Homebrew Equipment

I brew 5-6 gallon batches using my 10 gal brewpot and modified cooler.  The copper coil is an immersion cooler used to cool the wort after boiling.  Dan Gomez helped me weld and perforate the 1/4″ copper tubing inside the cooler to turn it into a lautertun.

I brewed the first five batches in my kitchen before I purchased the propane burner.  That solved two problems:

1. Emily didn’t get upset that I was occupying the kitchen all day, making a mess and being paranoid about potential bacteria that might infect the beer.
2. Boil times were cut down by about 3x.

Brewing outside is much more convenient.  It allows me to use the hose to fill the pots instead of the sink, and makes it far easier to clean up with the high-pressure hose.  All in all, I think I now clean, brew and clean (brewing is mostly cleaning) about 2x faster than in the kitchen.

My biggest issue is that I don’t seem to get a good hot break and my beer ends up with too much trub in the carboy.  I’ve recently modified the settings for my equipment in Beer Smith to allow for 2.5 gal lost to the boiler.  My plan is to brew extra beer, allow it to settle in the brewpot for an hour after cooling, and then siphon off the top, leaving the extra trub at the bottom.  This will require a bit more grain and hops, but should hopefully result in a cleaner beer at the end.

I’ve been doing my brewing on the weekend.  I start by bottling my last batch in the morning.  I let each batch age in the carboy for two weeks.  I have two carboys so I can pipeline a batch each week.  I have the water for the mash/lauter boiling by around 10am when the first football game starts.  Then I start cleaning and usually have the brewing done sometime during the middle of the afternoon game.