AG for DIY Retard

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rowan57

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Hi All,

I have wanted to move to AG since I started brewing, extract doesn't really do it for me.

I have the following kit, smaller pot bought for Extract and larger pot / cooler bought for me for Xmas last year with going AG in mind;

5 Gal Aluminium Pot (mash water)
10 Gal Aluminium Pot (boiler)
50qt Coleman Xtreme Cooler

I now need to make a shopping / to do list to finish the kit off, I'm fed up of looking at everything and not really knowing what to do.

My initial thoughts are as follows;

3 x 3-Piece Taps for both Pots and Cooler.
2 x Gas Burners (http://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=422) + regulators & hose

I will either drill the holes for the taps myself or get someone else to do it for me.

i'm struggling with 2 main issues; the brew stand and cooling.

I have nothing suitable for a brew stand at the moment, and I will need to be brewing outside. I want to go gravity for the time being to keep things simple but have very limited DIY ability and realistically nowhere to store a stand, it will need to stay outside. Thoughts?

Cooling - The next challenge. I have no running water outside at the moment, my only thought is to decant the finished brew into the ail pail fermenter and sit that in a bucket of ice water but clearly that will take some time to cool down.

Your thoughts and input welcome!
 
Hey Rowan57,

I feel your pain. I did maybe 5 extract batches before moving to AG, have done about 5 AG batches now, one every few months. True then, I'm not a brewing guru yet but have been down the road you are on recently so I'll toss ya my two cents.

I only use one burner. I'll heat sparge water while mash is mashing.

10 gallon pot is fine, tho some will say stainless steel is the only way to go...

Cooling? I use a submersible pump in a large plastic tub filled with ice water and pump it thru a plate chiller. I'll use tupperware and freeze several blocks of ice over the weeks between brews. A guy could use gravity to put the wort thru down into a fermenter, but i like to pump it from and back to the kettle (has a thermometer I installed) so as to keep an eye on the temp as well as whirl-pooling the trub. I do this on a make-shift brew stand that is actually an old table.

Tho not a stellar "build" or anything, it works for me. It took time to get even that done and it will take time for you to get to a place you feel comfortable regarding equipment as well unless your particularly wealthy...

Ice bath will work fine Rowan. Rapid wort cooling and controlled fermentation are sometimes the last two things thought about along the road but I've found they are very important considerations.

In the meantime, put the pot in an ice bath. For me, the idea of carrying 5 or 6 gallons of boiling hot liquid was something I needed to stop doing, hence the chugger-style pump and associated fittings for the pot, pump and chiller.

Convoluted reply here? Yes. Convoluted home-brewing journey for some of us? Yes.

Whatever road you go down you'll find answers here at HBT so stop reading my stuff and start reading good information!
 
I also wanted to ease into AG, so I used my two step ladders with boards across the steps to create shelves for gravity drainage into the BK. I bought one burner with legs tall enough to drain into the fermenter. Easy set up, and a low cost start. So happy with it, I just keep using it.

I heat strike water in my 8 gal pot, and drain into a cooler on the ground. I then heat sparge water and move the pot with hot water to a lower shelf. I lift the mash tun to a higher shelf and drain wort into the larger BK.

If you can lift the full MLT, this works great. If not, your procedure may be different. Works great for me.
 
as far as cooling, due to warm ground water temps, I take a large plastic tote box and put in some ice water and a small cheap fountain pump attached to a short section of garden hose for use with an immersion cooler, and recirculate back to the tote.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
My explanation above is weak. Sorry, needed to get lunch off the grill!

My setup requires only one burner, though that burner has legs. You could also set a burner on a stand of some sort instead of legs.

I didn't want to pour full pots of hot liquid, but I can lift a lot of weight, so my procedure was designed to lift instead of bailing or pouring. I only have to lift a full MLT (round cooler with lid) to head height. The sparge water is moved from burner height to the same height shelf. From there, I can drain into the MLT on the ground for sparge.

The BK is on the burner when I lauter.
Can't send photo now, but if interested I will get you one. (And if my ghetto setup seems stupid, no worries. I know it won't be for everyone.)

Good luck!
 
Thanks both, I had a moment of inspiration not long after I posted when it came to the stand! Filing Cabinets, the old metal ones. I figure a 4 drawer, 3 drawer & 2 drawer stacked next to each other will make a brilliant tiered brew stand and could be painted to look funky outside. They can also be had for peanuts secondhand.

I really don't want to be lifting the pots or MLT around - I used to work in a commercial kitchen and have been badly scalded a couple of times plus once when I was young leaving me with permanent scarring over half my right foot, have no desire to repeat that! :), my strength is not good either so I doubt I can lift a fully loaded pot, I know I can reasonably comfortably lift a full ail pail but thats about my limit.

My shopping list now looks like the below, costs for myself to budget accordingly;

3 x Taps (£72.00 holy crap they are expensive) (The Homebrew Shop)
Silicone Tubing x 2m (£10.00) (The Homebrew Shop)
2 x Gas Burner (£50.00) (Hamilton)
2 x Regulator (£14.00) (Hamilton)
2 x Gas Hose 2m (£6.00) (Hamilton)
1 x 4 Drawer Filing Cabinet (£10?)
1 x 3 Drawer Filing Cabinet (£10?)
1 x 2 Drawer Filing Cabinet (£10?)
Somebody to weld windshields onto 2 of the filing cabinets (can be hellishly windy here) Free?
2 x Gas Bottles £110-120 (Owch, cheaper when it comes to refilling).
Total: £304

This may take a few months to assemble and some shopping around to try and reduce the costs! Can you run 2 burners off one gas bottle? What would one need to do that?
 
Whoops, y'all are way quicker than me :) Singletrack, what you say makes sense for you, there is no way I can see me lifting a full MLT to head height :D

Joe & Tuts thanks for the explanation on cooling, that helps me visualise what I can aim for! It doesn't seem out of reach with a small pond pump and ice water.

Can anyone see any reason why the filing cabinet idea won't work?
 
While I'm thinking about things, I thought I would check my big pot for size, the picture below is with about 26l of water, my 5 gallon brew size is 22L, does this look ok for headspace? Tighter than I thought. ImageUploadedByHome Brew1411854164.961598.jpg


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew
 
Filing cabinets, huh. I wouldn't trust the flimsy home type, but sturdy commercial ones may be okay. Be careful. Then you plan to leave them outside to rust?

I use a 16 gal BK for 7.75 gal at the end of the boil, and I enjoy having so much freeboard. Many get by with much less. Some use fermcap.
 
I don't have the ability to lift 8+ gallons of any liquid any higher than my waist anymore, and that is pushing it. I have a method I use w/o valves or pumps, to keep my lifting to a minimum. I heat my mash water, put a double paint strainer in it, add my grain to the strainers, stir and wait. I pull the grain bag out, and hook in my mash tun (two 5 gallon buckets, one inside the other) add the mash water back in, stir and drain into BK. I already have 4 gallons of sparge water heated and waiting, and I pour that over the grain, give a stir and wait 10 or 15 minutes before draining into BK. This method is exactly the same way I always brew, I just don't have to worry about splashing hot wort and/or grain all over my legs.
 
I mean like the ones below;

153.jpg


I think they are plenty strong, and with a sheet of wood on top to disperse the point load of the gas burners to the corners should be fine?


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew
 
I would paint some old ones but then yeah let them rust, if they last 2-3 years at £10 or so each I can live with that.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew
 
There are a lot of ideas on this forum. Maybe you want to search them a bit more before deciding. There's a thread that shows hundreds of brew stands, and some are creative low-build solutions. You will enjoy AG. There's nothing like the smell of the mash in the morning. Smells like...victory.
 
Singletrack said:
Filing cabinets, huh. I wouldn't trust the flimsy home type, but sturdy commercial ones may be okay. Be careful. Then you plan to leave them outside to rust?

I use a 16 gal BK for 7.75 gal at the end of the boil, and I enjoy having so much freeboard. Many get by with much less. Some use fermcap.
Click to expand...

Use fermcap. Always use fermcap.

All it takes to know why is one boil over. Fermcap allows you the freedom of making the mistake of taking your eyes off of the brew kettle for 10 seconds before the hot break begins.
 
Have you considered Boil in a Bag (BIAB) method? You could eliminate one of the tiers, maybe 2, and eliminate one of the burners and still not need a pump nor would you need to lift several gallons of hot wort. The only tricky part is getting the heavy, wet grain out of your vessel but most folks rig up some kind of pulley system for that. Search the forums here for BIAB and see what you think.
 
KingKegII said:
Have you considered Boil in a Bag (BIAB) method? You could eliminate one of the tiers, maybe 2, and eliminate one of the burners and still not need a pump nor would you need to lift several gallons of hot wort. The only tricky part is getting the heavy, wet grain out of your vessel but most folks rig up some kind of pulley system for that. Search the forums here for BIAB and see what you think.
Click to expand...


Hi KingKeg, good though but I think with the kit I have I'm heading down the traditional AG route, it was perhaps more about figuring out how to build a system that works for me as opposed to looking for an alternative. I do understand BIAB but I can't say it appeals to me personally (I have no logical explanation as to why haha!) :D


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew
 
I've done two AG batches, my equipment consists of one Keggle (with no taps), a sp10 propane burner, 60qt cooler mash tun, a immersion chiller, and a submersible pump. I'v tried to only purchase just the bare minimum of what I needed to get the job done.

This has been my procedure so far and it's worked:
1. Heat strike water in the keggle
2. Scoop strike water into the mash tun with a sauce pot (pouring from a keggle seemed a little dangerous to me, also no heavy lifting)
3. Stabilize cooler temp and dough in
4. Move mash tun on top of a table (counter-top height)
5. Heat sparge water in same keggle
6. Collect first runnings in my 4 gallon stock pot
7. Move mash tun back to the ground and scoop in the sparge water
8. Pour first runnings from the stock pot into the keggle
9. Move mash tun BACK to the table and collect second runnings directly into keggle
10. Boil keggle
11. chill with IC and hose water for about 10 minutes
12. chill with IC and recirculated ice water for about another 10 minutes
13. auto-siphon into fermenter

For 5 gallon batches, lifting the mash tun to counter height isn't too heavy. Lift with your legs, not your back ;) Also, having a friend around on brew day would probably make lifting a breeze.

Cheap DIY cooler mashtun: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/60qt-ice-cube-mash-tun-build-cheap-simple-144475/
Cheap DIY immersion chiller (50'): https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/diy-interwoven-rib-cage-immersion-chiller-106415/index15.html
 
Why do I get so apprehensive about stuff I don't entirely understand?! I actually get quite stressed thinking about it. It really ****s me off. I really just want to AG Brew yet I get real nervous about pushing the button on the gear I need to buy in case its the wrong thing even though I know from the advice given it should be ok!

TheKraken, thank you, a good insight into a basic (no offence intended :) ) setup! I'm not mega strong (I weigh around 63kg soaking wet) and being increasingly introverted don't have a lot of people around me to help, so gravity feels like the way to go!

I have some birthday money coming up hopefully, and plan to splurge it on the remaining kit I need, I need to push myself to do it this time.
 
I actually eliminated all of the heavy lifting for my last batch, I split my strike into two different 4 gallon pots and heated them both on my kitchen stove at the same time, 2 to 2.5 gallons per pot isn't heavy, and I did the same for my sparge water. I collected all my runnings directly into the boil kettle and boiled outside on the propane burner as usual.

The only heavy lifting involved this time was moving the full fermenting bucket across the house and into the chest freezer.

The more you do it the more refined and efficient your process will become.
 
rowan57 said:
Why do I get so apprehensive about stuff I don't entirely understand?! I actually get quite stressed thinking about it. It really ****s me off. I really just want to AG Brew yet I get real nervous about pushing the button on the gear I need to buy in case its the wrong thing even though I know from the advice given it should be ok!

TheKraken, thank you, a good insight into a basic (no offence intended :) ) setup! I'm not mega strong (I weigh around 63kg soaking wet) and being increasingly introverted don't have a lot of people around me to help, so gravity feels like the way to go!

I have some birthday money coming up hopefully, and plan to splurge it on the remaining kit I need, I need to push myself to do it this time.
Click to expand...

Pumps are a back-saver for solo brewing, but will require additional investment (pump, valve, camlock fittings, silicone tubing).
 
BIAB is where its at. Everything in one vessel saves you transfer time, cleaning time, space, and money.
 
I thought I would update this thread :) I have managed to get over my nerves about making stuff. I have installed taps on both my pots (drilled them myself, very easy):

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1418244929.808050.jpg

Installed the manifold in my cooler (just waiting for an elbow to finish installing the tap)

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1418245014.723906.jpg

My stand is due to arrive sometime this week or next (wire shelving).

I have picked out my burners, just waiting to order. I also need to buy or make an immersion chiller. Copper is kinda expensive, so I am minded to buy a remade one so I don't mess it up but that may change.

Thank you for everyone's input and support!
 
^ What he said. cpvc good, pvc bad

Also are those push fittings that you used? Just regular old fittings work fine for me, you don't even need to glue up the joints or seal them. Keep in mind that any space underneath the manifold is wort you cant get to, with those fittings as thick as they are your dead space will be a little larger than if you use regular fittings.

Good work though, keep at it.
 
Thanks guys, it is PEX and specifically for hot water so no worries there. CPVC piping doesn't seem to be widely available here. Yes push fittings, I only lose 900ml and I couldn't immediately find PEX in normal fittings.

Thanks!
 
Better drill some holes in that PEX. I'd hate to have you attempt a mash out and wonder why it wasn't draining.
 

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