Brewer's Friend Home Brewing Software

Controlling Fermentation Temperature with a Fermentation Chamber

Controlling fermentation temperature is a key factor in making repeatable high quality beer. You’ll be amazed at how much your beer will improve by focusing on consistent fermentation temperature, and a related component the yeast pitching rate.

Yeast give off different flavor profiles depending on the temperature the fermentation takes place at. Consider US-05, a widely used dry yeast that is considered neutral in flavor. When fermented cool (around 62F), it leaves almost no flavor signature. When fermented high (above 68F) it can impart a peachy profile. Similarly many English ale strains will be somewhat neutral at the cooler end, but give off strong ester and fruit notes at the higher end. Belgian strains call for a higher temperature, because in those styles the fruitiness is desirable.

So, how can a home brewer guarantee temperature control during fermentation?

The answer is a fermentation chamber, which is made up of the following:

• An insulated chamber.
• A two stage temperature controller.
• A cooling source – typically a freezer chest or mini fridge (which can double as #1).
• A heat source – a lightbulb in a can works great.

Most temperature controllers come un-wired. If you know a little about electrical wiring, this makes a good DIY project. There are also a few models that come pre-wired, and some home brew stores provide this as a service.

Spending the extra $50 for a 2 stage controller with heating and cooling is well worth it. That way you can do lagers and ales, at whatever temperature you want, year round! It also gives a lot of flexibility. With a lager, the diacetyl rest is just a matter of turning up the set point to 65F for 48 hours. Want to cold crash that ale, no problem turn it down to 33F a few days before bottling. Just make sure to fit an airlock before cold crashing. If a blowoff tube is still set, the drop in pressure inside the fermentor will suck some of the fluid in the catch bucket back into the beer (yuck!).

My controller is a Control Products TC-9102D-HV Dual Stage High Voltage Digital Temperature Controller, product sheet and wiring diagrams can be found here. This model tends to change in price a lot. I got mine for $60 last year. There are cheaper options out there, but this one looked like the best compromise of build quality and price.

A note about the TC-9102D-HV and short cycling: make sure to set the differential on the cooling side to a value of 2. The thermometer tends to wobble between values (eg flip between 67 and 68 several times) before it will stay at the new value. Thank you to Foster82 for helping me out in the forum.

My heat source is an incandescent 40W light bulb in a paint can. The idea comes directly from brewstands.com. Incandescent light bulbs are being phased out, but lizard lamps or a low watt ceramic heater would work fine too.

Build Pictures:

Other options:

• Build an extended chamber around a mini-fridge. This has its advantages in terms of capacity and ease of loading.  The door can be setup very close to floor level, so there is no heavy lifting in and out like with my chest freezer. I wound up building a pulley system to save my back.
  • Building a fermentation chamber with a mini-fridge as the cooling source does take some skill. Parts include foam panels, 2×4’s, hinges, caulk, and all the little details to fit it all together.
  • The mini fridge is definitely cheaper than the freezer chest, but if you add in the cost of the materials, and the time it takes to build, it is about the same.
• Build a pool of water and use aquarium heaters. Good for ales in the winter, but may not work for lagers very well.
• Heating pads, heating wraps. Again these are okay for ales in the winter when the ambient temperature is below 50, but if you want to lager you need a dual stage controller with ability to heat and cool.
• Canonical fermentors with built in heating / cooling.These are awesome but very spendy.

Make sure to size your fermentation chamber according to how much beer you want to be fermenting at once. My brew rig can do 11 gallon batches. My fermentation chamber can accommodate two 6 gallon fermentors. This is great for doing a split batch with different yeast! Also great if I want to fill up two corny kegs in a matter of a week or two!

Dialing in a specific temperature and pitching yeast at professional rates will take your home brewed beer to the next level. The recipe editor’s yeast section has fields for fermentation temp and yeast pitch rate, both key components to taking your beer to the next level!

Posted in Equipment, Lagering | 4 Comments »

September 2013 Release Live – Inventory and shopping list updates

This month we tuned up the inventory and shopping list features so the data flows more smoothly and gives more flexibility at the same time. This was based on user feedback in the feature request forum – thank you for the input!

Recipe Tools -> Add To Shopping List improved:

The Add Recipe to Shopping List screen now shows inventory levels, and allows changing the actual amount to add to the shopping list. Lines can be unchecked, which means they will not carry into your shopping list. Please note that hops require an exact match between hop name, hop AA, and hop form to line up.

Shopping List now groups related items and shows the total:

Shopping list lines for the same ingredient are now grouped together and the total is displayed. This works for brewers buying in bulk (for example a 50 pound sack used for several recipes), and brewers who plan to build up each recipe’s grain bill individually. I do it both ways. Sometimes at my LHBS I put the entire grain bill for a recipe into a paper bag, ready to mill on brew day. While other times I’ll buy a 50 pound sack of Pilsner or 2-row and use that over the course of several brews. Buying in bulk does save a little money though.

Shopping List -> Convert to Inventory screen improved:

The amount in your inventory is displayed and the amount purchased can be overridden.

For a given line on your shopping list, if you convert less than the full amount the line will be kept but the amount converted will be subtracted from the original amount. Eg – you wanted to buy 10 pounds of honey but they only had 4, so now your shopping list has 6 pounds of honey.

Ever been to the home brew store wanting 14.8% AA Magnum hops, only to come home with 16.4% AA? Everytime I buy hops the AA values are slightly different. The convert to inventory screen allows the actual AA value to be provided.

This screen is also a good place to compare what is in your shopping list vs your inventory.

Deduct from Inventory:
Deducting from inventory can now be done in a Brew Session after the Brew is created. Look for it on the Brew Session -> Edit tab. I often create my brew session when I make my yeast starter. For yeast starters I log the day I started it, the starter size, and the amount of DME (which the yeast pitch calculator tells me). However, at that point I’m not quite ready to deduct from inventory.

Other updates:

• Add Gervin English Ale Yeast – GV12
• Brew session page ‘back to …’ button improved so it understands where you came in from, instead of always pointing back to the dashboard.
• In the recipe editor, snapshot recipes now show a large banner above them indicating they are a snapshot and not a regular recipe.

Posted in Announcements | 1 Comment »

Book Review – For the Love of Hops

Great book about hops. I learned something every page. Made my mouth water at times… Covers the entire range of hop related topics, from hops breeding, to farming, to drying and packaging, to brewing techniques, and even the complex sensory perception that is the enjoyment of a hoppy beer.

For The Love of Hops: The Practical Guide to Aroma, Bitterness and the Culture of Hop
by Stan Hieronymus

An appreciation of what Pro Brewers go through:
The book talks a lot about the relationship between farmers and brewers. It makes sense that the hop industry is focused on commercial brewing, since they are the largest consumer of hops. As a home brewer, buying at most a couple pounds of hops per year, it was neat to get some insight into what pro brewers face. Selecting hops for a brewery, planning ahead for an entire year, and working to keep the beer consistent year to year is quite a challenge.

New World Hops, a key part of the birth of Beervana:
The book covers the history of hops, going all the way back to the beginning when hops grew wild and were harvested at random.

Had it not been for Cascade hops Oregon would not be called Beervana. In fact, Beervana wouldn’t even exist *shudder*. Back in 1956 Cacade was discovered at the Oregon State University hops breeding program. Cascade was released to the public in 1971. Slowly brave and bold brewers, including Sierra Nevada Brewing Company started using it, and this kicked off the craft beer revolution! There were many other new hops breeds in the pipeline at the time, but nobody expected how far the revolution would go.

Hops breeding on the rise:
The book talks in detail about hop breeding programs around the world. I had no idea how aggressive hops breeding programs are – over 100k starts are created every year to be whittled down to a select few candidates that might make it into the kettle someday. As brewers and beer drinkers, we owe these breeding programs a lot. Up until the new world varieties came along there wasn’t much that could be done to make a beer distinctive. The choices back in the day were Fuggle, Goldings, Cluster, and maybe a couple others.  In today’s world we are sort of spoiled by the wide array of hops we can choose from. Take Citra, which imparts fruity tropic notes, or its polar opposite Magnum the clean bittering hop perfect for amping up bitterness without imparting flavor.

Hops in the Brewery:
The other thing this book brings up is just how different brewing practices are when it comes to the use of hops. Ask 10 brewers about dry hopping and get 11 answers. Macro breweries use more and more hop extract, while micro brewers do everything from whirlpools to hops stands to dry hopping to double dry hopping to hop torpedoes. The use of hops in beer is truly an art form!

Sensory Perception and Hops:
One chapter provides an in-depth look at how we as humans perceive hop flavor and aroma. This is done mainly with our sense of smell. It turns out hop flavor is partially processed by our sense of smell.

I was amazed to learn that our genes play a role in how we experience beer. It turns out, 1/3rd of people cannot detect the odor from an essential oil in Saaz giving it its hallmark smell and flavor. Instead of color blindness, this is a form of hop oil blindness, and is not fully understood by science.

A Good Reference:
The book has a complete listing of all the main hop varieties.

If you are looking brew some super hoppy beers, there is a chapter with a couple dozen home brew recipes from award winning breweries. The recipes are detailed in terms of quantities, times and amounts.

Definitely got a renewed appreciation and curiosity for hops!

Post by Larry

Posted in Book Reviews | 1 Comment »

Drying Hops Using a Food Dehydrator – Great Results

This year for drying my home grown hops I commandeered the household food dehydrator. It works like a charm. Makes the shed smell AMAZING!!!

In previous years I used a window screen and box fan but I don’t see myself going back to that. The window screen and fan approach can take days and days to finish drying. The dehydrator was done in 8-9 hours on the lowest setting of 95F (35C).  This approach is faster and gives the hops a more uniform level of dryness.

Dry your hops at the right temperature:

At first I was worried a food dehydrator would be too intense in terms of heat and airflow on the delicate hop cones and essential oils.

After doing research about what temperature hops are dried at and double checking what temperature settings my food dehydrator had, there was no risk at all.  The lowest temperature I found mentioning hop oil vaporization was 100F [1]. On professional scale, hops are kiln dried between 130F (54C) and 145F  (63C). In the kiln they are layered up to 28″ high. The hops are then blended and dried for another 24-36 hours before being packaged [2].  Based on that, the 95F (35C) temperature sounded pretty safe.

How long to dry for?

Every few hours I checked the cones to see how dry they were. After 4 hours many were still damp when I squeezed them.  After 8 hours all but one or two were completely dry.  Right around 9 hours in the dehydrator was perfect for this year’s hops harvest.

Other DIY approaches:

As I mentioned above, the window screen drying approach works but takes time. If you have a lot of hops to harvest it starts taking up way too much space.

Braukaiser has a great article on building a hop drying oast, which is a DIY 2×4 frame with a box fan built into it.  He says it takes about 3 days to dry the hops that way. He also points out that some essential hop oils actually vaporize at temperatures as low as 100F (40C). Drying the hops at cooler temperatures is beneficial.

How much can it hold?

This food dehydrator can fit a pound of wet hops comfortably.  After drying the weight was about 6 ounces. This was from one Chinook plant that grows vigorously up the front of the shed.

How to store and inventory the hops?

After drying I vacuum seal the hops into 2oz packages and store in the freezer. I also update the My Inventory section of my Brewer’s Friend account. I put the AA level at the low end of the spectrum for the variety. Since I’m flying blind in terms of AA levels I’m conservative.  Besides I generally use home grown hops for flavor or aroma additions only so the IBU impact is not that critical.

A fresh hop brew would have been another awesome way to use up a pound of wet Chinook hops, but alas all my kegs are full and the fermentation chamber is occupied with a lager right now. Not a bad problem to have.

Post by Larry

[1] Source: https://braukaiser.com/blog/blog/2012/12/09/hop-drying-at-home/

[2] Source:  Hieronymus, Stan. For the Love of Hops : The Practical Guide to Aroma, Bitterness and the Culture of Hops. N.p.: Brewers Publications, 2012. Print.)

Posted in Hops Growing | 5 Comments »

August 2013 Release Live

Multiple equipment profiles supported, new yeasts added, updates to extract/partial mash calculations and more.

Multiple Equipment Profiles:

The system now supports up to 5 equipment profiles under each account. To manage your equipment profiles click the gear icon in the upper right and then on Equipment Profiles. The equipment profile is used by the water requirements feature and more heavily in the brew feature.

One of the profiles may be set as the default. The default profile is used unless a recipe overrides it. To point a recipe at a specific profile, in the recipe editor click on the ‘More…’ button and look for the Equipment Profile drop down that appears. The More… section was rearranged a little in this release to make room for the extra field (sorry to change things!). For more, see our FAQ entry on equipment profiles.

I already have an equipment profile setup for my IPAs where I squeeze out the hops, vs my standard profile where I don’t bother. This does make a difference when it comes to hitting the target batch size exactly. I will soon setup a profile for 2.5 gallon batches in the kitchen. Makes me want to brew more already!

New yeasts and yeast manufacturers added:

This release includes over 70 new yeasts! New brands include East Coast Yeast, Mangrove Jack, Real Brewers, Siebel Institute, and Brewferm. The Wyeast list adds a few extra private collection strains. The White Labs list adds a few lambic strains. The White Labs list also gets whiskey yeasts which can be used on beer to produce interesting profiles.

Given the yeast list is pretty long there is now a drop down to filter by yeast brand. There is also an option to sort the list by product ID or by name (a profile option determines the default yeast sort).

We felt it is better if we maintain the yeast list, since it is published by the manufacturers and doesn’t change too often. We are always open to making additions and corrections. Contact us anytime.

Note to iPhone users about the yeast list: We have an iPhone release due out very soon that will incorporate the new yeast list. If you setup a recipe with a new yeast and sync it down, the current iPhone version (1.6) will switch it back to the default yeast since it doesn’t have the new yeasts yet. Look for the update in the App Store in the next few days. We’ll announce it on our social media channels when it is released.

Extract and Partial Mash recipes get more in depth options:

This release enables the concept of batch size targets for extract and partial mash recipes.

Batch size target can be kettle or fermentor. To the ‘kettle’ is how much wort is in the kettle at the very end of the brew (corrected for temperature). To the ‘fermentor’ is how much wort made it into the primary fermentor. Previously only BIAB and All Grain had this option.

Enabling this option gives extract partial mash brewers doing full wort boils much more control. The water requirements section includes kettle dead space for extract and partial mash brews.

The following FAQ entries were clarified. If you haven’t read up on batch size and the definition of efficiency (there are really four types), make sure to check into that.

• How is batch size defined by the recipe editor?
• How is efficiency defined by the recipe editor?
• How is efficiency calculated in a brew session?

Brewer’s Friend GrogTag store:

We now have a GrogTag store that gives you an exclusive 10% off on professionally printed beer labels. These guys do a great job of making high quality labels. Way better than our DIY label generator. We’ll be following up with a complete review next month.

Other updates:

• Recipe editor will display a warning ‘are you sure you want to leave this page?’ if you try to navigate away when the recipe is in an unsaved state and the page has been loaded for more than 30 seconds. Does not apply to Internet Explorer.
• Inventory section allows sorting by yeast year.
• Priming calculator – fermentation temp vs bottling temp clarified.
• Users with browser plugins that force SSL should have a better time using the site in 100% SSL mode.

Posted in Announcements | No Comments »

Dude Your Beer Line Stinks! Wash It Out!

Every so often beer lines need to be cleaned. They can get so dirty the poured beer will smell and taste funny. This is a normal issue that all home brewers, bars, and restaurants have to contend with.

The off colored crystalline sediment is officially known as beer stone (Calcium Oxalate). It builds up over time naturally. This line was used for probably two months. Already it has a large deposit on the inside. Even if the line is used regularly, beer stone build ups can happen in a matter of weeks. Whenever I notice beer stone building up I change the line. I’m kind of surprised it got as far as it did this go around, but hey it makes a good blog post!

You may note ‘goaty’ smells and flavors in beer served through a dirty line. This is can be a common problem in bars or restaurants that take a lax approach to beer line cleanliness.

What does Goaty really smell like, you ask?

For scientific and journalistic purposes, I have subjected myself to analyzing the aroma of this beer line. At first it smells like a sweaty locker room with a bit of wet animal and a hint of stale beer. I also get rotten cheese, curdled milk, and rubber. The rubber is no doubt from the hose itself. All in all, flavors we do not want in our beer.

Cleaning process:

It is pretty simple to clean the line. Start by soaking the line in a solution of line cleaner. Line cleaner can be purchased inexpensively at your local home brew store (LHBS). A little goes a long way. A splash of the line cleaner in a quart of warm water does the trick. Then the next day, I pour out the hose, and run a specially designed four foot long line cleaning brush through it. From there I flush thoroughly with hot water in both directions, then hang it up to try. Ready to use again!

Keep a backup serving line:
Beer stone and the need to regularly clean beer lines is a downside to kegging beer at home. I keep a clean, ready to go serving line in case I notice a serving line is dirty. That gives me plenty of time to clean out the dirty one while keeping the beer flowing.

For more about beer stone, and a detailed look at removing it:
https://www.birkocorp.com/brewery/white-papers/removing-beerstone-a-look-at-alternative-cleaning-methods/

Posted in Equipment, Kegging and CO2 | No Comments »

Hops Trellis Ideas

There are no rules when it comes to hop trellis design. The higher the hops can climb the better, up to 18 feet, but even 8-10 feet off the ground is okay. The important thing is to make sure the hops have as much sunlight as possible.  Give the vines something to climb up as they are growing (rope, wire or twine works great).

Trellis attached to building:

Earlier this year the brew shed got a trellis upgrade. Last year the hops were right up against the siding which is bad for the paint and overall lifespan of the siding. With the trellis installed there is now about a foot and a half of airspace between the plant and the wall. The design was inspired by: https://www.blueroofcabin.com/2011/06/diy-trellis-over-garage-door.html

March, 2013

May, 2013

July, 2013

Note how the hops are getting a little tangled. It is the Chinook and Fuggle in the middle that are fighting. Originally I attempted to train the Chinook hop vine around the porch light. It worked for a few months but now that the plant is in full growth it is impossible to keep it away.  I will need to do some work to ensure that when I harvest I don’t mix up the varieties too much.  In retrospect planting the same variety in the middle would have been smarter.

Free Standing Hop Trellis:

A friend of mine has many trees in his back yard. That was nice because it kept the house cool in the summer, but didn’t give much opportunity to grow hops. Instead he built this free standing trellis in the front yard and had awesome results:

Improvisation for growing hops:

Provided the hops have something to climb up the plant will figure the rest out. Hops can be trained to climb up a few feet and then horizontally like on a clothes line or fence.

How the pro’s setup a Hops trellis:

The most efficient way to grow hops is to setup rows with the plants 5 – 7 feet apart allow them to climb up to 18 feet in the air. I’m envious of this, but it would look a little strange in the back yard.

For more reading on hops:

• Information on Hop Gradening from Freshops.
• Brewer’s Friend Hop Growing Blog Category.

Some photos from Flickr creative commons:

• Hop field in Belgium
• Hop field trellises
• Hop vines on a fence

Posted in Hops Growing | 4 Comments »

July 2013 Release Notes

The July 2013 release is live. Hop stand support, gyle/krausen priming calculator, starting mash thickness field, and many other refinements are in this release. Along with changes to the cloud application this month our iPhone app was just updated to version 1.5 and is available in the app store. Many thanks to those who contributed to discussions in the feature request forum.

Support for Hop Stands – select Whirlpool or Hopback in the Hop Use drop down.

Hop Stands are getting a lot of attention lately and Brewer’s Friend now supports them!

A hop stand is a technique where hops are exposed to the wort after the boil but before fermentation.

• In a Whirlpool hop stand, the whirlpool is started after the boil and extra hops are added.
• With a hopback the wort is pumped or drained through a container holding the extra hops on the way to the fermentor.

Hop stands avoid vaporizing the essential oils and are said to result in smoother bitterness and flavor. The temperature and time of the exposure greatly impacts the utilization (for the purposes of IBU calculations). Given the wide variation in process and equipment out there, the utilization factor is left up to the brewer. A value of 10% is generally accepted, but could vary based on process. The hotter the temperature and the more time, the higher the utilization.

When selecting Whirlpool or Hopback as the hop use, two new fields will appear.

• The utilization of the hops (normally 10%, but could be zero if done at lower temperatures or for a short time).
• The temperature at which the hop stand is performed at.

For more information on hop stands see this excellent and detailed write up by BYO (Mar/Apr 2013).

Equations for modeling hop stand utilization and their IBU impact are being worked on by Kaiser!

State of the Art Gyle / Krausen Priming Calculator:

Our Gyle / Krausen Priming calculator is powered by Kaiser’s equations and his gyle/krausen spreadsheet. For convenience, if you don’t have enough Gyle or Krausen on hand, the calculator reports how much additional sugar is needed to hit the target CO2 level. It also breaks down the relative CO2 contributions from the beer, gyle/krausen, priming sugar, and any unfermented sugars still in the beer. Our plan is to eventually link up the recipe editor and brew session to our three priming calculators (gyle/krausen, priming sugar, and keg calculators).

Updates to the Recipe Editor:

• Total grain bill weight is displayed in the fermentables box.
• When changing the unit drop down for hops and grains, the value automatically toggles to the equivalent value in the new unit.
• Starting mash thickness field added for All Grain recipes as requested in the feature request forum. This sets us up to build out mash profiles down the road.
• Mash lines can be specified in quarts or gallons for recipes in US mode.
• Other Ingredients can be specified in milliliters.
• Volumes of CO2 added in priming section in the Other Ingredients section.
• New profile options for the recipe editor: Default Batch Size and Default Boil Size.

Other improvements:

Pre-boil gravity is now displayed on the recipe view, recipe print, and brew session pages.

The My Recipes and My Brewing list has been improved to include the recipe type. On the My Recipes page, each recipe now has direct links to related brew sessions.

iPhone 1.5 Updates:

• Improved listing of recipes with index (ability to jump down quickly) and snapshot indicator.
• Mash thickness field for all grain recipes.
• Recipe level volumes of CO2 and CO2 unit.
• Hopstand support (whirlpool and hopback hop uses).
• Mash line volume can now be specified in quarts or gallons (for recipes in US units mode).
• Other ingredient unit list now includes milliliters.
• Click here for more information about our iphone app.

Our mission is to help you brew better beer. Stay tuned for more updates at Brewer’s Friend!

Posted in Announcements | 2 Comments »

Lifting Carboys and Kegs with a Pulley in the Brew Shed

Lifting carboys full of beer in and out of keezers can be bad for the lower back.  My brew shed is setup with freezer chests for both the fermentation chamber and keezer. Freezer chests require awkward bending and lifting to get carboys and kegs in and out. There is no way to lift with the knees in this situation.  The solution is to install a pulley system above the keezers! With this system in place, I never strain a muscle.

If there is something in your brewery to over build, the pulley system is it! Mine is rated well over 250 pounds. Most parts are rated higher but the weak link is the single carabiner that links the pulley to the gambrel.  That said, 250 pounds is way more than the 60-70 pounds I’ll be lifting at one time.  Figure the pulley and gambrel weigh 10 pounds, the better bottle 1 pound, and 6 gallons of beer at 8.5 lb/gal reaches at most 65 pounds.  I never stand under it when there is load, and I’m careful to make sure I’m ready if something gives.

To make life easy, the pulley slides left and right along a 6 foot 1″ iron pipe mounted to 2×6 boards that are lag bolted into the joists. The pipe is held to the 2×6’s with brackets and screws that go through it at each end.  Two rings allow the pulley to move horizontally. Really only one ring is needed, but I went with two in case a weld fails.  The bar has paste wax smeared on top to allow the rings to slide easily.  On the floor between the keezer and the fermentation chamber there is an open spot where I can start the lift operation. After the payload is in the air, I can push it left or right, then lower it to the destination.

I went with a good quality pulley and gambrel kit on amazon: Hunters Specialties Mag Lift System with Gambrel. This pulley has a nice auto locking mechanism so the beer stays in the air. The pulley and gambrell are something you would normally see on a hunting trip.  Wire clamps on either side of the hooks keep them securely in place.

For lifting corny kegs, I remove the gambrel, and loop a heavy duty chain through the handle and hook it to the carabiner on the pulley. The hardware store will sell chain in short lengths. A foot is about right.

General Carboy Safety:
For safety – no matter what you are doing, always use a carboy hauler (the nylon basket show in the photos). If you have ever shattered a glass carboy, it is bad news. It can lead to nasty if not life threatening cuts. To avoid death by a broken carboy, I’ve switched to using better bottles. Cleaning a better bottle can take extra work because they are easy to scratch the inside of.  I’ve found PBW with a rag inside the container gets the chore done in 10-15 minutes.  We have a detailed guide on cleaning better bottles.

Other ideas:

• Some people go for the electric hoist:
  https://www.harborfreight.com/110-volt-440-lb-capacity-electric-hoist-with-remote-control-40765.html
  See it in action:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdM5L73AYNQ&noredirect=1

• Before I built my brew shed, I built a wagon for rolling carboys around.

• In retrospect, a fermentation chamber with a side door built around a smaller fridge could have worked, but I’d still be stuck with needing the hoist for my keezer.

• In googling this subject and researching it before I installed my own, I’m amazed at what people get by with and consider ‘safe’.  Make sure to over build your pulley / hoist system well past the load ratings! Some of these cheap made in China pulleys are a real joke and I wouldn’t trust them.

• I almost went with an I-Beam and an I-Beam trolley, but decided that was too expensive and overkill. It would look awesome though.

• It is possible to design a pulley hanger that allows for not just left/right movement, but also in and out from the wall!

Posted in Equipment | 2 Comments »

Why Kegging Home Brewed Beer Just Feels Right

Cracking open that first bottle of your own home brew is a satisfying feeling and a great accomplishment. The rush of CO2 as the seal is broken, the anticipation, the smell, and ohh the taste, and mmmm another sip…

Along the same lines, your first pour of kegged beer will be equally satisfying. Kegging offers a fast and easy packaging process, consistent carbonation, less exposure to oxygen, and no residual priming sugar. Not to mention, having home brewed beer on tap at home just feels right!

At this point in my brewing progression, I’m focused on quality and saving time. Brewers can save money by sacrificing time and or quality (see Better Faster Cheaper Beer). The other night, with all my kegs full, and a batch of home brew ready to package, I was busy soaking ~40 bottles of various sizes. It felt tedious. I began to add up all the extra steps bottling involves. Then I realized kegging is a convenience factor and a quality factor in one.

When converting to kegging, most people make the mistake of starting with a simple one or two keg setup. My advice is to buy a keezer big enough to handle at least 5 kegs. Trust me, if you are this far into brewing, you’ll want the extra room to expand later. I added a collar to my keezer so I could fit 5 kegs. In retrospect, I should have gotten a larger freezer chest to begin with. Now that I have 5 kegs, I wish I had 7. I don’t think it ever ends really…

Yes kegging is expensive to get started. One way to save money is to have just one picnic tap and switch it between the kegs for dispensing. The added benefit is the line doesn’t get goaty as fast because it is being cleared regularly. I also use one regulator. That means all my kegs are at the same pressure and volumes of CO2. That is not a big deal to me.

A breakdown of kegging vs. bottling:

BOTTLING:

1. Plan how many bottles you need of each size using our bottling calculator.
2. Make a priming sugar solution, calculate how much sugar you need using our priming sugar calculator.
3. Cool down the priming solution.
4. Add some fresh yeast if it is a lager.
5. Meanwhile, sanitize the bottles.
6. Rack beer to bottling bucket, add priming sugar, lift bottling bucket up to table.
7. Begin bottling and capping. Stir gently at a regular interval to avoid variation between bottles and ensure consistent carbonation.
8. Label 50 bottles (the fastest method I found is to write a short code on top of each cap with a sharpie – ie IPA, ESB, P for porter, PA for pale ale, etc).
9. Wait 4-6 weeks for bottle conditioning (stress about bottle conditioning in the interim).
10. When pouring make sure to decant off the small amount of sediment in the bottom.
11. Clean out said bottles after using, dry, and put away for later use.

Organizing bottles is a challenge:

KEGGING:

1. Sanitize 1 keg and parts.
2. Rack into keg.
3. While racking is happening, assemble keg parts.
4. Label 1 keg.
5. Hook up to gas line, carbonated in 14 days. Our keg carbonation calculator can help.
6. Drink and enjoy.

Other Thoughts:

• The big downside of kegging is the initial cost. At approximately $50 per used corny keg, a 5lb CO2 tank, keezer, temperature controller, hoses, the gas manifold – it adds up quick.
• Keg lines do need to be cleaned regularly. I have a 4ft long wire brush to assist with that.
• If I want to take my beer somewhere I fill a growler.
• When you open a 22oz, you are stuck with it. Can’t just have a sip like you can with beer on tap.
• A basement bar/brewery man cave looks awesome with tap handles on display.
• I have noticed my kegged beer tastes fresher, has consistent carbonation, and is preferred by my guests.

Posted in Kegging and CO2 | 3 Comments »