It shouldn't be that bad actually. A 6 gallon vessel of beer will weight about 50 pounds (plus the weight of the vessel), and I can easily handle that. Hell, I've been hauling half barrels of beer down there already and they weight 162 pounds! I'll just need to make sure things are sealed up tightly so I don't make a mess.
Just get a carboy cap and a carboy handle and you'll be fine. Or you can be super brewdad and get one of these.
It's brew day! I opted for non-hopped malts to do it right, and brewing on the gas burners in my kitchen. The house smells amazing... Doing two simple recipes back to back, since most of the work is in the sanitation. Amber malt extract - 3.3 pounds Light DME - 1 pound Dextrose - 1 pound Nugget bittering hops - 1oz Cascade finishing hops - 1oz Light malt extract - 3.3 pounds Light DME - 1 pound Dextrose - 1 pound Nugget bittering hops - 1oz Cascade finishing hops - 1oz
Yeah, brewing basically involves 5 things: cleaning, cleaning, sanitizing, cleaning and sanitizing. How are you cooling?
Cooling things in a sink full of ice. I checked on things this morning and I've got 10 gallons of beer bubbling like crazy down in the furnace room. Now that I've been through the process once I can totally see the wisdom of the gas burners. Standing there waiting for stuff to come to a boil was bad enough using gas, I can only imagine with a piddly electric burner. But what about a convection cook top? I know you have to stir like crazy to prevent burns, but they can bring water to a boil pretty damn fast. [video=youtube;b8zXdPA9E6s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8zXdPA9E6s[/video]
Convections work by the pan actually doing the heating as opposed to a burner. I guess it'd depend on what kind of pan you'd use. It would be way faster though. i share your pain, I've been running a pressure cooker non-stop for days and the waiting for a boil is ridiculously boring.
Yeah, apparently for induction to work the pot has to be able to have a magnet stick to it. Otherwise you're all set. So before I buy a new brew pot I'm making sure it passes the magnet test, just in case I go down this road. But even with my current setup it's acceptable. Two 5 gallon of batches knocked out in four hours, not bad. And now that I am a little more familiar with the process I won't need to stand over it and fuss so much.
Gave the induction cooktop a trial run tonight. My 8 gallon pot hasn't arrived yet, so I brought 2.5 gallons of water to a boil in my 5 gallon pot. 20 minutes to a rolling boil, pretty impressive...
Looking good, man! I'm glad it's working out for you. On Sunday, we ended up brewing a fresh hop IPA using wet heirloom cascade hops It's bubbling away right now and smells pretty incredible. Can't wait to try it in a few weeks!
I make this Kitchen Sink IPA every year out of leftover hops because (before I bought a vacuum sealer) they typically go bad after about a year of being stored in a standard ziplock in the freezer. Now that I have a vacuum sealer, this tradition probably won't live on. This is also the first year I've done it with fresh hops at the end. I'll probably end up dryhopping it with them as well. Mashed at 153F. 10 gallon batch.
This recipe is always hit or miss to be honest. None of these hops work that well together typically, but sometimes I'm really surprised. I usually add a bit of munich in there to give such a dry beer a little bit of malt backbone, but not too much.
DIY for life! If i were still a drinker, I'd be mashing some berries, pears, apples and grapes for wine and going down to the river to gather some wild hops for some home made brewskies......no doubt about it. Shit, I'd probably be raising a patch of barley, corn and wheat. I do know how to make a still :unibrow:. But alas......I no longer drink alcohol. I'm a bit envious of you home brewers though. I'll just have to settle for home made raisins and huge assed cinnamon rolls that gets washed down with home squeezed concord grape juice.
Matt, I've got to report back about this induction cooktop. Brewing my first batch now, about four gallons of wort in there. Came to a boil in about 30 minutes, and backed it off to 3/10 power setting and it's still rolling away. UNLIMITED POWER!!!
That's pretty awesome that it's working out! Will it work with a larger stainless pot so that you can roll those full boils?
I dunno. The pot I'm using now is my 8 gallon, arrived yesterday. Given it'll roll 4 gallons at 3/10, I'd say 6 gallons wouldn't even break a sweat. Wish I had gotten a larger pot now...
8 gallon should be more than enough for 5 gallon batches. I was rollin a 7 gallon and it worked really well. You think you're ready for the move to all grain? It would actually be fairly easy given your current setup. You could use the 8 gallon for boiling, the small pot you have for heating mash/sparge water and then you just need to build a cooler mash tun which is fairly cheap. http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/in...p_10_or_5_gallon_MLT_with_a_Rubbermaid_Cooler. Definitely go for the 10 gallon if possible.
Yeah, I'm definitely moving in that direction in a hurry. There's a group of home brewers at work, so between you guys and them I'm getting a rapid and thorough education! So mash tun is next, and that 10 gallon Igloo is exactly what I'm looking at.
If you can afford it, definitely fit it with a false bottom as opposed to a bazooka tube. False bottoms really boost the heck out of your efficiency (more sugars from less grain) and they get stuck less often.
So the brew is fully cold and carbonated now, and holy shit! Beginners luck or something, but this tastes great. It's a little hazy because I didn't cold crash, but otherwise I think it could stand toe-to-toe with the craft brews I spend 8 bucks on. Totally exceeded my expectations, can't wait to taste the amber.
Awesome, congratulations! The first beer I brewed was the best I ever did, and it has been all downhill from there I brewed up a quad today and it was pretty damn expensive. Last week's IPA only cost about $45 for 12 gallons and this one was $55 for 5 :O
We should really keep this thread going for awhile as a means of some recipe, equipment and DIY discussion. It's awesome I just kegged a cider that I made back on the 20th of September. I don't really drink much cider and haven't brewed one in over a year, but my girlfriend has been hounding me for some time to make a sweeter one. This shal be dubbed "Panty Dropper Cider" :unibrow: 4 Gallons of organic apple juice (additive/preservative free) 16oz of clover honey 6oz of molasses I mixed the honey and molasses with about a half gallon of the juice and heated it up to about 170 degrees to dissolve. I cooled it down with the cold juice and pitched a packet of rehydrated S-04 at 70 degrees. Fermented at that temp for about 10 days, added 4tsp of potassium sorbate (to kill all of the yeast and prevent fermentation from starting up again) and let that sit an additional 10 days. Today I boiled 3 cups of water with 2 cups of brown sugar, a quarter cup of maple syrup and 1 tablespoon of pure vanilla extract. Cooled that down, added to the keg and siphoned the cider on top of it. The sample was damn delicious and I can't wait to drink this when it's carbed in a few days! I measured about 6.8% ABV. Oh, and S-04 makes the tidiest little yeast cake that is such a pain in the ass to clean!
