New Garage and the Phoenix Brewery

Warrior · May 1, 2012

Getting the final things ready to brew next week. Just placed order for the grain and test fired the Hurricane burners. They produce quite a bit of heat even on natural gas! Will be posting pics as soon as everything is complete and ready to go.

Warrior · May 1, 2012

New three tier stand hurricane burners work great on the Natural gas lines! The lowest stand is designed as a portable. I have a low pressure regulator so I can use it with a propane bottle.

Ralphadopolis · May 2, 2012

wow man that looks awesome... I shall name it Brewtopia

mforsman · May 2, 2012

This is awesome!

stevea1210 · May 6, 2012

Glad to see you back in the game Mike. I saw your group buy thread, but just missed it filling up. Happy to see you brewing again.

Warrior · May 6, 2012

It's has been quite a while but I'll be glad to be brewing again.

Warrior · May 6, 2012

New maltmill unit. Only need to build the hopper for it yet. Motor is a gear reduction unit and only runs at 63 RPM. I might use a larger pulley on the motor side to increase the speed. A 6 in pully would give me a speed of 253 RPM.

Rivenin · May 7, 2012

living the home brewers dream! i wish i had 1/16th that space!

Warrior · May 13, 2012

For those that wanted to see the inside pics, this is some pics showing the entire shop.

Warrior · May 13, 2012

1st brew on new system was yesterday. Targeted for a 22 gal IPA of O.G. of 1.068. Swag on the amount of water for this batch as I just doubled what I used to make for an 11 gal batch in a 1/2 bbl system. Maxed out the 20 gal mash tun as I used too much water. Improvised on the fly and did a 2nd mash after draining off about 12 gal of wort and then added the additional grain and some more water from the sparge water. Ended up with about 27 gal of wort in the pot but still had more draining from the mash tun. Drained an additional 5 1/2 gal of 1.020 wort from the mash and am thinking about using that and some DME to make a 5 gal batch of another beer. Ended up with around 23 gal of an IPA at a 1.066 gravity.

Next time I'll reduce the mash water by 3 1/2 gals and the sparge by 2 gals. This should allow me to fit all 52 lbs of grain in one mash. This will make a thicker ratio of water to grain ratio then what I was used to but it'll still be 1 quart per lb of grain.

I love the new Blichmann mash screen!!! Even with all that extra water above the mashbed, it never clogged the flow. The 1st mash was very compacted from the 1st sparge but it flowed all the way till the bottom. It was tough breaking apart the grains to mix the new grain for the 2nd mash. All in all not a bad day for the 1st brew on this system. As you see in the last pics all five carboys were actively fermenting this morning only about 10 hours after pitching last night.

Warrior · Dec 8, 2014

Have not visited this thread for a while. Going through the old messages I saw about someone mentioning doing something for the fireman. My neighbors and I had our 5th annual Pig Roast fundraiser for the fire company. We have it at the shop and use several backyards with live music and lots of food. We raised $1,300 for them this past August. I also donated a keg of beer for a crab feed fundraiser they had back in Oct. I plan to keep this going as a thank you to our great local VOLUNTEER fire dept. Most of us take them for granted till they save your home and even the lives of those in their community. Thank God they are there for us!

Warrior · Aug 27, 2015

Finally got around to doing my round to project for the brewery. I was suppose to do this about 5 years ago after rebuilding the shop and brewery. Well here it's finally finished!