil and got it up to 1.062.

sirsloop said:

damn... you should have boiled it down more. I ended up doing a 90 minute boil and got it up to 1.062.

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You're right. I was getting tired and thought - OK we've proved it could work (I was at1.042 if I remember correctly), now I'll just bump it up a bit to where I like it.

This thread was a great read, thanks!

I see this idea going for sale on ebay as "Complete pilot brewing system"

jamesrm said:

I see this idea going for sale on ebay as "Complete pilot brewing system"

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LOL - Hey sirsloop - I bet we could buy an airlock apiece with the profits

I'm thinking this would be a great way to make wort for a yeast starter just the right amount of wort and a whole lot cheaper than using DME like I currently do.

greggor said:

I'm thinking this would be a great way to make wort for a yeast starter just the right amount of wort and a whole lot cheaper than using DME like I currently do.

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Now that is a great idea!!!