Next Level Beer

After a LOT of 5 gallon extract batches, I felt it was time to go to the next level.  For those not familiar with brewing, all beer is made from crushed grains.  You soak those grains in high temp water to pull out flavors/sugars and get what you call “wort”.  To get good wort requires a lot of extra work/hardware/attention, so companies have made it easier for the casual homebrewer by de-hydrating wort into syrups and powders.  These are the “extract”, which makes up extract-brewing.

I wanted to take the leap to all-grain brewing, but as I mentioned it requires a few more toys to get there.  First thing you need is a Mash Tun(MT from here on out).  The MT is what you soak the grains in, for up to 60 minutes, with a water temperature of ~170 degrees (water temp varies based on the recipe).   Next you need a big pot to do a full boil(already got that!).  And finally you need a way of adding additional hot water to the grain to “sparge” or rinse the grains.  I wanted to keep my options open while going the hardest way possible so I decided to do “fly” sparging(as opposed to “batch” sparging).  Batch sparging is basically draining the grain completely, filling it up with new hot water, stir, settle and drain again.  If you hit your temps/volumes right this makes very good beer.  Fly sparging is different in that as you drain the wort from the MT, you also fill it with new hot water at the same rate.  This lets you keep the water level the same while draining the good wort from the bottom and filling from the top.  Obviously this requires more toys to accomplish then with batch sparging.

As with most things, there are very fancy(and pretty) stainless steel parts that cost a pretty penny as well.  But homebrewers are supposed to be handy, and if anyone knows me I am the most handy person on earth.  So I built some.  A nice little Christmas request to my parents and I received the biggest piece, a 10 gallon gatorade-style cooler.  A quick(actually long) trip to Home Depot and I picked up some parts and pieces.  Put it all together and you get this!

 

 

So inside this the grain sits (several pounds to upwards of 20), you add high temp water and give it a good stir.  Then you seal it up and let it sit for up to 60 minutes.  This draws out all of the flavors and sugars needed to make beer.  The next trick is, how do you get the water out and leave the grain behind?  This is called “Sparging”.  A stuck sparge happens when draining the wort, and the grain compacts and clogs the valve/pipe.  So we need to find a way to evenly drain the wort, without disturbing the grain and/or causing a clog.

Again, there are fancy pre-made ways of doing this(SS false bottoms and other contraptions).  But I decided to take the hard road and fabricate.

 

 

This is a handy little manifold made out of copper pipe and fittings.  It’s all friction fit, and it lets only water (and possibly very small grains) out.  How?  Simple…

 

 

Some very tiny cuts, and a lot of them!  This allows water to evenly leave the grain without disturbing the grain bed!

I also recently upgraded the MT with SS parts and a nice digital thermometer to keep an eye on the water temperature.  The cooler does a great job at keeping the temperature stable, but I’m too anal to not know exactly where it is at.

 

The other side of this is the “Hot Liquor Tank” or HLT.  This can be another pot with a valve(eventually) or another cooler(much cheaper).  So I picked up a big cooler, threw a valve on it and done!  This just holds hot water that I attach to the lid of the MT and re-fill it.

 

Oh yea, the lid of the MT was another piece to build.  Looks pretty harmless from the outside, just a PVC valve, right?

 

I drilled it and filled with expanding foam insulation to provide a little better thermal properties.  Oh yea, remember that the grain bed can’t be disturbed?  How do we evenly distribute the NEW water that goes in?

 

Again, handy remember?  This lets the new hot water be evenly spread over the grain bed.  No stuck sparges, no uneven runnings or fillings.

To cap this all off, the brew pot needed some upgrades.  One problem I’ve always had was knowing how much wort was in the pot before/after I boiled.  Hitting your volumes is a big part of brewing.  I used to use a marked off spoon, but 5+ gallons boiling makes a lot of steam and a hard time to measure.  So a quick order to http://www.brewhardware.com and I had my sight valve with extra thermometer, because I like keeping an eye on everything.  Also, siphoning from the pot as easy as it is, can still be a pain.  What’s easier then just adding a SS valve and pickup tube?  Done and done.

 

We now have a handful of all-grain brews under our belt.  Everything has come out tasting great, but the other part of legit brewing is a numbers game.  I am still fine-tuning my skills to hit all of my numbers.  But we are now brewing all-grain full 5 gallon batches.  Time to make some custom recipes!