Tis the season as they say.  What is better time than now to give the gift of homebrewing? 

I am writing this post for a few reasons. I think we forget that friends and family may be good homebrewers but they just didn’t know where to start. Maybe a gift from their fellow homebrewer would give them the nudge they need.

For the readers who are learning more about homebrewing and want to take the plunge, send this post’s URL to a loved one as a hint to what to get you this holiday season.

There are a few different sellers of starter homebrewing kits out there. I would shop around for the best price. Some of the sellers we have highlighted in the past are:

Northern Brewer

Beer-Wine.com

DIY Brewing

And if you want more information about what you are buying, check out these posts:

• Beginner Brewing Kit
• Beginner Brew Pot
• Fermentation Bucket
• Racking Cane
• Bottling Bucket
• Hydrometer
• Bottle Capper
• Sanitizer and Bottle Brush

Brew On.

My mash tun is a picnic cooler. 

I thought it was well insulated. 

I have mashed with it a few times. 

I have lost a lot of heat out of it.

The mash temp may be 152 degrees when I close the top.

When I open it, it’s much lower…15 degrees lower. 

Ouch.

What gives?

Just my opinion, but I am not sure picnic coolers were made to maintain high temperatures for a hour or so.  On thing Mike pointed out about picnic coolers is that their covers are not well insulated.  Where does heat go?  It rises…and it rises right out of my mash tun.

One thing I am going to try next time to maintain my mash temperature is to put a heating pad around it and put a thick blanket on top of it to try to keep the heat from escaping. 

Do you have any techniques that you would like to share about maintaining mash temperatures?

There are lots of posts on the web about how to fill bottles from a keg of beer.  The most popular gear heady way to do it is to buy a counter pressure bottle filler or use a beer gun.  The beer gun seems a little easy to use.

However, I only bottle the occasional 6-pack or so from the keg and I’d rather spend my money on malt and hops than a beer gun.  What follows is a short step-by-step of how I fill bottles from my keg with stuff I have around the brewery.

Filling from a Keg:

1. Keg of beer must be chilled and carbonated.  I like to over carbonate by a few tenths (0.2) of a volume of CO2 to compensate for lost CO2.  (some of that lost CO2 is a good thing as I’ll state later)
2. I use a black Cobra/Picnic tap to dispense the beer from.  I modify the tap into a filler by using a piece of tubing that will stick right over the spout of the tap (usually 3/8 ID tubing).  The length of the tubing need only be long enough to reach the bottle of the bottle.
3. I chill down the bottles I plan to fill.  This reduces CO2 loss and foaming.
4. Right before I am ready to bottle (bottles and caps washed and sanitized), I dial down the CO2 on my regulator to zero PSI, then I burp the keg to release all the head pressure.
5. I put the tap with tubing filler into my first bottle and pull the trigger.  Then I slowly dial up the regulator until I have just enough pressure to get the beer flowing at a decent rate.  But not too fast to get excessive foaming.  This can be a little tricky to manage the regulator and the bottle filler at the same time.  But once you get the pressure set and the beer flowing; that’s it with fussing over the regulator settings.
6. Fill the rest of my bottles and cap them.  Getting a little foam while filling is a good thing as it helps to purge out the ambient air and O2.  This minimizes oxidation of the beer after bottling.
7. Once all the bottles are filled I reset the pressure on the regulator to my normal carbonating and dispensing pressure to keep the beer from going flat.

This method works good for all sizes of bottles just as long as your tubing reaches the bottom of the bottle.  And it’s certainly cheaper than purchasing a beer gun.

I have long been a fan of using plastic buckets for my primary fermentation.  They are easy to clean and they make it easy to get the beer in and out.  I generally ferment in primary for ten days before either racking to a keg or extended conditioning in secondary.   My beers are good and I have never had any issues with the quality of my beers that I can relate directly to the choice of my fermentor.

However, I was recently reviewing the recipes for each of the individual award winners from the latest NHC (National Homebrew Competition).  The recipes and their techniques are printed each year in the AHA magazine, Zymurgy.

After reviewing all the winners, I discovered something that I thought was interesting; none of those brewers had fermented in plastic.  Almost all the recipes list what they fermented in and it was always glass or steel (glass was used ~95% of the time).  I found this quite interesting.  If all these award winners were not using plastic, should I switch over to make better beer???

There are a couple other possibilities to explain this.  Plastic gets such a bad rap sometimes, that it’s possible people say they used glass to avoid the taboo.  But I doubt they would lie about something like that intentionally.  No one even mentioned using a “Better Bottle“.

It could be possible that glass is just a “step up” type of choice that many homebrewers serious about better beer brewing make.  The choice of glass may have little relevance to the quality of the brew and fermentation; but it could be an indicator of a brewers that are being extra careful about ALL parts of their process.
Surely, it would be interesting to know what would happen if all the same brewers with all the same recipes and ingredient just used buckets, would they have all come out on top still????

Perhaps a few side by side comparisons are necessary to figure it out. I have no delusions that glass doesn’t have some better qualities than plastic, but I still really like the price and the easy cleaning of plastic buckets.

So I was wondering how many readers here use glass exclusively (or stainless) for fermentation?  Maybe its time to make the switch BACK to glass.
Thoughts?

First and foremost, I believe in buying the best equipment that I can.  I think its worth taking a little extra time to save a little extra change to get “the next step up” when it comes to certain pieces of equipment.  My main reason for that is because proper calibration then becomes less of a concern.

And that brings me to some bad news for everyone… you CANNOT CALIBRATE a hydrometer or thermometer.  Calibration by definition, testing a known sample then SETTING that equipment to the known sample.  There is no way to RESET a hydrometer or thermometer.  These are preset closed instruments that were pre-calibrated by the manufacturer (hopefully correctly, see the opening paragraph).

Now before I get a lot of nasty comments about calibration, you can do what is referred to as Correction.  You can test your hydrometer in 60F distilled water for its accuracy at zero.  You can also test it in water with a pre-weighed amount of sugar to a desired gravity (assuming your scale is accurately calibrated too! You may be able to calibrate your scale).  If the hydrometer doesn’t read zero where its supposed to you can determine a Correction factor.  Which means you know that at zero water your hydrometer reads 1.004.  That means to get to true zero you need to subtract 4 points from your reading.  That means that a 1.054 reading is actually 1.050 SG.  What you have just done is determined your equipments correction factor and you need to work that into your brewing notes.

I know many people refer to that process as calibration, but as I lab guy I have to stand strong here and say that it’s not.

The last problem with using correction is that sometimes instruments do not react linearly across the whole scale.  Meaning that although your hydrometer reads 1.004 at “1.000″ that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is going to be off by 4 points at all gravities. (1.054 for 1.050 and 1.074 and 1.070)  In fact it usually gets worse as you move away from zero.  So the best thing to do is make a solution of sugar water to a specific gravity at the highest you normally brew at and something in the middle (say 1.085 and 1.040).  You can then see if the drift is up or down as you go up the scale and adjust accordingly with future, “real world” samples.

It’s not the end of the world, it’s just something to be aware of and how to deal with it; functionally and terminologically (is that a word???).  At least now you have a good argument for chat over the brew kettle with your buddies next time.

Cheers.

Times are tight, hops are expensive, malt is on the rise, inflation is taking its grip and your brewing dollars just don’t go as far as they used to. But who cares — you’re still a homebrew gearhead and you want that new shinny kettle or keg.

I was thinking about the next piece of major equipment I need to buy (need being a very inaccurate word). I know that first and foremost my kegs are just too warm and lonely sitting in a garage without a kegorator to house them in. So that should be where I invest my spare brewing pennies. I do, however, have a couple other pieces of equipment I have had my eye on and I thought I’d share with you what I am mulling over.

March Pump - This is one slick piece of equipment. If I purchased this I would put it to use straight away doing a recirculating-whirlpool chill technique that Jamil Zainasheff has described as a great way to maximize the potential of an immersion chiller. Getting a pump for wort and water would also facilitate maybe moving up to my next equipment want.

Plate chiller - I am a big fan of the ease of use that an immersion chill provides. But I also like my toys small and easy to store (my backpacking background). The plate chiller is just that, a self-contained slab of copper and steel chilling dynamo. The use of a pump would make its operation that much simpler. My only concern with the plate chiller is I don’t do a good job of seperating hops and break material from my kettle to my fermentor. So that would require some more kettle mods, more upgrades and more money.

Brewing stand - Getting back to my comment about my love of all things compact and easy to store, the brewing stand is large but would be a great addition. I think that getting a brewing stand together, on wheels, would make a nice permanent place for my brewing set up. I could just wheel it out, brew, then wheel it away. Nice clean and tidy set up. Now all my brewing stuff is scattered on several shelves and I have to haul it out and put it away. I never do that.  My kettle and burner just sit in the garage until I get tired of tripping over it or walking around it.

Alas, good things cost money, even if I make them myself. For now I’ll just keep on keeping on with the equipment I have. I am still making good beer regardless. It’s just the equipment changes that help keep it new and fresh and easy. Ahhh, it’s fun to dream.

What’s in your bag of “must haves”?

DIY is what is all about as a hombrewer and especially at Brew-Dudes.

My latest wacky idea is to build a bottle washer and sanitizer. I hate bottling mainly for the washing of the bottles. Its just so tedious and I don’t like the mess I inevitably make in the kitchen with all the soaking, brushing, and rinsing. So I tried to think of a way to “automate” the process a bit.

If you have ever brewed at one of those Brew-on-premise places you have seen they bottle washing station they use. Its basically a large box with standing tubes that the bottles go over upside down. Then the lid is closed and the machine cycles sanitizer through the tubes and up into the bottles.

I figured I could build something just like it using a large bin for the box, PVC for the tubing manifold, and then use a submersible pump for to drive the whole system. I would use a series of buckets to hold cleanser (PBW), rinse water and sanitizer (Star-San). Then all I would have to do would be to move the pump from bucket to bucket along the process. I could envision making a 12-24 tubed manifold. I think the limitation would be the head pressure from the pump. But a good quality pump might be the only real investment in the system. I wonder if a march pump people use for brewing operations has enough head pressure for this type of setup. Then I kill two birds with one stone getting a pump for brewing and washing bottles.

Anyone else seen a homemade bottle washer unit like that? Links???