Humble Beginnings

I thought I would show how were have progressed through the brewing world.  It all started with one of the best birthday gifts ever, a deluxe homebrewing kit!

This consisted of almost everything one would need to start making basic extract kits at home.  This is one of the better kits I have seen put together, and anyone interested in starting up brewing should look into it! I still use ALL of the parts from this kit today.

The main thing we needed was a big brewpot.  A quick trip to Target and that was solved as we purchased our 5 gallon pot!

(excuse the dirty stove, we cook a lot!)

This pot would handle all the extract beer our heart desired.  As great as this pot was, it has two main downsides.  The first one is more of a technicality, that while it is a 5 gallon pot you can’t sustain 5 gallons at a rolling boil.  So you are forced to boil only 3.5-4 gallons at a time.  The second is a physics problem. Brewing consists of boiling for 60 or more minutes. Boiling any liquid for that long will result in some water turning into steam and floating away. When you combine those two facts, you start with almost 4 gallons and end up with around 3.

For those unfamiliar with home brewing, most kits are designed to make a final volume of 5 gallons of beer.  What this means is that after the boil, we have to add whatever extra amount of sanitized water we need to hit 5 gallons.  And what is the easiest way to sanitize water?  Boil it.  So we boil more water, and cool it, to hit our 5 gallon mark.

So before long, the itch hit me to upgrade my stuff.  A quick trip to Amazon and before I knew it, I had a 10 gallon aluminum pot at my door!

Combine this with a propane burner stand (pic to come), and we can now do full 5 gallon boils!  This eliminates one more annoying step, which also removes one more area of possible un-sanitary water, and make brewing that much more consistent!