diy

I’m making my own bottling bucket and I was guessing if it would be better to put a valve in the bottom of the bucket instead of a spigot and a dip tube on the lower part of it. Obviously, I’m trying to minimize losses when bottling. Does anyone has any idea or experience with this? Thanks!

So, I inherited, then modified this system. It came to me with three 16 gallon vessels, each with two ports near the bottom; the higher of the two for a physical analog thermometer and the lower for a ball valve. I added 240v 5500w ripple elements via 1-1/2" tri-clamp bulkheads, HERMS coils...

Hello everyone! Hope everything is going well. So i have been trying to design a counterflow chiller that can cool 15 gallons of boiling wort to yeast pitching temperatures (around 16 degrees celsius or 60.8F) in as little time as possible. What i am trying to figure out is how long the chiller...

Make the first post a doozie, eh? Here's a project I'm about to pull the trigger on, but thought I'd ask the experts first. I'll start with an introduction: So I've been lurking on this forum for a while, and enjoying the wisdom and experience on the forum. I'd brewed for a number of years...

I posted in DIY but I wanted to ensure others knew about the build and/or first-timers with fermentation chambers. Shoot me some suggestions for lagers I should try with this bad boy! I surf this forum religiously when embarking on a new adventure or project. Thanks to everyone who contributes...

I surf this forum religiously when embarking on a new adventure or project. Thanks to everyone who contributes and I hope to help others with this post. I have been on and off brewing beer for about 5-6 years now and have been using a swamp cooler to try and control temperatures. This works for...

It took me a couple of years of homebrewing before I started worrying about my fermentation temperatures. Up until then, whatever the temperature my basement was at, was what my beer would be at. However, I eventually wanted to control my fermentation temperatures to improve the quality of my...

I have been kegging my beer for a while, now. One of the things I miss is the ease of sharing my beer. I used to just grab a bottle from the case and pass it along. So, I wanted to an easy way to be able to get back to sharing bottles. And it seems that bottle fillers are one of the best ways to...

Before long, any homebrewer with a little yard space is going to start eyeing up the corners of his or her yard and thinking about where to plant some hops. We encourage that urge! As we’ve touched on before, gardening for your homebrew is a great extension of the hobby, and even with a plant as...

Pleased with the HLT/heat exchanger project shown in a previous article, my friend Rick asked me to help him with his MLT build. We used the same techniques and many of the same components for this phase of his three vessel brewing system. This was the simplest kettle of the project, requiring...

I was reading the article posted by Peter Cotton on his no chill brewing. I had no idea of just how the water restrictions in Australia could affect home brewing. I personally have been doing an ice bath for years, but wanted to move up to an immersion chiller to quicken the cool down to reduce...

You have weighed the options, done the math, and made the decision that it is cheaper to modify your own brew kettle than to buy one with the ball valve already installed. Now the prospect of taking a drill to your pristine stainless steel kettle is a bit daunting. Hopefully I will be able to...

I really, really like my Monster Mill 3+. It is a little heavy to carry around, though, and it feels unstable when sitting on a bucket with a heavy drill motor hanging off the side. I knew that I wanted to make a permanent mounting with a fixed drive for it. That meant that I had to select a...

I have been using a combo HLT/heat exchanger since I added HERMS (Heat Exchanger Recirculating Mash System) to my original gravity feed brew rig. A friend had an old keg and wanted something just like mine so I offered to do the conversion for him, essentially duplicating my original build. I...

Version 2, which serves two mini-kegs at the same time No, this is not an article about drinking beer while driving around (very bad idea). This is an article about how to keep homebrew chilled and carbonated in mini-kegs for tail-gating, BBQs and camping trips. It is about having portable...

If there is one thing that can be said about homebrewers, it is that we are a DIY-type crowd. In fact, the very act of homebrewing is DIY, in that you are brewing it yourself, instead of buying in from the store. It is no wonder, therefore, that homebrewers tend to fabricate or re-purpose items...

It’s no great secret that a big chunk of the fun of being a wine connoisseur lies in the visual aspect of the bottles themselves. Yeah, we could stuff them all in boxes like so many 8-track tapes, but where’s the joy in that? No… Some sort of wine rack is called for to help keep the corks moist...

I recently had a chance to brew with the professionals at a local brewery. They were brewing on a SABCO Brew-Magic (15 gallon) system that they use for their weekly small batch releases. The brewer explained the components and how they all worked together. The wort would circulate throughout the...

There is a strong trend these days toward hot side temperature control, whether merely to maintain stable mash temperatures or to permit automatic temperature ramping, as for step mashes or for mashout. The majority of systems seen use modern electronics combined with electric heating elements...

As many home brewers have no doubt experienced, yeast can be one of the more difficult variables to control in the brewing process. Much like an impressionable youngster, yeast requires just the right conditions in order to thrive and therefore become successful in its efforts to produce...