ghetto brew setups?...

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Here is mine, im adding bits every weekend, a pump and plate chiller is on the wishlist.
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I'm not sure if i'd call this "ghetto" but it is a "setup" The HLT is on cinder blocks. The MLT is on some random wood thing and the Kettle is on the ground. We use the auto syphon the move the water in to a colinder lined with coffee filters to slow it down a bit. Its' how we sparge and it works fantastic although we have to move the colinder back and forth for about 40 minutes but it works.

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Wish you could actually see my keg. It's all kinds of dented. Wife bought it for 5 bucks at a garage sale. This pic is how I insulate my keggle for my BIAB mash.

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As soon as I saw those boilers I knew you were in England!
I have not seen those things in years, what temps do you get out of them?

all the temps i need! i get a boil in about 15 mins out of the bottom one after the sparge. problem is that they only hold about 3 and a half gallons each without boiling over, so once my 'HLT' is empty, it is rotated to the bottom and used as another boiler. i batch sparge, FYI. no problem holding mash temps in the 'mash tun' either.

Those things are cool.

Thanks! and free too, they are allways surplus on building sites after jobs are over, just wish they were bigger.
 
Wish you could actually see my keg. It's all kinds of dented. Wife bought it for 5 bucks at a garage sale...



Lol, I thought this was the ultimate mistreating of a keg. It sounds like yours looks worse.

The pic was taken when I was in Liverpool this summer, otherwise I would have gone fishing!
 
That one would def be hardcore ghetto! I also can't believe how this one thread idea I had would take off like it did. :ban::mug::ban:
I guess it just goes to show true American ingenuity at work...
 
Reading through this thread is really getting my gears turning - lots of shrewd/ingenious inventions and techniques. It's also made me realize that I don't have a single picture of my (ghetto) brew rig. I'll have to take some on my next brew day and post them here.
 
Here's mine... The components might not be all that ghetto, but the way I have them rigged up is, especially when I look at some of the rigs folks around here and in my club have put together:

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Yes, my HLT is standing on a turkey fryer, which in turn is standing on top of some piled bricks - mostly to get it high enough so I can relatively easily see its thermometer. And my mash tun is on top of a knock down assembly table I built for woodworking duty, with a yard game being used as an extra height booster to keep its ball valve above the height of the brew kettle. One of these days, I'll get around to building an actual rig...
 
As newlyweds,we lived in a duplex on an alley between main roads. We had to get all the guys together to shovel it out. We'd have some canned beers in a snow bank that froze in 5 minutes.
 
I did this one last night. It was my first All Grain. Yay me!!!
I just bought my SWMBO a really nice dryer and I haven't got rid of the old one just yet. So I thought to myself, "a 10 gallon cooler shouldn't be to heavy, I pick up my 5 gallon buckets all the time" yeah that sucked. The cooler is just awkward and the dryer is pretty tall, but I got it up there. I didn't have anything else that was high enough but looking back through this thread I just realized I had a few unused cinder blocks in the back yard :smack: Looks like I will be building a proper brew stand when I get paid lol

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here's my ghetto setup. Just got the 2 industrial 10gal igloo cooler brand new for free.

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And yes, I did climb up the ladder to double check my hot liquor temps. I've got an ebay pump on the way to deliver me from ghetto brewing. also notice the bulkhead/valve stolen from an old bottling bucket on my hlt.

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And yes, I did climb up the ladder to double check my hot liquor temps. I've got an ebay pump on the way to deliver me from ghetto brewing. also notice the bulkhead/valve stolen from an old bottling bucket on my hlt.

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HLT on a ladder. Mt on some Tupperware. BK on a rolling platform. Shouldn't there be some bear traps on the floor?
 
HLT on a ladder. Mt on some Tupperware. BK on a rolling platform. Shouldn't there be some bear traps on the floor?

Haha, well I got about 87% efficiency! My first attempt at a fly sparge. We'll see if I have the balls to rig it up again tomorrow.
 
This is the entire setup. After brewing, add water to the trub and you can make beer-flavored tamales.
Pics before and after the super-upgrade of a valve and shiny stuff. Went from ghetto to Space:1999. Props to Martin Landau!:rockin:

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Here's mine. A 2 tier system with a manual spargomatic, aka, using a pot to transfer water from the blue cooler to the igloo MLT :)

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And yes, I did climb up the ladder to double check my hot liquor temps. I've got an ebay pump on the way to deliver me from ghetto brewing. also notice the bulkhead/valve stolen from an old bottling bucket on my hlt.

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How the hell did you get it up there.....HOT.

I am pretty sure how but damn, I wouldn't be lifting 5 gallons of 170+ degree water very high lol :drunk:
 
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