Squam Lakes Brewery with Pictures

[Sea]

Beautiful setup.

Please do, we're in the beginning stages of our 1 bbl brewery and we're planning on going fully electric as well. Of particular interest is the mounting of the heating elements, what fittings/gaskets did you use to construct them? Will they stand the high temps, etc. Thanks!

Looks to me like the simply screw a 1" Threaded PVC coupling onto a h2o htr element. Then a 1" x 1/2" threaded PVC bushing into that, then a 1/2" wire gland into that. Just make sure your jacketed cable is of the right gauge for the current draw of your elements. Oh, and connect the wire to the element before threading the whole thing together.

Rather clever way to guard the exposed end of an element.

 

[Boar Beer]

Got some stuff done over the weekend. First the room is looking much better.

I picked up a new sink and a ss counter top. Got that all jammed in and then hooked up the drain and water.


In the above picture you can see the 20 gallon Blichmann false bottom and behind it the new false bottom used in then 44 Gallon MT
I have to thank YooperBrew again for teaching me how to get the pictures organized.

 

[Boar Beer]

The next step was to Test the New 44 gallon MT
I bought a 19.25 in diameter false bottom from Jaybird.
The barrel is a food grade bucket from Rubbermaid

I put a 1/2" drain in and connected it to a circle of Pex tube with 1/8 in holes in the bottom (turned out to be too small)


Next we split a piece of old tubing to help protect the bucket and to make a nice seal to keep the grain from getting under the false bottom. Ya i know the date is wrong.

When all put together it looked great. What you dont see is that the false bottom is not quiet as snug a fit as we could have used. Maybe next time we will try a thicker tube

Just as a reminder .... Below is a picture of the two white 44 gallon barrels we are using one for the HLT and the other is this MT

 

[Boar Beer]

The next step was to prepare the some grain for our brew.


Then mash it in and wait

 

[Boar Beer]

Brew day November 15

Now everything up to this point has gone along very nicely. But when we went to sparging we had trouble. We hand a BIG stuck sparge !!!! So we tried all the usual things like blowing back up the tube ect… but finally we just shoveled half the grain into our old Blichmann 20 gallon MT spagred it then shoveled over the rest and finished off the second sparge. The rest of the day went very well. The 55 gallon Blichmann with 10,000 watts of heating and the Brewmation controls made everything work well and we ended up with over 30 gallons of nice clean beer.

OK so for the next mash we have drilled out the 1/8 in holes with 1 /4 in holes. We think that we had the logic wrong with the small holes. We were thinking we wanted to prevent the grain from coming out but in fact we should have been trying to get any grain under the false bottom out and dunning the vollof gently settle the grain bed into a filter.

So even though we did not get everything right the first time we are very confident our next big mash will go smoothly.

Jumbo82 will post the grain bill and the actual brew stats.

 

[MikeRLynch]

Absolutely outstanding. How did you chill down your wort? Did you use whirlfloc or irish moss in the boil for clarity? Do you filter your finished beer? What's the meaning of life?

 

[Boar Beer]

Blichmann plate chiller. It does a great job as long as you keep the hops out of it.

 

[Jumbo82]

Absolutely outstanding. How did you chill down your wort? Did you use whirlfloc or irish moss in the boil for clarity? Do you filter your finished beer? What's the meaning of life?

We chilled down using our Blichmann Therminator. Its really amazing how well it works. 31 gallons of boiling wort chilled down to 67 degrees in probably 15-20 minutes. Its helps that our groundwater is currently 48 degrees. I used 4 whirlfloc tablets and a dash of irish moss 15 minutes before the end of the boil. No, we don't filter our beer. Unfortunately, I currently don't know the meaning of life but if I do find out I'll be sure to post it on this thread at a later date. Check back often.

The beer for the day was a variation of a Belgian Tripel;

31 gallon batch

69.5 lbs Pilsner Malt
8 lbs Light Munich Malt
2.5 lbs Melanoidin Malt
10 lbs Cane Sugar

17 oz Fuggle Hops (5.5% AA) at 60 minutes.

4 whirlfloc tablets and irish moss added at 15 minutes.

We mashed at 149 degrees for 90 minutes. We started the boil once we had collected 20 gallons of wort and continued to boil for 2 hours. So some of wort received a 2 hour boil and some was boiled for 90 minutes.

The hops were divided into two separate mesh bags. According to Beer Smith the IBUs would be a bit high for the style, but I figured I'd lose a bit of utilization due to the use of the bag and it would all even out in the end.

The cane sugar was added during the last 10 minutes of the boil. The O.G. came out at 1.075. We chilled through the Therminator into four separate fermenters. 12 gallons into a 15 gallon demijohn, 10 gallons into 14.5 gallon Fermenator, 5 gallons into a 6 gallon glass carboy, and 4 gallons into a 5 gallon glass carboy.

We added 2.5 packets of Safbrew T-58 to each of the large fermenters and 1.5 packets of Safbrew S-33 to each of the smaller fermenters. They all began to bubble away within 30 minutes.

 

[jwats01]

Wow. What an impressive setup. Great to see a son & dad team working on such a great project! Cheers!

 

[Chosenwon]

Remind me not to complain when I think I am working on an expensive batch of beer! How much did the Barrel brew run you?

 

[Jumbo82]

Remind me not to complain when I think I am working on an expensive batch of beer! How much did the Barrel brew run you?

I buy my base malt from a local brewery for $38 per 25kg sack. That works out to $48 for the 69.5 lbs of Pilsner Malt. My specialty grains cost me $1.25 per pound at my LHBS, so that's about $13. Add the 10 lbs of sugar for another $5. The hops were $9.75 per pound from Hops Direct, but when I weighed them out they actually gave me 17 oz . Each dry yeast packet was $1.75 at the LHBS, so 8 packs is $14. Ingredients total roughly $90. Add in the $1.70 per hour to run the electric kettle, which for the mash water, sparge water and boil was probably somewhere around 3.5 hours, that's another $6. Miscellaneous sanitizers, cleaners, Whirfloc tablets, etc, maybe another $5 although I doubt its that much (I buy my PBW by the 50lb pail). So my rough math puts me at $101 per batch, which assuming I end up with 30 gallons of beer works out to $3.37 per gallon or 32 cents per 12 oz beer. Not too bad for a beer that should come out near 8% ABV.

 

[bendavanza]

Nice. Do you serve from 6 corny kegs or 2 15.5g sankey kegs? That price is cheaper than buying natural light kegs.

 

[smmcdermott]

wow, the cost from that last post is awesome...Love the brew dungeon, love the set-up, love the father-son team. All in all, favorite thread so far.

One question, and I am very surprised I am the first to ask this...Why are you bottling as opposed to keggin it? It would seem to save you a lot of trouble to keg a lot and maybe bottle 2 cases to hand out to friends and family. Just curious.

Keep the posts coming.

 

[MikeRLynch]

My god, bottling a barrel's worth of beer. I can't even fathom that. I bitch and whine about bottling 5 gallons...

 

[Jumbo82]

wow, the cost from that last post is awesome...Love the brew dungeon, love the set-up, love the father-son team. All in all, favorite thread so far.

One question, and I am very surprised I am the first to ask this...Why are you bottling as opposed to keggin it? It would seem to save you a lot of trouble to keg a lot and maybe bottle 2 cases to hand out to friends and family. Just curious.

Keep the posts coming.

Thanks, I'm glad you are enjoying the thread . We do a fair amount of kegging, I think at last count we had 10 corny kegs. Over the summer we supplied the beer to a friend and then a relative's wedding on back to back weekends and kegging is the only way we would have done it. But there are a few reasons we still bottle the majority of our beer. First, I love the convenience of being able to take bottles with me anywhere I go. Well over half of the beer I consume is at a location other than the house. Plus, I like having several dozen different beers to choose from on any given night, and thats not practical with kegging. A lot of our beers are put away for a 6 months, a year, or even longer and its nice to be able to take a trip down memory lane. Also, I'm planning to sell my beer to local stores once all my paperwork is approved. My original plan was to sell kegs to local bars/restaurants, but on the small scale I'm operating on it seems like more of a hassle to deal with kegs (cleaning, servicing, etc.). Getting all the kinks worked out with bottling on this scale is good practice for me now. And with 22 oz bottles I can bottle 10 gallons of beer by myself in about 1.5 hours, so its really not that bad. At some point down the road I may end up selling kegs, but at least for the short term I plan to stick with bottles.

 

[smmcdermott]

Thanks, I'm glad you are enjoying the thread . We do a fair amount of kegging, I think at last count we had 10 corny kegs. Over the summer we supplied the beer to a friend and then a relative's wedding on back to back weekends and kegging is the only way we would have done it. But there are a few reasons we still bottle the majority of our beer. First, I love the convenience of being able to take bottles with me anywhere I go. Well over half of the beer I consume is at a location other than the house. Plus, I like having several dozen different beers to choose from on any given night, and thats not practical with kegging. A lot of our beers are put away for a 6 months, a year, or even longer and its nice to be able to take a trip down memory lane. Also, I'm planning to sell my beer to local stores once all my paperwork is approved. My original plan was to sell kegs to local bars/restaurants, but on the small scale I'm operating on it seems like more of a hassle to deal with kegs (cleaning, servicing, etc.). Getting all the kinks worked out with bottling on this scale is good practice for me now. And with 22 oz bottles I can bottle 10 gallons of beer by myself in about 1.5 hours, so its really not that bad. At some point down the road I may end up selling kegs, but at least for the short term I plan to stick with bottles.

Wow, power to you. I go camping up in Maine every summer, Lake Pemaquid to be exact, You located anywhere south in NH? If your paperwork gets approved, I will support the homebrewer!!!

 

[Jumbo82]

Wow, power to you. I go camping up in Maine every summer, Lake Pemaquid to be exact, You located anywhere south in NH? If your paperwork gets approved, I will support the homebrewer!!!

I appreciate the support! I'm located in central NH and if all goes as planned I should have my beer in local stores by the summer. I'll be sure to keep HBT posted as I get further along in the process. If and when I get in stores I'll post the locations as well .

 

[TwoHeadsBrewing]

Wow, nice job gentlemen! Very impressive setup and nice pics of the build. Thanks for sharing!

 

[JoeMama]

Boar Beer is my dad.

HOLY ****! Hes MY dad too! Ive been looking for you for years now pops!
I guess this brewery setup will make up for lost time. I forgive you

Wow, great setup and its awesome to see father and son enjoying a hobby together. Maybe one day my daughter will learn to enjoy beer at the level that I do. For now, filling and sanitizing bottles, and making hop additions to the boil will have to suffice. We can visit the whole 'REAL' assistant brewer thing when she turns 21
-Me

 

[BrianTheBrewer]

Very very impressed with you guys. I am from Acton MA. My parents have a place on Newfound Lake. I fish Squam lake a few times a year. I would love to see your beer in the store of NH and MA soon. Keep up the good work.

 

[Boar Beer]

Very very impressed with you guys. I am from Acton MA. My parents have a place on Newfound Lake. I fish Squam lake a few times a year. I would love to see your beer in the store of NH and MA soon. Keep up the good work.

With some luck we will have a couple good beers for you to sample by mid summer.

 

[Boar Beer]

Added the bottle washer

 

[DubbelDach]

Added the bottle washer

Brilliant... a dedicated bottle washer spout. I've got a QD on mine, but this truly trumps that! Great work!

 

[Boar Beer]

Got the bottle bucket back up and this time its set up to work over the sink.
We will shorten up the tube a bit so we can leave the bottle filling while putting a cap on the previous bottle. In this way the filler almost never stops.

 

[Boar Beer]

Ran another test with the new MT. This time we doubled up on the split plastic tubing around the edges of the false bottom and used 1/4 in holes in the pex tube. It worked great. We also tested running the system in a RIMS form by draining off into our little 15 gallon kettle setting the desired mash temp and pumping back to the MT. It worked but is it worth all the extra hassle ?

 

[chrisrush]

Any updates? Very curious as to the Brewmation equipment. How do you like it? How is it holding up, etc?

 

[Jumbo82]

I am very pleased with the equipment. I've made a number of batches and they all have come out well. The Brewmation control panel and elements have worked perfectly so far. No complaints on that end.

There are a few things I need to work on before I have a dream brewery. I am still collecting the wort during the sparge in 5 gal buckets which I manually dump into the kettle. Ideally I would have two peristaltic pumps running at the same rate; one bringing hot sparge water to the top of my mash tun and the other bringing the runnings from the mash tun to the boil kettle. With this setup I could avoid babysitting the brewery during the sparge. Its on my list of things to do, but I've been preoccupied with other things (like the paperwork for my Brewer's Notice) and haven't gotten around to it yet.

If you can think of any specific questions I'd love to go into more detail. Without re-reading the thread I just can't think of what I've whats new and what I've already mentioned. I'm off to bed now, I'll check back tomorrow.

 

[Djlunchbox]

three things:

i'm totally ripping off your bottle washer idea, it's the answer i needed. mines still sitting in the bag.

brew day at your place this summer

how did you figure out who to talk to about getting it all legal for sale?

 

[Boar Beer]

Djlunchbox

I see in your threads you are an extract brewer. You probably should be headed in the all grain direction but should start out with a simple 5-10 gallon system. When you move up into 1bb batches (that would be a about 15 cases of 22oz bottles) things get more expensive and more complicated.
Brewing is fun and its even more fun to share our brews with friends and family. Lets get you into a small all grain set up next. This HBT site is great for learning about different types of systems.

Good luck

 

[Jumbo82]

three things:

i'm totally ripping off your bottle washer idea, it's the answer i needed. mines still sitting in the bag.

brew day at your place this summer

how did you figure out who to talk to about getting it all legal for sale?

Yeah, the bottle washer is a must have, especially considering the number of bottles I clean on a regular basis.

You're more than welcome to drop by and check out a brew day whenever you want. Just shoot me an email when you could come and I'll let you know if I'm brewing that weekend and give you directions.

Getting it all legal is a bit of a pain. The first step is to get a Brewer's Notice, which means you have to submit all the forms located on this page http://www.ttb.gov/beer/qualify.shtml , including a $1000 (minimum) brewer's bond. Then you need state approval, labels approved, and some other stuff as well. They have it set up so its not practical for a small time homebrewer to sell their beer.