The smallest/fastest all grain rig in the world

I want to make the smallest and fastest all grain beer rig in the world.

It has to be portable as I want to take to community centres to show people how beer is made properly (in 'Make your Own Beer' workshops as part of a free science learning festival). I would like to make the beer within 2 hours and give it to people to take home to ferment. Seems a bit mad but I reacon it can be done.

Any ideas, any comments?

Do you think I could give the beer to people in PET bottles to ferment?

If you want portability, then I'd say use a converted 5 or 10 gallon cooler as a mash tun. As far as speed, I'm at a loss as to mashing and boiling and being done in two hours. I think Orfy has his stuff together and is done in three. Remember if you're teaching, then that should slow down the process as well...

Good luck.

At that rate your best bet is probably either a no sparge, or brew-in-a-bag rig. Mash and sparge in your brew pot, boil for 45 minutes.

Sounds doable. The airlock would be tough on PET bottles, could always go the balloon route. The problem is that they won't be able to drink straight from those little bottles, they'd have to rack off the trub somehow.... which would leave 'em with like 8oz tops. I'd go for gallon jugs with cheapo airlocks shoved in the lids, just give out a jug or two per demo.

If you're teaching people to get into brewing wouldn't it be better to teach an extract method, as that is how the vast majority of people will start? Maybe while the boil is going on you could demonstrate the mashing/sparging process, but send them home with the extract beer to ferment.

+1 on extract. Plus doing it this way, you havfe the mash down for a beer that is all yours

In regards to a cheap and easy brew rig... https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/show-us-your-sculpture-brew-rig-46578/index7.html#post546543

If I were you though, I would try to stick to a single tier if I were you. That will make the demonstration a little more viewer friendly

TimothyTaylorslLandlady said:

I want to make the smallest and fastest all grain beer rig in the world.

It has to be portable as I want to take to community centres to show people how beer is made properly (in 'Make your Own Beer' workshops as part of a free science learning festival). I would like to make the beer within 2 hours and give it to people to take home to ferment. Seems a bit mad but I reacon it can be done.

Any ideas, any comments?

Do you think I could give the beer to people in PET bottles to ferment?

Click to expand...

2 hours?
Mash 1 hour
Boil 1 hour.
Times up already. Done forget time to heat water, sparging etc. Its not gonna happen in 2 hours.

+1 to that.

Speed means extract to me.

My 3 hour sessions include set up and clean away.

Several options.

Start your session before the crowd turn up. Have the boil half done.
Demo the steps for mashing etc.
Finish off using the proper wort from the boil.


Also look at a 3 gallon batch.

Use a large grain bill to do a no sparge mash for 30 minutes.
You should be able to do a 45 minute boil.

Aim for a Mild or something with a lower ABV.


I know a man who can make cheese in 30 minutes instead of 8 hours for demos
You wouldn't want to eat it but at least you see the full demo.

Thanks for all this, its helpful. I like the idea of showing them the grain beer but giving them the extract beer, drinking the grain beer myself! Genious.

I can afford to get bubblers and give a more generous amount of beer away so I guess the plastic 4 pint containers that milk comes in I (in UK) should not leach chemicals.

I'm not aiming to get people into making beer, I want to explain the science.
I want them to see the grain process - theres biology, chemistry and physics all there. I think its a great project for some science education.

If I make it without the sparge it will bring the workshop down to 2 hours. I can afford the grain for a demonstration so efficiency is not so important. Also I have been told that the mash can be shortened. 30 mins should be enough ( I usually do 90 mins but thats all second order stuff, the main business happens quicker)

I don't want to get people into beer making particularly (its not for everyone all the effort and there is lots of good stuff in the pub!).

Its an educational thing. If people took more notice of what they drank and understood the science of alcohol better they would be more respectful of themselves and enjoy it more. Young people put all sorts of crap into themselves (incredible amounts of alco-pops). I see real ale as a wholefood and I don't know any real ale drinker that doesn't just fall over when overly tired.

Mr Humbug, your the first other Brit I have come across and I see from your profile there is a Brit group. Jolly good!
This is a very US dominated site and definately all the better for it. So many keen brewers its marvellous, but it is also great to find a local forum.

You cannot complete an AG brew in 2 hours. 45 min mash (min) and 60 min boil (min) chill (20 minutes)... see, that is 2:05 hours. Impossible to do it in 2

The Pol said:

You cannot complete an AG brew in 2 hours. 45 min mash (min) and 60 min boil (min) chill (20 minutes)... see, that is 2:05 hours. Impossible to do it in 2

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What about that BYO article I read awhile ago about 20 minute mashing?

I dont read BYO... if you can do a 20 minute mash then, yes, you can do a 2 hour brew. My mashes are always an hour, and I always boil 90 mins.

I would think this would be possible but you would be limited on the styles and things you could do. Here is my idea:

Brew a very simple mild with MO and some 6-row for extra diastatic power. Do a 20m mash and check for conversion. Do a fast batch sparge and boil the bejeezes out of your wort for 35 minutes, upping your hops to get the desired bitterness.

Sounds like it could work.... but could be a disaster as well.....

Okay.

I feel that one of the new challenges on my list is to now make a 2 hour beer.
I think that I'm going to take it from after set up because lots of people have permanent brew set ups and are ready to go. Would it be cheating to say that I can have water up to temp and if I use a shop bought recipe kit it's already be weighed and ready to go. Lets face it the challenge is to make beer from grain within 2 hours (Not including the ferment)

Mash - 25 minutes plus one sparge and drain at 10 minutes
To get to rolling boil 20 minutes
Boil 45 minutes (I think I can afford the reduced hop utilization)
Chill 15 minutes
Drain to fermenter and pitch yeast 5 minutes


So that's

25 - Mash
10 - Sparge
20 - Bring to boil (In FWH)
45 - Boil
15 - Chill
5 - Drain and Pitch
Total 2 hours.

I think for a 5 gallon batch that this is border line achievable.
For a 3 gallon batch it's be easier.

Here's how I'd look a doing a Demo.

You are going to be spending time speaking a bout the ingredients, and the chemistry behind it. I'd also want to cover a bit of basic history (Very interesting) and also covering the fact that it's arguable that man settled so he could make beer!!!!! and how just about every civilistion in the world brewed beer.

That being said a full on brew session beging to end is not really feasable.

I cover the important bits and cheat on the others.

What's important.

The starch to sugar conversion.
The boil to reduce and hop additions.
Cooling and adding the yeast.

So after showing the grains. Several samples of dark light grains and let them taste.
Do a mash and do iodine tests at the start, at 10 minutes, 20 minutes and 25 when hopefully it should be done.

Drain the wort and let people taste the sweetness.

Then have an pre hopped extract brew timed to be on the boil and ready. I'd do a last hop addition for effect so you can talk about the hops and see if people are brave enough to taste. A

If you want to push the education angle, show a time course of starch conversion during the mash using an iodine test like this:



This was from last month when I helped my wife set up the experiment for her class. This was not done to demonstrate beer making, but to highlight starch conversion process that occurs in germinating seeds. Maybe next year we'll actually add some germinated barley to the experiment

If it were me, I would start the mash ahead of time and try to squeeze the sparge and boil into 2 hours.

Lets face it...the mashing is one of the most important aspects of AG brewing, but the most boring from a teaching standpoint. There isn't much to see. I would go with a visual thing like pjjb2a suggest to show what was going on in the MT.

Another idea would be to do two batches...an AG batch showing a mash and a sparge and an extract batch showing the boil and cool. Both would be going on at the same time. Up to you how this would work out logistically though...

I have read about mashing in a coffee pot. You could do the boil on a hot plate. That seems the smallest.
Here is a link of an example for mashing in a coffee pot. I am not sure it is the best because I have not tried it.
How to Brew Beer in a Coffee Pot

My internet messed up and sent the post twice so i edited this one.

How are you going to teach anything while you are trying like hell to get out an AG brew in 2 hours? If you had a fully automated system, it may work... but if you have your hands in it at all it seems like you will be hard pressed for spare time.

I think you'd have to do what cooking shows do, and pre-do most of the work and have lots of extras.

Something like:
-dough-in get a couple of temps, ph, etc, for about 5-10 minutes in one MT
-Show Mash-out and sparge in another MT
-Start of boil and a hop addition in one BK
-cool and transfer with another BK

Just need 2 of each - one to show begginning and one to show the end.

would be a PITA, I think though.

You may could do a small partial mash (with a short mash) to show the concepts.

good points, orfy.

six row and constant stirring may help your mash go faster...so will having the proper pH.

you could always do a 30 minute boil for a pale ale or something, although it's a waste of hops.

lol, now i want to try a 2 hour AG 2.5 gallon batch.

maybe i'll kick one out tomorrow

I loved this coffee pot mash, its brilliant as people can so easily go home and try it. Our science festival has a small budget for this and I could give out ingredients for anyone who is really keen.

I think doing a mash ahead of time will work, a kind on 'one I made earlier'. I can do a lot of prep in advance to make it all go quicker than real brews. The starch conversion demo is fab. This will be lots of fun, I know people will love it.

I did a cheesemaking version once and it was a huge hit. People just don't know where these marvellous things come from.

The Pol said:

How are you going to teach anything while you are trying like hell to get out an AG brew in 2 hours? If you had a fully automated system, it may work... but if you have your hands in it at all it seems like you will be hard pressed for spare time.

Click to expand...

I think it will need a lot of prep and helpers. I usually brew on my own and take hours (the last 2 have taken me a whole day with so many hiccups with kit) but I think when I ask friends to help out for this workshop they will jump at the chance to see it for themselves.

I reacon I could do it at all sorts of community festivals and fairs in UK if I made the patter good enough and there was really interesting science stuff to learn.

The beer needs to be good and drinkable , not award winning.
The process needs to be authentic, not exact.

I think it will be a laugh. Like this forum, I have been chatting for about a week and its fab.

The more I think about it, the more I think that you might be able to pull something off on a micro scale...like the coffee pot brewing, only more representative of true brewing, especially if you are only aiming for a few liters...the smaller the volume the less time it will take to get to boil.

But, What if you built some sort of a table topped brewing system based about old style plug in coffee urns?



At first I thought about some sort of micro hermes setup, but that would require some small heat resistant pumps, BUT what if you built it as a portable gravity 3 tier system. Like this, only on a counter.



You could use two urns, one as a hot liquor tank, then one as a mash tunn, then you could use a 2 or 3 gallon pot as brew kettle, using one of those table top propane burners or a hot plate that could boil a fex gallons of water.

Something like this;



You could run hose out of the spigots of the mlt and mash tun, to the kettle.

Most coffee urns that I looked at online do 3 gallons, there might even be smaller ones, but either way if you are aiming for a 1-2 gallon batch the time it takes to get to a boil will be reduced, since the volume is as well.

You would need a power strip for the coffee urns, a small tank pf propane for the burner, and you could built the tier out of wood, and it would sit nicely on a counter or work table where you demo it.

You could probably pick up the urns relatively cheap at a second hand store. I bet you could even rig up one of the coffee baskets as the false bottom in your mash tun, maybe simply inverting it and placing it in the bottom of the urn.

the coffee pot idea is kind of neat and it may work, but what a waste...you can do so much more with just a couple of pots.

If you wanted to give them a "fun" soda bottle fermenter you could rig the lids up with small balloons instead of airlocks...It would take some rigging (I don't have sepcifics yet) BUT the premise would be to have a hole drilled in the cap of the screwtop bottle, the runs a small balloor up from the bottom, and then you would need something like a plastic ring that would hold the under part of the balloon somewhat open and held in place under the cap.

DeathBrewer said:

the coffee pot idea is kind of neat and it may work, but what a waste...you can do so much more with just a couple of pots.

Click to expand...

She could...BUT having the built in heating elements would help speed up the water heating requirements, it wouldn't require her to have to rely on needing a stove, which means she could do it nearly anywhere, cheaply AND it could look a lot like a lot one of those nifty 3 tier brewing systems, especially with all the shiny metal, and hoses connecting the HLt, the MT and the kettle.

We have 20 litres (4Gallons? but your Gallons are different to ours) kettles/tea urns in the UK called Burcos, both electric and gas run. They are used quite a lot in homebrews and I think there are smaller versions (10L). I have an electric 20L one that is 30 years old.

Its still looks shiney and it would look neat in that arrangement. Shiney is good!

I have done the balloon thing with kids and bread yeast, PET bottle + yeast + sugar warm water, its fun works in 30 mins, blow the balloon right up, definately something I will give to people to take home and do for themselves after the workshop and maybe even use balloons instead of bubblers.
Probably best with bread yeast/PET bottle as a fun thing to do later rather than as a solution for the beer they take away as I would not want to risk that ruining whereas if they stick too much yeast in a bottle and the balloon take off, well the kids will love it. If it ruined the beer, the parents would cry.

I wonder if you could "trick out" a third Burco so that the heating element could actually boil the wort (maybe a gas one). Then you could leave the top off to add hops and stuff, and it would look like 3 SS brewing vessels, it could look really snazzy.

Now if we could come up with a tiny immersion or plate chiller, you'd be all set.

It looks like burcos also come in 8 and 2 liter sizes as well...

I don't seem to be able to insert pictures from files? just from urls, is that correct?

I picked up another 2 Burcos from the council skip for 5 quid each (in addition to the one I already have which I use to caramelise first runnings) the elements are 30 quid and they need new ones but if I mend them I will be well set.

I am going to brew a large brew this week 150L, brown or porter or stout.
have not yet decided.

TimothyTaylorslLandlady said:

I don't seem to be able to insert pictures from files? just from urls, is that correct?

Click to expand...

put at the beginning and the end, respectively.