Official Home-brew Thread

[KillaCam]

CALLING ALL HOME BREWERS
Home Brewers Unite!
who brews there own beer?
recently (last four months) I have been home brewing.
everything from irish stouts to American loggers

recently I brewed my own creation of a oatmeal stout and a IPA.

what are some of your favorite recipes?


What kind of set up are you running?

[NigelStu]

SUBBED!

I just had my first foray into home-brewing. A few buddies (one of which who brews quite a bit) started a bit of a hands-on how-to series.

Real simple setup for this round - turkey fryer, propane heater, a couple of carboys. For this round, we went for a Belgium Imperial style. 14 lbs of malt extract added in to the water that was brought up to temp with some basic grains seeping. 2 bags of rock sugar. 2 types of hops added in 3 stages. Honey, a bit of cloves, ginger, a few other things and touch of cinnamon. Belgium yeast. Should yield a 10-11%, Belgium style ale with some good hop nose to it.

I'm excited to have been apart of this brew, and am really looking forward to the tasting!

And, we have already talked about making the setup more robust and easier. Gravity feed setup. As a group, we plan to trade off who is brewing. Luckily, there are a few great home-brew stores in the area.

[KillaCam]

SUBBED!

I just had my first foray into home-brewing. A few buddies (one of which who brews quite a bit) started a bit of a hands-on how-to series.

Real simple setup for this round - turkey fryer, propane heater, a couple of carboys. For this round, we went for a Belgium Imperial style. 14 lbs of malt extract added in to the water that was brought up to temp with some basic grains seeping. 2 bags of rock sugar. 2 types of hops added in 3 stages. Honey, a bit of cloves, ginger, a few other things and touch of cinnamon. Belgium yeast. Should yield a 10-11%, Belgium style ale with some good hop nose to it.

I'm excited to have been apart of this brew, and am really looking forward to the tasting!

And, we have already talked about making the setup more robust and easier. Gravity feed setup. As a group, we plan to trade off who is brewing. Luckily, there are a few great home-brew stores in the area.

damn that sounds intense. 10- 11 %.. thats gonna be strong.
honey, cloves, ginger and cinnamon. that sounds good.

i think for my next batch im going to use oranges and honey in the boil.

i need to upgrade my set up. im just using 2 3G stainless steel pots and a 5 gallon bucket for fermentation.

do you know what kind of yeast you used?

[z31maniac]

Purchased a kit awhile, but have been too lazy. We met a couple at one of our favorite pubs a few weeks ago, he's an avid homebrewer and is going to come over in a few weeks to walk me through my first few batches.

I'm fucking excited............just need to go look for a clone of Rogue Chocolate Stout.

[willworkfore30s]

I built this guy as a senior design project. Its controlled by a net book. One peristaltic pump and four solenoid valves transfer the liquid through out the brewing process. I built it for around $1000 but had some substancial donations. By the time I got it finished I was only able to brew with it one time but it worked great. My professor kept it and brews a "beer of the month" with it every month. I can do 5gal batches but is designed for 4gals. The design goals were for it to be portable and easy to use. Fill everything up, press the start button, and come back in a couple weeks and the beer will be in the fermenter ready for carbonation.





Coiling that stainless steel was a bitch!

[TurboJake]

I built this guy as a senior design project. Its controlled by a net book. One peristaltic pump and four solenoid valves transfer the liquid through out the brewing process. I built it for around $1000 but had some substancial donations. By the time I got it finished I was only able to brew with it one time but it worked great. My professor kept it and brews a "beer of the month" with it every month. I can do 5gal batches but is designed for 4gals. The design goals were for it to be portable and easy to use. Fill everything up, press the start button, and come back in a couple weeks and the beer will be in the fermenter ready for carbonation.

An Allen Bradley Micrologix PLC would've worked great for that. You could alter the parameters using your home computer over the network and monitor it too.

[willworkfore30s]

Funny you mention that. That was the original plan but because of budget and time constraints I decided to simplify the control system a whole lot...a WHOLE lot. No it runs off of a ethernet controlled sprinkler valve controller. Had to do some electrically magic to make the pump run off the 24V controller as well as the hot plates and the valves. But it was still cheaper and easier than a PLC. The pulling tractor we built for 2013 competition is run off a Allen Bradley PLC.



Sorry to get off topic a bit.

Here is an awesome brewing set up I studied a lot for my build.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2h8FOXmga8

[TurboJake]

Funny you mention that. That was the original plan but because of budget and time constraints I decided to simplify the control system a whole lot...a WHOLE lot. No it runs off of a ethernet controlled sprinkler valve controller. Had to do some electrically magic to make the pump run off the 24V controller as well as the hot plates and the valves. But it was still cheaper and easier than a PLC. The pulling tractor we built for 2013 competition is run off a Allen Bradley PLC.

I don't know man. You can buy a micrologix on ebay for <$50.
Could've done the whole system in 24v (Minus the heating element, which you could've just used an output to energize a relay).

And they make 24v peristaltic pumps.


Many different ways to skin a cat. I'm not arguing the method with you in any way. All the same outcome. Still a neat little thing.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ALLEN-BRADLEY-MICROLOGIX-1000-1761-L16BWA-/150865576020?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item23204a0054#ht_500wt_1413

EDIT: this one would've worked great, and it's only 1 bill. 10 inputs, 6 relay outputs. I don't know the details but 4 valves, the hot plate, and the pump would've been driven just fine.

[willworkfore30s]

If i had it to do over again a lot of things would be different. Would be PLC controlled. Would have level and temp sensors. All my valves would be stainless steel. It would use propane burners and march pumps. I was given the pump and kinda built the system around it. I was also asked to combine the boil kettle and fermenter into one vessel which was not my orignal plan.

[Pantless Spency]

I'm really looking to get into this

[KillaCam]

Purchased a kit awhile, but have been too lazy. We met a couple at one of our favorite pubs a few weeks ago, he's an avid homebrewer and is going to come over in a few weeks to walk me through my first few batches.

I'm fucking excited............just need to go look for a clone of Rogue Chocolate Stout.

im sure there is a wright up on it. but dont they use real chocolate in the brew?

I built this guy as a senior design project. Its controlled by a net book. One peristaltic pump and four solenoid valves transfer the liquid through out the brewing process. I built it for around $1000 but had some substancial donations. By the time I got it finished I was only able to brew with it one time but it worked great. My professor kept it and brews a "beer of the month" with it every month. I can do 5gal batches but is designed for 4gals. The design goals were for it to be portable and easy to use. Fill everything up, press the start button, and come back in a couple weeks and the beer will be in the fermenter ready for carbonation.





Coiling that stainless steel was a bitch!

damn that is sick. what a easy way to brew.

[NigelStu]

do you know what kind of yeast you used?

Hops were Saaz and Hallertauer, 2 oz each. 1 oz of each at the start. 1 oz of Hallertauer after ~10-15 min and finished off with 1 oz of Saaz. Saaz was the higher Alpha acid one.


Yeast was White Labs Trappist Ale yeast (WLP500).



So many excites for this brew to be ready to drink!

[Dermeister3]

I'm getting tools soon and I'll be brewing. I'll be watching this close for recipe's and tips :)

[deutschman]

My friend and I have been brewing beer for a few years now. He started while we were in culinary school and I got pulled into it. We brew about every other week in 5 gallon batches. We started doing partial mash like most people, and about a year ago moved to full mash beers and have just been upgrading our equipment and raising the complication of our beers every time we brew. The first full mash set up consisted of two coolers on a two step razed platform and a 5 gallon pot on a burner. That worked ok for a while, but we just upgraded to a system using two beer kegs with the tops cut off of them and some valves welded on. Still working on that set up.
I'll post some pictures and some more details later, along with some pictures of his fridge project which we use for beer, cured meats, and cheeses.

[AndrewBird]

I REALLY want to start home brewing, but I really don't have the time to put into it. We have a brew shop here in Bend that has a ton of supplies and literally a 6x20 walk in refrigerator full of fresh hops of different varieties. I think they keep 10-15 different hops in stock.