inr brewing - basement brewery build

6/18/2016 update

first brew day is here! got going at 7 am and started heating the strike water. i was a little tired from staying up late to let the ro/di system finish but i was too excited to worry about it. while the water was heating, i started weighing out the grain. i am brewing an english mild, marris otter is the base. a big bag of grain:



weighing the grain. beersmith recipe printed out for reference:



all the grains weighed out:



leftover specialty malts are individually bagged and labeled. the labels on the bags from my lhbs peel off easily so i stuck them right on the ziplock bags. i crossed out the '1 lb' designation and wrote down the weight of the leftover grain. i also added today's date:



time to mill. i milled outside to cut down on dust in the house:



lot of milling problems. i used a feeler gauge to set the rollers to 0.045". i ran the first set of grain through and took a look at the crush. it looked like half the grains hadn't been crushed. i looked ta the rollers and sure enough, they were crooked with a gap larger than the grain. so a large amount of grain simply flowed through the rollers. i tightened everything back up but noticed one roller was still loose and could not be tightened. needless to say, very frustrated. it was then that i noticed the eye bolts for locking the rollers in place had additional nuts that were tight against the frame of the crusher. i loosened those and found i could tighten down the eye bolts much further. i set my gap and got everything locked in place. tried to run some more grain but the driven roller spun with no resistance and no grain flowed through. after a bunch of time screwing around, found out that the non-driven roller was stuck. learned at that moment that both rollers need to spin for the system to work. milled the rest of the grain and moved on. crush looked okay but seems finer than it should be:



by now, my hlt was up to temp (and had been for about 20 minutes). i transferred some strike water to the mlt and realized i didn't add any of my brewing salts. rather than treat a portion of the water. i decided to pump the mlt water back into the hlt. so i switched some hoses around and got that going. what i didn't account for was that when i turned off the recirc in the hlt, the stagnant water around the rtd cooled and 'fooled' the pid into thinking the hlt was cooler than it really was. after fooling around with the hoses, moving the water and turning everything back on, the hlt was now at about 170 degrees. so i needed to wait for that to cool. in the meantime, i took the remaining marris otter and got it into buckets. each bucket gets a label with grain type, approx amount and date. i used the date on teh sack rather than today's date:



mash in action and recirc through the herms coil in the hlt:



science lab! this is opposite of my brew stand. i don't have any other working space in the are so the top of the fermentation chamber serves as a workbench. checking ph of the mash. with ro water and the dark grains in the grain bill, no need to add any lactic acid for ph correction:



while the mash is happening, i moved on to weighing out the hops. hop bill for this english mild is stupid-easy, 2 oz of kent goldings:



vacuum-sealed the rest of the hops in 2 oz packages and moved them into the deep-freeze chest freezer. packages labeled with hop type aa%, weight and date:



mashing out:



first runnings into the bk. this recipe has a light grain bill and i ended up rushing the sprage, only about a half hour or so:



finishing up the sparge:



starters pulled out of the fridge, excess liquid decanted and warming up on the bar:



hot break. not much foaming with such a small grain bill:



and a nice boil:



progress shot of mlt cleanout during the boil:



boil complete, all setup for chilling and transfer to carboys:



chilling was a bear. my tap water is about 64 degrees and i had it wide open. using a conterflow chiller as single pass, i really had to crank down wort flow to get 65-70 into the carboy. cfc is stainless which i knew would be slower than copper but everything i have read implies 10-15% slower. took damn near an hour to chill ten gallons. progress shot:



boil kettle shot, heating element and hopstopper starting to show:



kettle drain complete. hop amount was small but i was impressed with the hopstopper:



oxygenating the wort:



yeast pitched:



and a couple happy campers sitting in the fermentation chamber:



boil kettle mess:



things that went well:

• control panel was easy to use, did excellent job holding temperatures (cross-checked with thermapen)
• ventilation system worked awesome, no sign of water accumulation in the 'gutter' on the hood
• hopstopper work as advertised
• cleanup was easy with a sink and spray arm adjacent to the brew stand

things that went bad:

• grain mill
• chiller
• system efficiency

i was very greedy and assumed 95% efficiency, came in way low on og. plus i made a recipe error and ended up with an extra gallon or so of water going into the fermenters. this will be a weak beer and will likely taste thin. gravity readings were weitrd as well, post-boil was only a couple points less than pre-boil. not sure if that was user or equipment error. i used a refractor for gravity readings, future brews will use a hydrometer to compare readings. grain mill problem is solved. chiller is an issue that requires investigation. next batch will use a lower efficiency for the recipe.

whole day took about nine hours, from heating strike water to lights off. i should be able to speed that up on the next one, especially with that mill and water salt issue resolved.

6/19/2016 update

fermentation progressing, below shot is from noon the day after pitching yeast:

Are you batch or fly sparging? The sparging picture, if you're fly sparging, might explain some of your efficiency problems. That looks like a setup tailor made for channeling - the sparse water is going to take the most direct route to the valve to exit - set up as pictured, that may not necessarily extract everything from the grain bed that isn't a direct line from your sparge hose to the valve.

6/25/2016 update

due to my initial gravity reading issues, i'm not really sure where my beer is at. it is low alcohol so should ferment out pretty fast. i took a reading this morning and it is at 1.012. beersmith says this is what it should ferment out to and i don't see any airlock activity so i'm calling it. finished carboys in the fermentation chamber, with a starter for the next beer spinning nearby:



getting the kegs sanitized. the keg on the right is full of sanitizer and i am using co2 to push it into the empty keg on the left (lid is off). this will result in the keg on the right full of co2:



i had a problem with the transfer. i was using about 10 psi and as soon as i saw bubbles in the transfer line, i turned off the c02 at the regulator. problem was, there was still 10 psi of gas in that first keg and it bubbled into the second. with the lid off, the sanitizer went bananas and frothed all over the place. lesson learned for the future, pull off the liquid transfer line at the first keg to stop co2 from leaving the first keg.

i then pushed sanitizer out of the second keg into a bucket. i used one of the ball lock jumper posts from brewhardware on the liquid disconenct that is in the bucket, to keep the disconnect open and liquid flowing. so now i have two kegs full of co2:



i eventually want to go to a closed transfer system but for now, i plan on using a sanitary siphon. siphon cap chilling out in some sanitizer:



getting ready to fill the keg:



and the filling operation:



more problems, i could not get that sanitary siphon to work. i was blowing on that thing for all i was worth. beer would move up the cane and partway down the tube but as soon as i took my mouth off, it seemed to siphon back up into the cane. i checked fittings, no leaks, out of ideas. went with the classic mouth starter. boo. whole batch has problems so add this to a learning log. i think my tubing was too long and had liquid in the bottom of it. when i blew, it compressed the air and wouldn't move the liquid out the bottom. the tubing was curled, i think it will work better with straight tube. in any event, both kegs are in the keezer and on gas.

time to clean the carboys. keg/carboy cleaner worked like a charm. the extra foam must be from the cleaning action as it interacts with the crusty bits, it didn't foam up that much when cleaning a clean keg. ran it for 15 minutes, clean as a whistle:

stratslinger said:

Are you batch or fly sparging? The sparging picture, if you're fly sparging, might explain some of your efficiency problems. That looks like a setup tailor made for channeling - the sparse water is going to take the most direct route to the valve to exit - set up as pictured, that may not necessarily extract everything from the grain bed that isn't a direct line from your sparge hose to the valve.

Click to expand...

photo is from the end of sparge, i had a couple inches liquid over the top of the grain bed during the sprage. i'm using the same technique as on kal's setup, he doesn't have any efficiency or channeling issues. i have spike kettles as opposed to blichmann but their false bottom seems pretty legit. pickup is in the center of the mlt.

i did notice a pretty good size 'depression' in the grain bed where the recirc exists the tube in the mlt. others have reported this phenomenon as well and also seem to get good efficiency. but i had thought about this and am investigating some alternatives to spread out the sparge water.

Maybe a stainless float ball to ensure you're adding water to the top of the MLT fluid surface, instead of a tube that can just sink into the grain bed?

Also, not sure why that sanitary siphon isn't behaving the way it should (almost sounds like you're getting a vacuum in the fermenter, or at least a significant reduction in pressure?), but a plain old auto-siphon never gave me a problem. Sanitize it and, if you feel the need, cover the fermenter neck with foil or Saran Wrap and you're 99% as sanitary as the method you're attempting, without weirdness that'll make you crazy!

my tube always stays above the grain bed, i don't believe a float will help. i think sparging is my issue. on the first batch, i sparged quickly, 30-40 minutes. on my second batch, i couldn't get a nice layer of liquid above the grain bed. i opened up the sparge water a bit to build it up and it is almost like the grain was floating and rose with the liquid level. so i added a bunch of water relatively quickly and then slowly drained it out, matching wort outlet rate with the sparge water inlet rate. it was just tha ti didn't have much water left to do much of a matched flow rate.

how about the crush? i milled at 0.045 inch gap. would a 0.050 gap be better? seems like it will reduce surag extraction due to the larger pieces but should also setup a better grain bed, giving a better sparge. thoughts?

This is epic! Love the sexy wooden brewstand! For some reason the thing that blew my mind with all that cool electrical jazz was the splitter dumping your wort into two different carboys at the same time. I only eBIAB 2.5 gallon batches at the moment so I've never seen anything like that!

inhousebrew said:

This is epic! Love the sexy wooden brewstand! For some reason the thing that blew my mind with all that cool electrical jazz was the splitter dumping your wort into two different carboys at the same time. I only eBIAB 2.5 gallon batches at the moment so I've never seen anything like that!

Click to expand...

probably overkill but my thoughts were that i would get different gravities in the carboys if i filled them individually.

damn, almost six weeks since my last post! still alive, lots of travel during july but i still found time to keep the homebrew train rolling. after kegging the mild back on june 25, i brewed a two hearted clone the next day. had some difficulty matching flow rates during fly sparging so i only sparged for about 45 minutes. chilling again was a long process but the hopstopper worked like a champ, handling the nearly nine ounces of hops with ease.

i busted into the mild only about a week into carbonation. it was okay. it is definitely watered down and super low in abv, something like 2.3%. taste good, color good, no real off flavors. nice on a hot day since you can pretty much pound it down. i consider it adequate for a first brew. the two hearted was my first attempt at cold crashing, worked like a charm with a fermentation chest freezer. i kegged the two hearted on july 16, no issues with starting a siphon. smelled delicious. brewed an esb on july 17 and for chilling, used my old copper immersion chiller as a pre-chiller for the cooling water. definitely helped, shaved fifteen minutes or so off the chilling time. i think i am just too aggressive trying to get the wort down to 70 degrees. i think from now on i will chill to, say, 80 degrees and then place in the fermentation freezer to get down the last 10 degrees or so before pitching.

busted into the two hearted on july 28. i bought some real two hearted to do some comparisons. color and smell were very close. mine was clearer, had whiter foam and better head retention/lacing than the original but was less bitter and had less mouthfeel, probably due to the carbonation. i noticed a lot more fine bubbles in the original than in mine. i did a blind test for the wife and she actually preferred mine, due to the decreased bitterness. for a second brew, this one was a winner.

kegged the esb this last wednesday, tasted good but definitely bitter. i attribute this to being young, should mellow in the keg over the next couple weeks. still haven't kicked any kegs yet but that first mild should go any day.

first couple months of brewing have been great. i'm starting to dial in the efficiency of my setup and getting the cleaning routines down. yeast starter process good, kegging process good, most everything good, consider me hooked. i must be, i am brewing right now, janet's brown ale.

itsnotrequired said:

still haven't kicked any kegs yet but that first mild should go any day.

Click to expand...

after making this post on saturday, i grabbed a pint of the mild while sparging. kicked the keg halfway through the pour.

what is more interesting is that i kicked the first two hearted keg yesterday. it only lasted a week and a half! seems like i hit it a bit heavy but then remembered i gave a growler to my folks, brought a growler to a party and lost 4 or 5 beers due to foaming issues while working on growler filling techniques. going to family get together in three weeks, hoping the other keg makes it!

This thread aint no fun, now that you are making beer, and not just looking forward to it. Time to scrap that obsolete system, and start over. I know you don't want to, but stop being contented and selfish, and think about us for a change.