Squam Lakes Brewery with Pictures

Gone Hunting see you all Monday

Picked up some 22 oz bottles the other day
Each 1bb batch takes 15 cases!!!
We will bottle what is in the big conical and brew a batch with the new rig this week.

I also picked up some materials to do the other wall with FRP
Still thinking about how to drill the holes in the Pex tub for the new MT

I would just drill 1/8" holes about an inch apart around the whole loop on the bottom of it. What are U gonna use to empty the mash? I use a shop vac and it works great.

Keiths
We had figured we hand to shovel it out. The the shop vac is a great idea. I will give it a try on our next mash.
Thanks for your comments

Hot damn....

keiths said:

I would just drill 1/8" holes about an inch apart around the whole loop on the bottom of it. What are U gonna use to empty the mash? I use a shop vac and it works great.

Click to expand...

Hmmm... shop vac. I will also have to give that a whirl on my big setup as well.

Nice setup!

I used to live in Gilmanton (crystal lake), not far south of ya. I sure miss fall in NH.

its a great time of year to live in central NH

Today is my first brew day with the new setup. I've collected about 30 gallons of wort so far and have just brought the kettle to a boil. I could only mash in 50 lbs of grain into my 20 gal boilermaker, so I'm going to have to supplement a bit with dry extract to get up to a respectable O.G. My final runnings are just about at the point where I need to stop the sparge and top off the kettle with water. I'm making an Amarillo Pale Ale in case anybody was wondering. My dad will be posting some pictures he took at noon later today.

Ok this is test day.
We are brewing a batch using the new kettle
You can see the HLT which we filled with sparge water using the 55 gallon new kettle. In this picture Jumbo82 is sparging using the pump to go from the HLT to the MT


Its crude to say the least but for a test its working


Using a bucket to fill the brew kettle. We will use a pump in the future. We just have not figured out the best way to go about it. But as this is a day to test the Brew Kettle hand filling is ok



The Farther Son team

Fantastic. Just read through the thread for the first time. I can't believe that a 15g kettle can be considered "small." But, compared to those other monsters, it certainly looks that way now.

Question: Any problems with the Bilchman thermometers (I think that's what you have there)? I've seen a number of posts over the last few days where people were having problems with them when they were used at an angle... Apparently the dials might get stuck or something.

That 55 Gal. pot is a thing of beauty! Nice set up and way to go with the father son team!

Munsoned said:

Question: Any problems with the Bilchman thermometers (I think that's what you have there)? I've seen a number of posts over the last few days where people were having problems with them when they were used at an angle... Apparently the dials might get stuck or something.

Click to expand...

We use the Thermometers as a guide only. As far as i can tell all the mechanical ones need a rap once in a while if you are trying to follow the temp close. We have two hand held ones that we use to check things and the brew kettles have good ones with digital reed outs.

Munsoned said:

Question: Any problems with the Bilchman thermometers (I think that's what you have there)? I've seen a number of posts over the last few days where people were having problems with them when they were used at an angle... Apparently the dials might get stuck or something.

Click to expand...

Yeah, we've had the problem of the dial being stuck on the wrong temp, but we found that with a couple of taps on the glass the needle would move to the right temp. Its pretty accurate after a couple taps, but I must say I hardly ever look at it since our digital control panel gives us a temp reading.

I cut off the sparge when my refractometer read 2.5 (about O.G. 1.010). I added another 8 gallons of water to the kettle and took another reading. Right now there is 38 gallons of wort at O.G. 1.036. By the time it boils down it should be in the neighborhood of 1.040 (first time boiling, so not sure how much boil off there will be). I'll likely add 5 lbs of extra light malt extract to boost the gravity another 7 points. I just put 8 oz of Amarillo hops in a mesh bag, tied it to the handle of the pot and tossed it in the kettle. Hopefully the pellets stay in the bag or else I'll have a nightmare of a time trying to chill through my Therminator (been there, done that).

I ended up adding 4.5 lbs of malt extract and 1.5 lbs of corn sugar. I mashed a bit high at 154 degrees, so I thought adding the sugar would help dry it out a bit, but 1.5 lbs in a 34 gallon batch isn't going to make much difference (was 35, but lost a gallon to hot break). My O.G. was 1.049, which according to beersmith means I had 82% efficiency. Right now the whole batch is just starting to bubble away. The hop additions using the mesh bag worked really well. I had no trouble using the Therminator. I used 4 Whirlfloc tablets and the wort came out very clear. A total of 18 oz of Amarillo hops were used, which thanks to hops direct only cost me about $11. Overall a good brew day. I'm looking forward seeing how this batch comes out. Since I have 34 gallons fermenting, I should end up with close to a full barrel of beer. Hopefully it turns out well.

I just read through the whole thread everything looks fantastic. One little thing to add if you don't want to use the sink maybe you could put some of the controls in it with and hide some wires almost like a big junction box, just a thought. Everything looks great and it seems no matter how much you think things through they always change and you have to fly by feel

Krelja
Thats a great idea. Thanks.

Wow, I don't know how I missed this thread for so long, but this is great. The brewery is absolutely awesome (Blichmann everywhere!) and the father son team is nice as well. I have been thinking that sometime way in the future I want a big room much like you have, looks perfect for brewing.

Best of luck to you in all of your future brews.

Holy smokes guys that is freeken killer!!!!
I want to see a picture of the monster false bottom installed.
Cheers
Jay

Beautiful setup.

MikeRLynch said:

Please do, we're in the beginning stages of our 1 bbl brewery and we're planning on going fully electric as well. Of particular interest is the mounting of the heating elements, what fittings/gaskets did you use to construct them? Will they stand the high temps, etc. Thanks!

Click to expand...

Looks to me like the simply screw a 1" Threaded PVC coupling onto a h2o htr element. Then a 1" x 1/2" threaded PVC bushing into that, then a 1/2" wire gland into that. Just make sure your jacketed cable is of the right gauge for the current draw of your elements. Oh, and connect the wire to the element before threading the whole thing together.

Rather clever way to guard the exposed end of an element.

Got some stuff done over the weekend. First the room is looking much better.

I picked up a new sink and a ss counter top. Got that all jammed in and then hooked up the drain and water.


In the above picture you can see the 20 gallon Blichmann false bottom and behind it the new false bottom used in then 44 Gallon MT
I have to thank YooperBrew again for teaching me how to get the pictures organized.

The next step was to Test the New 44 gallon MT
I bought a 19.25 in diameter false bottom from Jaybird.
The barrel is a food grade bucket from Rubbermaid

I put a 1/2" drain in and connected it to a circle of Pex tube with 1/8 in holes in the bottom (turned out to be too small)


Next we split a piece of old tubing to help protect the bucket and to make a nice seal to keep the grain from getting under the false bottom. Ya i know the date is wrong.

When all put together it looked great. What you dont see is that the false bottom is not quiet as snug a fit as we could have used. Maybe next time we will try a thicker tube

Just as a reminder .... Below is a picture of the two white 44 gallon barrels we are using one for the HLT and the other is this MT

The next step was to prepare the some grain for our brew.


Then mash it in and wait

Brew day November 15

Now everything up to this point has gone along very nicely. But when we went to sparging we had trouble. We hand a BIG stuck sparge !!!! So we tried all the usual things like blowing back up the tube ect… but finally we just shoveled half the grain into our old Blichmann 20 gallon MT spagred it then shoveled over the rest and finished off the second sparge. The rest of the day went very well. The 55 gallon Blichmann with 10,000 watts of heating and the Brewmation controls made everything work well and we ended up with over 30 gallons of nice clean beer.

OK so for the next mash we have drilled out the 1/8 in holes with 1 /4 in holes. We think that we had the logic wrong with the small holes. We were thinking we wanted to prevent the grain from coming out but in fact we should have been trying to get any grain under the false bottom out and dunning the vollof gently settle the grain bed into a filter.

So even though we did not get everything right the first time we are very confident our next big mash will go smoothly.

Jumbo82 will post the grain bill and the actual brew stats.

Absolutely outstanding. How did you chill down your wort? Did you use whirlfloc or irish moss in the boil for clarity? Do you filter your finished beer? What's the meaning of life?

Blichmann plate chiller. It does a great job as long as you keep the hops out of it.

MikeRLynch said:

Absolutely outstanding. How did you chill down your wort? Did you use whirlfloc or irish moss in the boil for clarity? Do you filter your finished beer? What's the meaning of life?

Click to expand...

We chilled down using our Blichmann Therminator. Its really amazing how well it works. 31 gallons of boiling wort chilled down to 67 degrees in probably 15-20 minutes. Its helps that our groundwater is currently 48 degrees. I used 4 whirlfloc tablets and a dash of irish moss 15 minutes before the end of the boil. No, we don't filter our beer. Unfortunately, I currently don't know the meaning of life but if I do find out I'll be sure to post it on this thread at a later date. Check back often.

The beer for the day was a variation of a Belgian Tripel;

31 gallon batch

69.5 lbs Pilsner Malt
8 lbs Light Munich Malt
2.5 lbs Melanoidin Malt
10 lbs Cane Sugar

17 oz Fuggle Hops (5.5% AA) at 60 minutes.

4 whirlfloc tablets and irish moss added at 15 minutes.

We mashed at 149 degrees for 90 minutes. We started the boil once we had collected 20 gallons of wort and continued to boil for 2 hours. So some of wort received a 2 hour boil and some was boiled for 90 minutes.

The hops were divided into two separate mesh bags. According to Beer Smith the IBUs would be a bit high for the style, but I figured I'd lose a bit of utilization due to the use of the bag and it would all even out in the end.

The cane sugar was added during the last 10 minutes of the boil. The O.G. came out at 1.075. We chilled through the Therminator into four separate fermenters. 12 gallons into a 15 gallon demijohn, 10 gallons into 14.5 gallon Fermenator, 5 gallons into a 6 gallon glass carboy, and 4 gallons into a 5 gallon glass carboy.

We added 2.5 packets of Safbrew T-58 to each of the large fermenters and 1.5 packets of Safbrew S-33 to each of the smaller fermenters. They all began to bubble away within 30 minutes.

Wow. What an impressive setup. Great to see a son & dad team working on such a great project! Cheers!

Remind me not to complain when I think I am working on an expensive batch of beer! How much did the Barrel brew run you?

Chosenwon said:

Remind me not to complain when I think I am working on an expensive batch of beer! How much did the Barrel brew run you?

Click to expand...

I buy my base malt from a local brewery for $38 per 25kg sack. That works out to $48 for the 69.5 lbs of Pilsner Malt. My specialty grains cost me $1.25 per pound at my LHBS, so that's about $13. Add the 10 lbs of sugar for another $5. The hops were $9.75 per pound from Hops Direct, but when I weighed them out they actually gave me 17 oz . Each dry yeast packet was $1.75 at the LHBS, so 8 packs is $14. Ingredients total roughly $90. Add in the $1.70 per hour to run the electric kettle, which for the mash water, sparge water and boil was probably somewhere around 3.5 hours, that's another $6. Miscellaneous sanitizers, cleaners, Whirfloc tablets, etc, maybe another $5 although I doubt its that much (I buy my PBW by the 50lb pail). So my rough math puts me at $101 per batch, which assuming I end up with 30 gallons of beer works out to $3.37 per gallon or 32 cents per 12 oz beer. Not too bad for a beer that should come out near 8% ABV.

Nice. Do you serve from 6 corny kegs or 2 15.5g sankey kegs? That price is cheaper than buying natural light kegs.

wow, the cost from that last post is awesome...Love the brew dungeon, love the set-up, love the father-son team. All in all, favorite thread so far.

One question, and I am very surprised I am the first to ask this...Why are you bottling as opposed to keggin it? It would seem to save you a lot of trouble to keg a lot and maybe bottle 2 cases to hand out to friends and family. Just curious.

Keep the posts coming.

My god, bottling a barrel's worth of beer. I can't even fathom that. I ***** and whine about bottling 5 gallons...

smmcdermott said:

wow, the cost from that last post is awesome...Love the brew dungeon, love the set-up, love the father-son team. All in all, favorite thread so far.

One question, and I am very surprised I am the first to ask this...Why are you bottling as opposed to keggin it? It would seem to save you a lot of trouble to keg a lot and maybe bottle 2 cases to hand out to friends and family. Just curious.

Keep the posts coming.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I'm glad you are enjoying the thread . We do a fair amount of kegging, I think at last count we had 10 corny kegs. Over the summer we supplied the beer to a friend and then a relative's wedding on back to back weekends and kegging is the only way we would have done it. But there are a few reasons we still bottle the majority of our beer. First, I love the convenience of being able to take bottles with me anywhere I go. Well over half of the beer I consume is at a location other than the house. Plus, I like having several dozen different beers to choose from on any given night, and thats not practical with kegging. A lot of our beers are put away for a 6 months, a year, or even longer and its nice to be able to take a trip down memory lane. Also, I'm planning to sell my beer to local stores once all my paperwork is approved. My original plan was to sell kegs to local bars/restaurants, but on the small scale I'm operating on it seems like more of a hassle to deal with kegs (cleaning, servicing, etc.). Getting all the kinks worked out with bottling on this scale is good practice for me now. And with 22 oz bottles I can bottle 10 gallons of beer by myself in about 1.5 hours, so its really not that bad. At some point down the road I may end up selling kegs, but at least for the short term I plan to stick with bottles.

Jumbo82 said:

Thanks, I'm glad you are enjoying the thread . We do a fair amount of kegging, I think at last count we had 10 corny kegs. Over the summer we supplied the beer to a friend and then a relative's wedding on back to back weekends and kegging is the only way we would have done it. But there are a few reasons we still bottle the majority of our beer. First, I love the convenience of being able to take bottles with me anywhere I go. Well over half of the beer I consume is at a location other than the house. Plus, I like having several dozen different beers to choose from on any given night, and thats not practical with kegging. A lot of our beers are put away for a 6 months, a year, or even longer and its nice to be able to take a trip down memory lane. Also, I'm planning to sell my beer to local stores once all my paperwork is approved. My original plan was to sell kegs to local bars/restaurants, but on the small scale I'm operating on it seems like more of a hassle to deal with kegs (cleaning, servicing, etc.). Getting all the kinks worked out with bottling on this scale is good practice for me now. And with 22 oz bottles I can bottle 10 gallons of beer by myself in about 1.5 hours, so its really not that bad. At some point down the road I may end up selling kegs, but at least for the short term I plan to stick with bottles.

Click to expand...

Wow, power to you. I go camping up in Maine every summer, Lake Pemaquid to be exact, You located anywhere south in NH? If your paperwork gets approved, I will support the homebrewer!!!

smmcdermott said:

Wow, power to you. I go camping up in Maine every summer, Lake Pemaquid to be exact, You located anywhere south in NH? If your paperwork gets approved, I will support the homebrewer!!!

Click to expand...

I appreciate the support! I'm located in central NH and if all goes as planned I should have my beer in local stores by the summer. I'll be sure to keep HBT posted as I get further along in the process. If and when I get in stores I'll post the locations as well .

Wow, nice job gentlemen! Very impressive setup and nice pics of the build. Thanks for sharing!

Jumbo82 said:

Boar Beer is my dad.

Click to expand...

HOLY ****! Hes MY dad too! Ive been looking for you for years now pops!
I guess this brewery setup will make up for lost time. I forgive you

Wow, great setup and its awesome to see father and son enjoying a hobby together. Maybe one day my daughter will learn to enjoy beer at the level that I do. For now, filling and sanitizing bottles, and making hop additions to the boil will have to suffice. We can visit the whole 'REAL' assistant brewer thing when she turns 21
-Me

Very very impressed with you guys. I am from Acton MA. My parents have a place on Newfound Lake. I fish Squam lake a few times a year. I would love to see your beer in the store of NH and MA soon. Keep up the good work.