OEHokie
Well-Known Member
Hey,
I'm going to be building an all electric build, but I haven't seen one quite like this before. I live in a small apartment (high-rise) and we're not allowed to have grills or anything like that on our balconies (hence, electric). I thought about making an electric kettle and insulating it, but lately I've been thinking about "optimizing" recipes and experimenting.
My plan is to brew five 1-1.5 gallon batches but doing slight variations on each batch (more/less hops, different yeast, etc). I've bought six 2 gallon water jugs (like mini-water coolers) and I plan on doing secondary fermentation. So I'll transfer from one primary to the empty... clean out the old primary and use that as another secondary... repeat.
On alternating months, once the batch is done... Some friends and I will pick the "winner" and brew a full (5 gallon) batch.
My equipment setup (since doing five small batches in one day would take forever)... I'm going to buy two 1000W burners and insulate the kettles. I think this will also help with the 5 gallon brewing in that I take the 5 gallon recipe and half it... then do two 2.5 gallon boils and combine them in the end (would still take a while on the burners, but it does anyways so... oh well).
Does anyone see a problem with combining like that?
I will probably be using a counterflow chiller to cool them down (only going to have one of those, will offset the batches and alternate)
I'd eventually like to add in a PID controller... has anyone used arduino's for this before? I think one controller could handle two different pots if setup correctly.
And right now I only do extract brewing, but would eventually like to get into all-grain (I realize I might have to buy twice the equipment once I get into that, but that's not a huge concern).
Edit: I will be bottling the small batches and kegging the larger "winning" ones.
Any questions, criticism, suggestions, similar projects, whatever... I'd be happy to hear them. Cheers,
OE
I'm going to be building an all electric build, but I haven't seen one quite like this before. I live in a small apartment (high-rise) and we're not allowed to have grills or anything like that on our balconies (hence, electric). I thought about making an electric kettle and insulating it, but lately I've been thinking about "optimizing" recipes and experimenting.
My plan is to brew five 1-1.5 gallon batches but doing slight variations on each batch (more/less hops, different yeast, etc). I've bought six 2 gallon water jugs (like mini-water coolers) and I plan on doing secondary fermentation. So I'll transfer from one primary to the empty... clean out the old primary and use that as another secondary... repeat.
On alternating months, once the batch is done... Some friends and I will pick the "winner" and brew a full (5 gallon) batch.
My equipment setup (since doing five small batches in one day would take forever)... I'm going to buy two 1000W burners and insulate the kettles. I think this will also help with the 5 gallon brewing in that I take the 5 gallon recipe and half it... then do two 2.5 gallon boils and combine them in the end (would still take a while on the burners, but it does anyways so... oh well).
Does anyone see a problem with combining like that?
I will probably be using a counterflow chiller to cool them down (only going to have one of those, will offset the batches and alternate)
I'd eventually like to add in a PID controller... has anyone used arduino's for this before? I think one controller could handle two different pots if setup correctly.
And right now I only do extract brewing, but would eventually like to get into all-grain (I realize I might have to buy twice the equipment once I get into that, but that's not a huge concern).
Edit: I will be bottling the small batches and kegging the larger "winning" ones.
Any questions, criticism, suggestions, similar projects, whatever... I'd be happy to hear them. Cheers,
OE