A pleasant summertime brewday...in February

Half of the US has been covered in snow, but over here in Seattle the last few days we've had the best weather we've seen since last September. This Saturday and Sunday, it was about 60 F, blue skies, and a mild breeze.

My old MLT came down with an intractable case of mold recently, so I set to work building a new and improved one on Saturday. I used a 10 gallon rubbermaid cooler with an retractable handle and wheels (just like a suitcase) this time. It's the same volume as my old MLT, except a couple inches taller and with a correspondingly smaller footprint. I also used a stainless braid as opposed to a copper manifold this time.




I also replaced some kinked tubing on my CFC. The clear vinyl tubing is nice because I can see whether there is still water in the line. The tap water is fed from a garden hose on the left and the hot output water drains into another section of hose on the left that goes down to the yard. The two hoses are zip-tied into the deck's support strut, and the stand is zip-tied into the deck for stability. When the boil is nearing the end, I close the water valve, run down to the yard, hook the hose to the faucet, and turn it on. I then open the valve just before I start running wort through the chiller coil. After I've got the wort chilled and safely indoors, I turn the hose off. I leave the valve open when not in use to allow it to drain by gravity.

Sunday, I actually got around to brewing. I brewed a variation of EdWort's IPA.

Here's the sparge water heating up on the kitchen stove. Spread between two pots, this stove gets 4 gallons of cold tap water up to mash/sparge temps in about 30 minutes, and lets me minimize my propane use. So, this is where all my mash and sparge water comes from.



Mashing:




Building the MLT out of a cooler with wheels and a retractable handle was genius. Easiest spent grain disposal ever.

Brewing. You can't really see the flame in such bright daylight.



And finally, chilling. I boiled off too much and ended up with around 4.25 gallons.

How do you get your wort from the mash tun to the BK preboil? Pump or put the BK on the deck below? Sweet setup BTW. Just out of curiousity, what temp does the wort come out of the CFC at?

it was a gorgeous weekend for brewing. cheers.

BenS said:

How do you get your wort from the mash tun to the BK preboil? Pump or put the BK on the deck below? Sweet setup BTW. Just out of curiousity, what temp does the wort come out of the CFC at?

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When I am lautering the mash, I put the kettle on the deck and drain straight into it. I attach a couple of feet of tube to the MLT's drain valve, which isn't shown in the photos unfortunately.

After the initial lautering, I put the kettle on the propane burner and start heating it. Then, I sparge twice using water from the kitchen stove that I heated up in my pair of 2.5 gallon pots. Dump a potful of 170 F water into the MLT, stir it up, let it sit a few minutes, vorlauf, then use the same pot to collect the runnings. The grain is saturated with water after the mash, so you'll get the same volume out of it as you put into it, and the pot will always be able to hold what you're draining into it. Then, I just dump that into the kettle manually. Pretty easy to lift and pour, and no electricity/pumps needed.

The tap water in Seattle never really gets below about 50 F year round, and it can get several degrees lower this time of year. Running my CFC at about half it's maximum cooling water flow rate (guessing), I can chill 5 gallons of boiling wort to about 50 F in 15 minutes. More typically I run it at a low cooling water flow rate and get to ~75 F in 15 minutes because I don't brew lagers.

Some other photos I took that aren't directly brewing-related...

We have a clear view of the whole Olympic mountain range from north to south from our deck, and if it's clear, this is what I see when I'm outside brewing.


(click for full-size, though it's not very sharp)

Also, if you look carefully (and stand on a chair) you can just barely see the Puget Sound peeking through the trees.


(click for full-size, though it's not very sharp)

ReeseAllen said:

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My SWMBO was ready to outlaw brewing after I dumped the grains into the trash bin. Three days later, it was filled with maggots and blow flys.

jason.mundy said:

My SWMBO was ready to outlaw brewing after I dumped the grains into the trash bin. Three days later, it was filled with maggots and blow flys.

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I'm thinking that ones yard waste, believe it or not, composting is pretty much mandatory in seattle.

Very nice, thanks for sharing the photos!

My spent grains bring maggots and flies, too if they are left in a pile. Spreading them around the yard (good stuff) or making dog treats works great. Nice weather break and brew day!

I used to put spent grain in our compost bin, but when it got to the point where there was more spent grain than ordinary compost, my roommate (the gardener) asked me to knock it off for a few months. So, now I dump it in the yard waste bin.

Actually, the yard waste bin is definitely way better than the compost bin, it turns out. The compost bin is all the way around the back side of the property, but the yard waste bin is only 15 feet from my brewstand, and with the porch (as you can see in the photos) I don't even have to hoist the MLT above waist level to dump it out.

Nice pics. Unfortunately for me, I was working everyday it was nice this week. Just for that I'm taking a 4 day weekend and brewing at least one 11 gal batch, maybe two