Cold Box Build for a 55-gallon drum

[charlesap]

I'm scaling up my Sake homebrew and I need to keep a 55-gallon drum cool in the cheapest way possible. So, with a mini-fridge I had on hand and a trip to Home Depot, I made a 55-gallon drum cold box. This box would work just as well for Lagers, or keeping a LOT of corny kegs cold... but I'm going to use it for Sake.

The end result:

I have a short writeup of the build here:

http://blog.chucksbrewing.com/2011/10/building-cold-box.html#more

 

[twobrain]

how much rice do you need to steam to ferment 55 gallons of sake???? a lottttt

 

[charlesap]

I can only make 30 gallons or so of sake in a 55 gallon drum since the sake foams up a lot when it ferments. For 30 gallons of sake I need 100 lbs of rice and 25 lbs of koji -- which is rice with a mold that has the enzymes in it to turn the rice starch into sugar for the yeast to eat.

For my first batch on the new setup I'm going to start out conservatively... only 15 gallons of sake, so only 50 lbs of rice and 12.5 lbs of koji!

 

[twobrain]

i made it once a few years ago, started with teh dry koji but i dont think i ever got that to work, so i just bought teh tub that they use to make miso.

i froget how much rice i used, but i ended up with a little more than a gallon of sake, i never pasteurized it so a lot of it turned sour

got any recipes? what strains of yeast do you use

what temps do you let it ferment at

 

[charlesap]

Hi, twobrain!

For now I'm using the same Koji and polished rice that they use at SakeOne in Oregon... They sell it to FHSteinbart.com who resells it to us home brewers. That makes things much easier. I'm using the recipe Bob Taylor put together at http://www.taylor-madeak.org/index.php which is based on instructions put together by Fred Eckhardt.

The Sake I've made so far has been drunk before it had time to sour, for larger batches I will have to pasteurize. I'm using a true sake yeast, Wyeast #4134, which is the same as Sake Yeast #9 in Japan. You can also get Sake Yeast #7 from White Labs, which is WLP705. I haven't tried that one yet but I have a vial of it... I'd better use it before it expires!

For fermenting I hold it at 70 degrees F for a few days for yeast build-up and then drop it to 50 degrees f for main fermentation and conditioning. That's done once for the starter (they call it a moto) and once again for the main ferment (they call that the moromi.) Bob's guide spells it all out, I just followed his instructions.

 

[charlesap]

Update:

Yesterday I filled the drum half-full of tap water, at 78 degrees and plugged the box in. The temperature has been dropping just under a degree an hour. This morning it was down to 62 degrees... I am quite pleased. Now I have to make something to steam a whole 50-lb bag of rice and I'll be ready to make some sake!