Any All Grain Kitchen brewers out there

[motosapiens]

Dang. there are alot of complicated people out there. I used to brew in the kitchen, but a $100 gas camp stove put out so much more heat in made sense to move the operation into the garage and laundry room. I'm still able to watch football on TV while I keep an eye on stuff.

Gotta say I don't get the appeal of BIAB in large enough quantities that it requires a hoist. It would make total sense for 1-3 gallon batches, but if i'm going to have a hoist, i might as well just buy a cheap cooler.

 

[shoengine]

Chilling is best done with cold tap water to get it down to say 100-120F. It will go fast. Using ice at that point is a sheer waste. I reclaim that hot water for cleanup in a couple big buckets. Save the ice for where it counts the most, to take it down those last 30-50 degrees with or without recirculation.

Ice works great for me, and I get a good break each time. Guess I could try it without ice but I wouldn't really call $6 in bagged ice a "waste". It is actually more efficient for the volume, and I would have to use a lot more water to get the same amount of cooling with the water at ~50F and the ice at under 32F.

 

[IslandLizard]

Ice works great for me, and I get a good break each time. Guess I could try it without ice but I wouldn't really call $6 in bagged ice a "waste". It is actually more efficient for the volume, and I would have to use a lot more water to get the same amount of cooling with the water at ~50F and the ice at under 32F.

I doubt a delta-T of more than 60-80°F makes any significant difference in the speed of chilling. But everyone's system and methods are different, so do whatever works for you. I have a plate chiller. During the warmer seasons I hook up the (immersion-type) pre-chiller, but won't load the bucket with ice until the temps become steady to around 100-120F using recirculation back through the whirlpool port. I then move the hose and chill down in one pass straight to the fermentor. I monitor the output temp and adjust the flow accordingly.

 

[shoengine]

I'd like to get a recirculating chiller at some point, and get a large heatsink on it, like a radiator from a car and see what breaks I can achieve. Plus I hate wasting all that water.

 

[Vedexent]

Yep - 2.5 gallon batches, 5 gallon kettle, all-grain, BIAB, full volume mash/boil.

Done in my kitchen, mashes in my oven ( preheated to 170F and turned off ), boils on my stove-top, ferments in a home built climate controlled box on my balcony - easy to do this time of year with ambient air temperature being colder than target fermenting temperatures ( contemplating "ice packing" when the weather warms - or just brewing Saison beers ).

2.5 - 3 gallon batches is pretty much the limit of my brewday equipment; unless I want to do multiple boils and mix wort in the fermenter, or graduate to an Igloo cooler/mash tun and do sparging.

Boils are small enough I can drop sanitized plastic soda bottles full of ice into the kettle, while it's sitting in a sink of ice water, and it drops the temperature pretty effectively - although my last batch I just sealed up in a carefully sanitized food grade HDPE 2 bucket and let cool naturally.

For now, a 2.5 gallon batch every 1-2 weeks ( 17 x 500 ml bottles final production ) matches my consumption levels nicely.

 

[Hopsimus]

I do 3 gallon all grain batches on my electric kitchen stove. The stove can handle boiling about 5 gallons, so 3 gallon batches are about my limit.
I use a 10 gallon cooler as my mash tun and batch sparge.
I guess it would be considered a 3 tier system, since I have a second kettle that I use to heat the sparge water.

For cooling I use a copper immersion coil that is hooked up to the kitchen sink.

I almost always end up with some water on the floor before the brew day is over, but that is ok because we have tile in the kitchen and it stands up to water pretty well.

I brew every 3 or 4 weeks. With 3 gallon batches that works out to around 7 to 10 glasses of beer per week that my wife and I need to drink, which is about right for us. All in all, I'm pretty happy with my current setup!