peterson82
Active Member
Hello everyone. I am new around here and am excited to find and start communicating with the brewing world. I started brewing in August, and since then (like many of you) I dream, think, live brewing. I sometimes lay awake at night thinking of how to improve my brewing process based on the information I have read that day.
I am a complete hop head. I love IPAs and IIPAs, but I also love a broad range of different beers and respect the design and creative element to creating such concoctions. I am actually bringing a Keg to my 30th birthday party of my first ESB I have ever brewed (this is very nerve racking).
Anyway back to the electric part of it... I have recently found Kal's electric brewery setup, and am in awe. I watch the videos and live vicariously through them. I have read the step by step process and I don't even own any of the parts! The most important thing is it made me realize some errors in my brewing process; especially the cloudy beer I have been getting recently. So now I am ready to improve, and gain the ability to brew like the best. I cannot order the whole system right now because I am limited to my apartment. At this point, all i have is two 8 gallon pots and a plastic mash tun. The beer is good, but it isn't great. I got all the right temps and I planned all my salts out before hand. I keg it, and bottle some of it. I pass it to my friends and they love having free beer, but I am never satisfied with it. I think this setup will change that.
I plan on buying a house in 2 years. So this gives me two years in an apartment. I don't have any space on my own to build a brewery room, and I just do it in the kitchen. I ordered my first phase today, actually. My phases are: Phase one Feb 14th 2012, The whole wort chiller setup, pump setup, and hoses setup. Phase two 2013, HLT, Mash Tun, Control Panel, heating elements and temp probes. Phase 3 2014 (new house), Boil Kettle, Brew Stand, Ventilation.
I chose phase one because I can use all three right now. Here is the proposed brewing process:
-Pot1 heats up tap water to 165 degrees.
-Add Potassium metabisulfite (250mg).
-add salts depending on brew.
{
My water comes from the Corbalis water treatment plant in Fairfax Virginia highlighted in this paper on Chlorine/Chloramine. http://ajdel.wetnewf.org:81/Brewing_articles/BT_Chlorine.pdf
Calcium: 37.4
Magnesium 9.4
Sodium 17.9
Chloride 26.1
Sulfate 43.8
Bicarbonate 82
Chlorine, Total 3.4mg/L
}
-add crushed grains and check temp and pH
-plug in hoses, and pump the pre-wort through the pump and back up to the top. This prevents the temperature gradient from the double burner for heating.
-40 mins into the mash, I heat up water into my boil kettle/HLT.
-I raise the temp of the mash tun to 168 degrees.
-I fly sparge using the hoses and pumps and trickle the wort into an intermediary. takes about 60 mins
-dump the intermediary into the boil kettle when the sparge is complete.
-boil for 60-90 mins.
-send wort through the pump and then through the counter-flow wort chiller and into a fermenter.
-ferment in the keggerator at 64-68 degrees for 3 weeks.
-keg for second ferment and add gelatin
-dry hop
-keg for serving
To clarify, I do not have any pumps or counter-flow chillers at the moment. I do heavy lifting and gravity to do all of my movement.
Phase two was chosen because I do not need a lot of space for the things that I cannot use (anything attached to the CP) and I can add the pots to the mix... fixing them to get ready for my final brewery.
Phase three will commence as soon as I have a place to put a brew stand and exhaust pipe from ventilation. As I said I will need my own place, as apartments are not good for such things.
By this time I plan on using a 30 gallon boil kettle, and the full Electronic Brewery at my disposal. It will have a 20 gallon Mash Tun, and a 20 gallon HLT. Here is how I plan on making 20 gallon batches:
Use the HLT to heat 15-18 gallons water up to 165 degrees. Transfer it to the Mash tun. Add 15-18 more gallons to HLT and heat to 152 (or whatever it needs).
Add grains to the mash tun. and control heat with the HERMS system. Fly sparge to the boil kettle and collect whatever I need pre-boil. The rest is the same as before.
I will update with pics on all of this as I progress. There will probably be a huge lag between updates as it is a two year process. I am excited about it all, and am looking forward to getting it all complete. That said, I would love constructive feedback, and criticisms.
-Peterson82
I am a complete hop head. I love IPAs and IIPAs, but I also love a broad range of different beers and respect the design and creative element to creating such concoctions. I am actually bringing a Keg to my 30th birthday party of my first ESB I have ever brewed (this is very nerve racking).
Anyway back to the electric part of it... I have recently found Kal's electric brewery setup, and am in awe. I watch the videos and live vicariously through them. I have read the step by step process and I don't even own any of the parts! The most important thing is it made me realize some errors in my brewing process; especially the cloudy beer I have been getting recently. So now I am ready to improve, and gain the ability to brew like the best. I cannot order the whole system right now because I am limited to my apartment. At this point, all i have is two 8 gallon pots and a plastic mash tun. The beer is good, but it isn't great. I got all the right temps and I planned all my salts out before hand. I keg it, and bottle some of it. I pass it to my friends and they love having free beer, but I am never satisfied with it. I think this setup will change that.
I plan on buying a house in 2 years. So this gives me two years in an apartment. I don't have any space on my own to build a brewery room, and I just do it in the kitchen. I ordered my first phase today, actually. My phases are: Phase one Feb 14th 2012, The whole wort chiller setup, pump setup, and hoses setup. Phase two 2013, HLT, Mash Tun, Control Panel, heating elements and temp probes. Phase 3 2014 (new house), Boil Kettle, Brew Stand, Ventilation.
I chose phase one because I can use all three right now. Here is the proposed brewing process:
-Pot1 heats up tap water to 165 degrees.
-Add Potassium metabisulfite (250mg).
-add salts depending on brew.
{
My water comes from the Corbalis water treatment plant in Fairfax Virginia highlighted in this paper on Chlorine/Chloramine. http://ajdel.wetnewf.org:81/Brewing_articles/BT_Chlorine.pdf
Calcium: 37.4
Magnesium 9.4
Sodium 17.9
Chloride 26.1
Sulfate 43.8
Bicarbonate 82
Chlorine, Total 3.4mg/L
}
-add crushed grains and check temp and pH
-plug in hoses, and pump the pre-wort through the pump and back up to the top. This prevents the temperature gradient from the double burner for heating.
-40 mins into the mash, I heat up water into my boil kettle/HLT.
-I raise the temp of the mash tun to 168 degrees.
-I fly sparge using the hoses and pumps and trickle the wort into an intermediary. takes about 60 mins
-dump the intermediary into the boil kettle when the sparge is complete.
-boil for 60-90 mins.
-send wort through the pump and then through the counter-flow wort chiller and into a fermenter.
-ferment in the keggerator at 64-68 degrees for 3 weeks.
-keg for second ferment and add gelatin
-dry hop
-keg for serving
To clarify, I do not have any pumps or counter-flow chillers at the moment. I do heavy lifting and gravity to do all of my movement.
Phase two was chosen because I do not need a lot of space for the things that I cannot use (anything attached to the CP) and I can add the pots to the mix... fixing them to get ready for my final brewery.
Phase three will commence as soon as I have a place to put a brew stand and exhaust pipe from ventilation. As I said I will need my own place, as apartments are not good for such things.
By this time I plan on using a 30 gallon boil kettle, and the full Electronic Brewery at my disposal. It will have a 20 gallon Mash Tun, and a 20 gallon HLT. Here is how I plan on making 20 gallon batches:
Use the HLT to heat 15-18 gallons water up to 165 degrees. Transfer it to the Mash tun. Add 15-18 more gallons to HLT and heat to 152 (or whatever it needs).
Add grains to the mash tun. and control heat with the HERMS system. Fly sparge to the boil kettle and collect whatever I need pre-boil. The rest is the same as before.
I will update with pics on all of this as I progress. There will probably be a huge lag between updates as it is a two year process. I am excited about it all, and am looking forward to getting it all complete. That said, I would love constructive feedback, and criticisms.
-Peterson82
