Brew area in the "basement/Office"

Ok, we have a bathroom that I had previously gutted, was going to redo it and we tore out the old dry wall, replaced the aluminum wiring, etc., I have finally received permission to put in whatever I want for my brewing!!!

The only problem is the room size is 5x6.5, now I can take out the two inside walls without any problems and open it up into the rest of the room and probably use a LITTLE of the office space, but not much with all my camera and video equipment.....

My question is, is this enough room? I can hook a burner up to the gas line and run it off natural gas, vent it for heat and fumes, and I already have water right there.....as for the toilet, no problem, we can just plug that over and its history....

This is what the room looks like:

ok the scetch I drew didn't work. I've attached a PDF with the layout.


I thought about taking out wall A and moving into the office by about 2 feet and building a bar to separate the cooking area from the office....

Thoughts? Or should I just wait until we find the property in the country and build that final home and add a place out back to do the brewing.....

View attachment room layout.pdf

That's too small. You'll have all your stuff in your office. How important is your work? I'd assume less important than brewing. What I would do is move the office to the little room, and occupy the bigger room with brewing.

I just ran and measured my brewery/brewstand and took a picture so you can see my small area.

My stand is exactly 5 feet by 20". It has two pumps, a CFC, and a control panel all on a single tier. (The "tippy dump" MLT is a brand new feature!).

That's probably about the minimum footprint for a traditional 3 vessel system. It works very well for me. I don't have a ton of storage in that room, but I have one cabinet that holds pH meter, sanitizer, brewing salts, towels, hydrometer, etc. I bring the fermenters in when I use them. The hoses are hanging on the wall on the left to hook up the CFC. (My house isn't crooked- I must have been holding the camera crooked! )

Could not possibly use the smaller room for the office, desk alone would not fit not to mention six computers, four printers, fax machine, four filing cabinets,and then all the camera and video gear.

try to turn it into some sort of fermentation chamber?

Yeah, maybe a fermentation fridge and a wet bar with kegerator... After all, you'll get mighty thirsty working down there in your office, right?

I'm always thirsty, so let's say I skip the boiling and heat source and just use it for a wet bar and fermentation area....that might actually work.....I could get a stainless steel sink and extender on that outside wall and there would be plenty of room behind the bar.

How wide should the bar be? I've never actually measured one.....

I was also thinking of possibly changing from gas heat for the boil to electric, but I suppose the space still would not be big enough for that either eh?

I might be able to get away with putting a sink and counter area on the back inside wall and a bar directly across from it. That would allow one or two fridges on the outside wall.......I wouldn't be "Brewing" in the space but I could do my cleaning, setup, fermentation, etc.

the speidel machines are great for small spaces, easy to use, electric, and wildly expensive. but really small footprint for a rims system, the size of one large kettle. you just need 220v and water+drain for cooling. certainly not ideal for everyone or every brew but might be worth considering, there's a giant pro/con thread here on hbt

First, I would consider going electric if you want to brew indoors. There are a few reasons why I think electric makes sense over gas, not the least of which are safety concerns. But you will want to have 220V in there.

And, you will very likely NEED a good vent system. You don't want that much wet air floating around. I think a single tier system would fit fine in that much space, but it will be small. You may need to store ingredients elsewhere.

If you have the height for it, you may be able to do a partial gravity system and stack the HLT over the mash tun and reduce the footprint somewhat.

Is the bottom of the stairs at the bottom of the drawing or the top of the drawing?

The word "doorway" at the top of the drawing: is that denoting some other doorway to some other area right next to the stairwell or are you noting the doorway to the brew area?

I'm just looking at all that dead space to the right of the brew room. If there's no doorway at the top of the drawing, and the bottom of the stairs are at the bottom of the doorway...then I'd remove that right wall, extend it all the way to the stairwell area, and use the space under the stairwell for equipment storage or controlled fermentation.

The doorway goes into the laundry room. The really isn't much space between the inside wall and the stairway maybe five feet once your past the steps which are right at the doorway at the top