Kitchen Sink Primary?

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ClarnoBrewer

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I was just doing the dishes and thinking about beer when the thought hit me- Could you use a SS kitchen sink as a primary or secondary? I stopped doing dishes long enough to measure the volume of our pretty standard kitchen sink, and it's just over 10g. Hmmm... Kitchen sinks are easy to come by at scrapyards and home salvage places.

The only trick would be rigging up an airtight lid, but with some SS sheet and some gasket-maker, I think it would be pretty easy. You could even use a double-basin sink as primary and secondary if you used a pump. It would also have the benefit of being bottom draining if need be.

I know it's not conical, and you wouldn't get the benefits of a conical, but it may be a cheap step-up from a plastic bucket.

Any thoughts on this?
 
You know you're a homebrewer when you consider turning your sink into a fermenter as you wash up after dinner....
 
I bet you could put a 2x4 against the drain hole and pound the hell out of it to make it conical. Then get a matching sink and weld it to the top of the first one. Two 20g side by side conicals!
 
Too funny HickoryMike.

Sounds like a reasonable idea to me. Are there any drawbacks to certain shaped fermentors? Post some pics if you make one.
 
If you were to seal the holes with a welded round plate and mount two burners under them, you would have two stainless steel brew pots. One for boiling water for sparging and one for boiling down the wort.


Good idea with the sink Clarno
 
If you were to seal the holes with a welded round plate and mount two burners under them, you would have two stainless steel brew pots. One for boiling water for sparging and one for boiling down the wort.


Good idea with the sink Clarno

Ooooh, I like it! I may have to try that.
 
If you were to seal the holes with a welded round plate and mount two burners under them, you would have two stainless steel brew pots. One for boiling water for sparging and one for boiling down the wort.

NOW you're talkin'!!
 
Too funny HickoryMike.

Sounds like a reasonable idea to me. Are there any drawbacks to certain shaped fermentors? Post some pics if you make one.

I also am intrigued by the BFH approach. Sounds pretty typical of my level of finesse. As for drawback of shapes, there are. Obviously a lot of us ferment in cylindrical fermentors. It's not a bad shape. The advantage of a conical is that the slope of the sides causes the trub to collect in the bottom. Then it can be drained off easily. There's an ideal shape for this, as other vaguely conical shapes don't have steep enough sides to facilitate the collection of the trub. A sink would be a variation on a flat bottom. Some of the trub would collect in the drain, but not all, and probably not the majority of it, due to the mostly flat bottom. That would make using the drain as an actual drain not a real advantage. Probably using a racking cane or installing a drain just above the flat bottom would be better. Unless we get out the BFH and see how conical we can get it...:drunk:
 
If you were to seal the holes with a welded round plate and mount two burners under them, you would have two stainless steel brew pots. One for boiling water for sparging and one for boiling down the wort.


Good idea with the sink Clarno

Maybe something like this guy's setup?



Some people are great at re-purposing stuff. Check out all this guy's video links, he's got quite the setup for a home brewery.
 
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I liked his home-built stirrer cabinet, where the motor is mounted beneath the cabinet, and the flask just gets locked away behind the cabinet door. Neat & clean. It seems his homemade counterflow chiller works great too.
 
Maybe something like this guy's setup?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlzmUPv2seU

Some people are great at re-purposing stuff. Check out all this guy's video links, he's got quite the setup for a home brewery.

Wow, that's a pretty sweet set-up! I wonder how many gallons he's producing? The sink thing is pretty much what I was thinking of. Darn, I thought I was going to be a pioneer in the ways of salvaged sink brewing. Someone always beats me to the punch! I still like the idea of going at the sink with a hammer, but I have the feeling that it'd end up looking like a mess. SS isn't the most malleable stuff in the world.
 
His "boil sink" looked pretty deep, but I'm guessing he was putting about 15 gallons into his fermenters. If a standard depth sink measures out @ 10 gallons, I'd think his was 25 gallons or so.

It would be nice if someone with decent video skills and better audio would document his whole setup.
 
Just another video from down under - some of those guys are quite the DIY'rs.

It probably doesn't deserve it's own thread - but these 2 have some pretty good homebuilt equipment for bottling beer & sanitizing. Imagine if they ever got beyond Extract brewing...

 
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