My setup, and how I got to that point:
First off, let me preface this with a few notes about myself. I am a minimalist at heart. I grew up dirt poor, so it has been ingrained in my head. Even when I have the money to buy something I would rather pool my skills and resources to try to figure out how to accomplish something with what I have. Combined with a biweekly self-imposed allowance, which I may or may not actually get, depending on the budgetary constraints of just $25. When I started researching what it takes to start homebrewing I tried to figure out how to have the best possible with the least possible.
You Don't Have To Spend A Fortune To Make Great Beer
Christmas in 2011 found me adding the $40 basic Mr. Beer kit to my wish list. Oddly enough, my wife actually decided to get it for me. Now, bless her heart, I love her to death, but she decided to upgrade to the Brewmasters Select Kit ($140). I was more than happy with the gift, however, when I found the price, I silently cried over the thought of possibly getting a real brewing setup for the same cost. Looking back, I am thankful that I have stuck to my 2.5 gallon fermentors. It works perfectly for my space, and allows me to experiment more. This means less bad beer to drink if I completely mess it up. It also allows me to brew bigger beers, like Barleywines and Imperial Stouts, while keeping under the $20 a batch limit.
For Christmas in 2013, I received yet another Mr. Beer fermentor, plus two ingredient kits. At this time, I wasn't brewing very much, as the kits themselves were expensive. However, I had found HomeBrewTalk by this time, and I realized with a few modifications, the kits could be better than before. This time around, the bug caught! I added some Carapils and a pound of LME to each batch, and I ended up with some very passable, even slightly tasty, beer.
I started researching the recipes database, and then scaled them down to my 2.5-gallon batch size. This was somewhat effective, and ended up making some decent beer. I was still finding the extract to be more expensive than I wanted to deal with, but I, by no means, had the ability to buy a three-tiered system. I didn't have the space anyways, as we were living with the in-laws. I discovered BIAB reading through the forums, and the Beginners Guide sticky in the sub-forum got me going in the right direction. A $5 pair of paint strainer bags, and a $12, 16-quart, stainless steel pot from Walmart, and I was up and running! My first two tries were again decent, but they were significantly cheaper than extract, for which I was excited! A 24 pack of beer for less than $8? Any day, any time.
I ran into the issue of only being able to ferment one batch at a time, which meant I had to wait two weeks between batches. The swamp cooler method of fermentation temperature control doesn't work too well, even indoors, in Texas in the summer. I had to tear down the kids' swing set/jungle gym due to the wood at the bottom rotting out, and I noticed quite a few of the planks were in really good condition. A light bulb turned on, and I designed my dual-keg fermentation chamber, what was based off of the son-of-a-fermentation chamber build here on HBT. After figuring out the fan (I'm a geek, fans I have plenty of) and controller configuration ($6 with free shipping from China), then adding in a $12 sheet of polystyrene from Lowes that I could double up to 1 for insulation, and I had a temperature regulated environment. It is very simple to maintain the proper temperature, I only need to change the ice every 12 hours.
My process of brewing cheaply:
A typical case of homebrew ends up costing me around $10. I end up taking a case to work every Friday to share with my coworkers. Not every beer that I make I think is good, however, they are apparently so used to BMC, they even like my "bad" batches. I'm always trying new recipes from the recipes section here on HomeBrewTalk and I enjoy experimenting to see what can be changed.
Brew Day:
My brew day starts by grabbing my five 3 quart Ozarka bottles from beside my fermentation chamber, my box of brewing equipment from the shelf in the girls' closet, my 22 ounce bottles from behind the upstairs bar, the bag of grain from the bedroom, and the remainder of the equipment from wherever I was able to find the room to stash it. My Ozarka bottles get filled with water from the fridge filter. I can't wait to get an inline filter that I can use on the sink, the fridge takes way too long to fill the bottles.
Preparing The Stove Top Mash
Once I have everything downstairs in the kitchen, nine quarts of water goes into my 16 quart pot. I use a candy thermometer to bring the mash water up to the appropriate strike temperature, which is usually 10F higher than the expected mash temperature because a typical batch is five pounds of grain.
Once I reach my strike temperature, I place my paint strainer bag into the pot, and gently pour my grain in while stirring lightly to keep it from clumping. I usually lay a folded-up towel on the counter beforehand for insulation, and place the pot on top of that. This is followed by putting the lid on, wrapping my pot with a blanket, and then covering it with my old military jacket. This has allowed be to only drop two degrees in an hour, which may be huge for some people, but my results have been pretty good so far. If the recipe calls for 154F, I hit 155F, and go from there.
While the mash is resting, I'm usually playing with the kids, or working on another beer crate in the garage. We have a seven-month old, so I keep pretty busy. After 55 minutes have passed, I start heating up a smaller pot with two quarts of water. By the time mash is complete, the smaller pot has hit 175F. This is my version of a mash out. Although it's probably not needed, my pot is too small to just turn the burner on without scorching the bag, so I just dunk it separately. I just threw out the first strainer bag that I bought in 2013, last month, so being overprotective has certainly helped. Do I need this extra step? Possibly not, but, it works for me, and its ingrained in my process now, so I just go with it.
I've usually let the grains drain into the pot for a minute or two while starting to bring it to a boil. Then I transfer the bag over to the smaller pot. I stir that around a bit let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes, then move the colander over and let it drain for another 5 to 10 minutes while I wait for the main pot to a full boil. I could probably be convinced a sparge isn't necessary, except for the fact that the water in the small pot looks nearly identical to the wort in the big pot. So I figure there must be some sugar in there in the end.
My hops get added once the remainder of the wort is dumped into the large pot, and the total volume is brought up to 3 gallons. I know I lose .5g per hour, so this will leave me with right around my 2.5 gallons post boil, once I take cooling shrinkage into account. My method of hop measurement is extremely precise, just eyeball it into even piles and there you go. If I need .25 ounces I just divide the contents of the one ounce bag into four. I have had a scale on my wishlist for about two Christmases. The beer gets to boil in about 20 to 25 minutes from flameout at which point I start my timer.
This is when the multitasking comes in. Once my boil starts, I'm usually bottling a previous batch. Typically, I wont use green bottles, but this was a cider, so I wanted to try something different. Plus, the LHBS had them for free in a pile. The owner has people donating bottles when they don't want to go through the work of cleaning them, or they have just started kegging. Then people like me get free bottles!
Sanitization! Here you can see a little of my ingenuity in designing a bottle rack out of the same lumber from the swing set, and some 3/8 dowels.
I always sanitize one extra bomber and a couple of little bottles, just in case my 2.5 gallon guesstimate was off a bit. Typically I get 13, 22-ounce bottles out of my batches.
I picked up a 2.5-gallon water jug from Wal-Mart that I have been bottling from for about a year and a half. I put my priming sugar (usually 1/4 cup) in eight ounces of boiled water. Then, I let it cool before adding to the jug. In this case, I also added six tablespoons of Xylitol (non-fermentable sugar alcohol). With the hose down, and the flow on, transferring begins. On the Mr. Beer fermentors, it is my experience that the yeast (I pitch half a packet, re-hydrated) stays on the bottom pretty well, so that I can tip it slowly to get the remainder of the beer, without getting sediment.
Honestly, I could probably have a better way to bottle. Although there may be some aeration, I haven't had any noticeable effect as of yet. I try to keep it slow enough that it doesn't splash down the side of the bottle. Somebody in the Mr. Beer thread mentioned fixing a bottling wand to the inside of that spout, but I have yet to attempt that particular addition.
I let the bottles sit with the caps on loosely (pre-sanitized, of course), and I can usually hear the caps lifting up occasionally. Which I assume is CO2 off-gassing, which I hope helps as a way to purge the bottle for me. Although, that is a highly unscientific assumption.
I have 3 kids, who are 8, 9, and 10 years old. One of them is my assistant brew master each weekend, depending on who is feeling up to it. They really enjoy helping me out. Once we got past the whole washing-hands thing, and not picking our noses while handing me bottles, everything worked out great!
After finishing off with capping the beers using my wing capper, and putting bottles back in their box, it is time to move stuff out of the way, because my watch just buzzed saying 60 minutes has passed. I chill the wort in a good, old-fashioned ice bath. I stir the wort one direction, and stir the ice the other direction to keep the contact points circulating. I found I can get the temp down faster this way and it typically takes me 15-20 minutes to chill it down to 75F. If I find myself below 2.5 gallons at the end of the boil, I will add ice directly to my wort, until I get up to the right volume. When I freeze ice, I make sure the trays are covered, so nothing gets inside, in the event that I do need to add it to the wort. I sanitize the trays after brewing every weekend.
Chilling The Wort In An Ice Bath
This was actually my very first time using a hydrometer! Looking through the foam, and adjusting for temperature, I hit about 1.047, which was higher than the 1.044 I was expecting. For never using a hydrometer, and hitting 80%, I'm impressed, to say the least!
I did a wort direct to fermenter batch once. I had so much trub after fermentation was complete that I lost about half of a gallon from the finished product. Since then, I filter it all out using a hop sack with binder clips holding it to the opening of the Mr. Beer fermentor. I also think this helps me out a bit with aeration.
Going back just a little:
Prior to the chill, I start re-hydrating the yeast. I boil the water, then chill to room temp, then sprinkle the yeast on top. For best re-hydration practices, though, always consult the instructions per the yeast manufacturer.
Filling The Mr. beer LBK With Wort
After the wort is in the fermentor, I add my yeast cream, and tuck it away, nice and cozy, in the fermentation chamber. The $6 controller I bought was in Celsius, which was only slightly inconvenient. The bad thing is, I noticed that if you set it to say 18C, it turns on, but then takes it all the way down to 16C before it trips off again. This was definitely too far of a variance to have the probe in the wort itself. However, I learned that if the probe is just hanging in the open air, the temperature readout on the side of my keg reads a constant 65F. Is it the best? No, but it is certainly functionable. I'll work on making a better fermentation chamber when I have the room, and the resources.
Moral of the story:
Given enough planning and ingenuity, the stubbornness to find another way of doing things, and the good people at HomeBrewTalk, it is possible to still brew beer on a very tight budget. With a $12 SS pot, a paint strainer bag, and an LHBS that fine-crushes everything for you, you can be brewing all grain in no time. A lot of the stuff I had around the house already; like the blankets, coats, thermometer, etc. It doesn't take much to get started. As long as you pay attention to sanitation, and have some method of temperature control, you can make award winning beers all day long, without the $1000 budget.
Bio:
Sean "Skitter" Wheeler is a father of four, and geek by general affirmation, in more than just the computer-sense. He likes researching everything he can find out about a subject before applying his new-found knowledge. Carpentry, brewing, computers, hunting, fishing, gaming, the subject typically doesn't matter. He enjoys knowing the "why's" of the world, rather than just taking explanations like, "it just is." This can be to his detriment, as well as, his advancement. Serving in the Air Force, he had to change careers one year after enlisting because he was benched off the flight line as a C-130 Crew Chief for asking too many questions straight out of training. Coupled with a near-photographic memory, social skills are not his forte. Inquisitive sponge sums it up rather nicely.
Skitt's Brewers Blog
//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/ t=_self
First off, let me preface this with a few notes about myself. I am a minimalist at heart. I grew up dirt poor, so it has been ingrained in my head. Even when I have the money to buy something I would rather pool my skills and resources to try to figure out how to accomplish something with what I have. Combined with a biweekly self-imposed allowance, which I may or may not actually get, depending on the budgetary constraints of just $25. When I started researching what it takes to start homebrewing I tried to figure out how to have the best possible with the least possible.
You Don't Have To Spend A Fortune To Make Great Beer
Christmas in 2011 found me adding the $40 basic Mr. Beer kit to my wish list. Oddly enough, my wife actually decided to get it for me. Now, bless her heart, I love her to death, but she decided to upgrade to the Brewmasters Select Kit ($140). I was more than happy with the gift, however, when I found the price, I silently cried over the thought of possibly getting a real brewing setup for the same cost. Looking back, I am thankful that I have stuck to my 2.5 gallon fermentors. It works perfectly for my space, and allows me to experiment more. This means less bad beer to drink if I completely mess it up. It also allows me to brew bigger beers, like Barleywines and Imperial Stouts, while keeping under the $20 a batch limit.
For Christmas in 2013, I received yet another Mr. Beer fermentor, plus two ingredient kits. At this time, I wasn't brewing very much, as the kits themselves were expensive. However, I had found HomeBrewTalk by this time, and I realized with a few modifications, the kits could be better than before. This time around, the bug caught! I added some Carapils and a pound of LME to each batch, and I ended up with some very passable, even slightly tasty, beer.
I started researching the recipes database, and then scaled them down to my 2.5-gallon batch size. This was somewhat effective, and ended up making some decent beer. I was still finding the extract to be more expensive than I wanted to deal with, but I, by no means, had the ability to buy a three-tiered system. I didn't have the space anyways, as we were living with the in-laws. I discovered BIAB reading through the forums, and the Beginners Guide sticky in the sub-forum got me going in the right direction. A $5 pair of paint strainer bags, and a $12, 16-quart, stainless steel pot from Walmart, and I was up and running! My first two tries were again decent, but they were significantly cheaper than extract, for which I was excited! A 24 pack of beer for less than $8? Any day, any time.
I ran into the issue of only being able to ferment one batch at a time, which meant I had to wait two weeks between batches. The swamp cooler method of fermentation temperature control doesn't work too well, even indoors, in Texas in the summer. I had to tear down the kids' swing set/jungle gym due to the wood at the bottom rotting out, and I noticed quite a few of the planks were in really good condition. A light bulb turned on, and I designed my dual-keg fermentation chamber, what was based off of the son-of-a-fermentation chamber build here on HBT. After figuring out the fan (I'm a geek, fans I have plenty of) and controller configuration ($6 with free shipping from China), then adding in a $12 sheet of polystyrene from Lowes that I could double up to 1 for insulation, and I had a temperature regulated environment. It is very simple to maintain the proper temperature, I only need to change the ice every 12 hours.
My process of brewing cheaply:
A typical case of homebrew ends up costing me around $10. I end up taking a case to work every Friday to share with my coworkers. Not every beer that I make I think is good, however, they are apparently so used to BMC, they even like my "bad" batches. I'm always trying new recipes from the recipes section here on HomeBrewTalk and I enjoy experimenting to see what can be changed.
Brew Day:
My brew day starts by grabbing my five 3 quart Ozarka bottles from beside my fermentation chamber, my box of brewing equipment from the shelf in the girls' closet, my 22 ounce bottles from behind the upstairs bar, the bag of grain from the bedroom, and the remainder of the equipment from wherever I was able to find the room to stash it. My Ozarka bottles get filled with water from the fridge filter. I can't wait to get an inline filter that I can use on the sink, the fridge takes way too long to fill the bottles.
Preparing The Stove Top Mash
Once I have everything downstairs in the kitchen, nine quarts of water goes into my 16 quart pot. I use a candy thermometer to bring the mash water up to the appropriate strike temperature, which is usually 10F higher than the expected mash temperature because a typical batch is five pounds of grain.
Once I reach my strike temperature, I place my paint strainer bag into the pot, and gently pour my grain in while stirring lightly to keep it from clumping. I usually lay a folded-up towel on the counter beforehand for insulation, and place the pot on top of that. This is followed by putting the lid on, wrapping my pot with a blanket, and then covering it with my old military jacket. This has allowed be to only drop two degrees in an hour, which may be huge for some people, but my results have been pretty good so far. If the recipe calls for 154F, I hit 155F, and go from there.
While the mash is resting, I'm usually playing with the kids, or working on another beer crate in the garage. We have a seven-month old, so I keep pretty busy. After 55 minutes have passed, I start heating up a smaller pot with two quarts of water. By the time mash is complete, the smaller pot has hit 175F. This is my version of a mash out. Although it's probably not needed, my pot is too small to just turn the burner on without scorching the bag, so I just dunk it separately. I just threw out the first strainer bag that I bought in 2013, last month, so being overprotective has certainly helped. Do I need this extra step? Possibly not, but, it works for me, and its ingrained in my process now, so I just go with it.
I've usually let the grains drain into the pot for a minute or two while starting to bring it to a boil. Then I transfer the bag over to the smaller pot. I stir that around a bit let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes, then move the colander over and let it drain for another 5 to 10 minutes while I wait for the main pot to a full boil. I could probably be convinced a sparge isn't necessary, except for the fact that the water in the small pot looks nearly identical to the wort in the big pot. So I figure there must be some sugar in there in the end.
My hops get added once the remainder of the wort is dumped into the large pot, and the total volume is brought up to 3 gallons. I know I lose .5g per hour, so this will leave me with right around my 2.5 gallons post boil, once I take cooling shrinkage into account. My method of hop measurement is extremely precise, just eyeball it into even piles and there you go. If I need .25 ounces I just divide the contents of the one ounce bag into four. I have had a scale on my wishlist for about two Christmases. The beer gets to boil in about 20 to 25 minutes from flameout at which point I start my timer.
This is when the multitasking comes in. Once my boil starts, I'm usually bottling a previous batch. Typically, I wont use green bottles, but this was a cider, so I wanted to try something different. Plus, the LHBS had them for free in a pile. The owner has people donating bottles when they don't want to go through the work of cleaning them, or they have just started kegging. Then people like me get free bottles!
Sanitization! Here you can see a little of my ingenuity in designing a bottle rack out of the same lumber from the swing set, and some 3/8 dowels.
I always sanitize one extra bomber and a couple of little bottles, just in case my 2.5 gallon guesstimate was off a bit. Typically I get 13, 22-ounce bottles out of my batches.
I picked up a 2.5-gallon water jug from Wal-Mart that I have been bottling from for about a year and a half. I put my priming sugar (usually 1/4 cup) in eight ounces of boiled water. Then, I let it cool before adding to the jug. In this case, I also added six tablespoons of Xylitol (non-fermentable sugar alcohol). With the hose down, and the flow on, transferring begins. On the Mr. Beer fermentors, it is my experience that the yeast (I pitch half a packet, re-hydrated) stays on the bottom pretty well, so that I can tip it slowly to get the remainder of the beer, without getting sediment.
Honestly, I could probably have a better way to bottle. Although there may be some aeration, I haven't had any noticeable effect as of yet. I try to keep it slow enough that it doesn't splash down the side of the bottle. Somebody in the Mr. Beer thread mentioned fixing a bottling wand to the inside of that spout, but I have yet to attempt that particular addition.
I let the bottles sit with the caps on loosely (pre-sanitized, of course), and I can usually hear the caps lifting up occasionally. Which I assume is CO2 off-gassing, which I hope helps as a way to purge the bottle for me. Although, that is a highly unscientific assumption.
I have 3 kids, who are 8, 9, and 10 years old. One of them is my assistant brew master each weekend, depending on who is feeling up to it. They really enjoy helping me out. Once we got past the whole washing-hands thing, and not picking our noses while handing me bottles, everything worked out great!
After finishing off with capping the beers using my wing capper, and putting bottles back in their box, it is time to move stuff out of the way, because my watch just buzzed saying 60 minutes has passed. I chill the wort in a good, old-fashioned ice bath. I stir the wort one direction, and stir the ice the other direction to keep the contact points circulating. I found I can get the temp down faster this way and it typically takes me 15-20 minutes to chill it down to 75F. If I find myself below 2.5 gallons at the end of the boil, I will add ice directly to my wort, until I get up to the right volume. When I freeze ice, I make sure the trays are covered, so nothing gets inside, in the event that I do need to add it to the wort. I sanitize the trays after brewing every weekend.
Chilling The Wort In An Ice Bath
This was actually my very first time using a hydrometer! Looking through the foam, and adjusting for temperature, I hit about 1.047, which was higher than the 1.044 I was expecting. For never using a hydrometer, and hitting 80%, I'm impressed, to say the least!
I did a wort direct to fermenter batch once. I had so much trub after fermentation was complete that I lost about half of a gallon from the finished product. Since then, I filter it all out using a hop sack with binder clips holding it to the opening of the Mr. Beer fermentor. I also think this helps me out a bit with aeration.
Going back just a little:
Prior to the chill, I start re-hydrating the yeast. I boil the water, then chill to room temp, then sprinkle the yeast on top. For best re-hydration practices, though, always consult the instructions per the yeast manufacturer.
Filling The Mr. beer LBK With Wort
After the wort is in the fermentor, I add my yeast cream, and tuck it away, nice and cozy, in the fermentation chamber. The $6 controller I bought was in Celsius, which was only slightly inconvenient. The bad thing is, I noticed that if you set it to say 18C, it turns on, but then takes it all the way down to 16C before it trips off again. This was definitely too far of a variance to have the probe in the wort itself. However, I learned that if the probe is just hanging in the open air, the temperature readout on the side of my keg reads a constant 65F. Is it the best? No, but it is certainly functionable. I'll work on making a better fermentation chamber when I have the room, and the resources.
Moral of the story:
Given enough planning and ingenuity, the stubbornness to find another way of doing things, and the good people at HomeBrewTalk, it is possible to still brew beer on a very tight budget. With a $12 SS pot, a paint strainer bag, and an LHBS that fine-crushes everything for you, you can be brewing all grain in no time. A lot of the stuff I had around the house already; like the blankets, coats, thermometer, etc. It doesn't take much to get started. As long as you pay attention to sanitation, and have some method of temperature control, you can make award winning beers all day long, without the $1000 budget.
Bio:
Sean "Skitter" Wheeler is a father of four, and geek by general affirmation, in more than just the computer-sense. He likes researching everything he can find out about a subject before applying his new-found knowledge. Carpentry, brewing, computers, hunting, fishing, gaming, the subject typically doesn't matter. He enjoys knowing the "why's" of the world, rather than just taking explanations like, "it just is." This can be to his detriment, as well as, his advancement. Serving in the Air Force, he had to change careers one year after enlisting because he was benched off the flight line as a C-130 Crew Chief for asking too many questions straight out of training. Coupled with a near-photographic memory, social skills are not his forte. Inquisitive sponge sums it up rather nicely.
Skitt's Brewers Blog
//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/ t=_self
