Simple Brew Stand in an Afternoon

Hello again everybody!  I hope your brewing has been going well!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I love Strong Scotch Ales and now that I have finally gone all grain I have the ability to brew one.  The recipe I followed was a simple one, but it does call for an extended (60 day) secondary.  The problem I have with this is that my fermentation chamber is a variant on the Son of Fermenter and it holds exactly one fermentation bucket or carboy.

No brewing until approximately October 21st for yours truly.

Normally I brew once a month unless real life has other plans for me (married, 3 sons aged 9-15 and 2 dogs tends to make free time a premium during the school season). Be that as it may, I wanted to get something brew related done this month so I drew up a simple 2 stage brew stand that will work for me and remain budget friendly - otherwise known as free.

Disclaimer - my middle son doesn't use the bunk bead I made for him years ago anymore and the wood from that project was donated for the betterment of the brewing department of our household.  (Besides, it was sitting in storage for 3 years collecting dust and I did ask him if I could take it for a brew stand, no hating on me for taking his bed please!)

The plan for this is a simple set up.  I thought about my first (and so far only) all grain brew day, using saw horses to keep the mash tun up and having the burner on the floor.  I just wanted something less improvised or thrown together looking and have a type of brew stand that works for me.  This is what I put together and it is quite a simple build.  Now I'm no carpenter (I'm actually a plumber) so I bet there are a lot of people out there who could make this more appealing in the same amount of time.

It's a simple idea behind this stand.  My brew kettle and burner sit on the lower level.  Once the mash water reaches temperature I transfer it to the mash tun on the higher level via a small sauce pot. I heat my sparge water in a smaller pot and transfer that in the same way, while the height of the higher stand allows me to drain it via the valve on the side directly into the empty brewpot on top of the burner.I agree it is certainly not the most efficient way, but for now it works very well on my limited budget and my brewing efficiency was 75% according to Brewer's Friend when I checked my numbers after brewing.

The base is a 24" x 48" piece of 3/4 plywood on top of a 2" x 4" frame supported across the center and ends.  

Here is a view of it from underneath, it may not look like it but they are equally spaced across the bottom.

For mobility, I added caster wheels (my buddy Phil was getting rid of them and let me have them - thanks Phil!) on one side and a handle on the non-wheel side so that it can be lifted and pulled like a wagon.  The legs on the non wheeled side are simple to cut.  I mounted the casters first and measured how far they were off from the base and just cut legs to match that length.  It makes for a very level cart.  

The second stand was easier.  The top is roughly 24" x 24" supported the same way.  As your height needs may be different from mine, I determined my height by placing my burner assembly and brew pot on the first cart.  I then measured how tall it was to the top of the brew pot and added a few inches for clearance and ease of moving my carts around.

Here is a helpful hint for you - If you flip the taller cart upside down and only attach each leg with one screw for the time being, it is much easier to insert the lower shelf and square everything out.  Additional screws can be added for keeping it together after you are 100% sure it's straight.  

I have a shelf on the taller stand for 2 reasons.  The first is that it will be handy for keeping those last minute things I need close by - such as my brew log book - and secondly, the shelf adds a lot of support to the legs.  It keeps them very square and true, which is a must for me, I have casters on all 4 legs because I need to move this around while brewing and I can't take the risk of a leg coming out of place and tipping.

There ya have it folks, it's cheap, easy to put together and small enough to store away on edge when not in use.  The only other thing I did was make a small sign for the front with a scrap of pallet wood I had laying around.

As always, thanks for reading this to the end!

Feel free to drop me a comment or question below!

Simple Mash Tun Conversion

So, I am still getting things together for my conversion to all grain brewing that I mentioned in Blog #1.

I managed to pick up a new digital scale from Harbor Freight Tools, and as of this writing (blogging?) the oxygen regulator I ordered from Amazon is on it's way.  Last week though, I was able to pick up a new cooler from Target and make a mash tun.

I had to get a larger cooler than the normal one I used for partial extract brewing.  That one, which I will keep for smaller brews, is a converted 5 gallon Rubbermaid cooler from Home Depot and it just isn't large enough for mashing bigger beers.  For example, I like Strong Scotch Ales - or Wee Heavies if you prefer.  I mean I really like them, and I have always wanted to brew my own.  For a 5 gallon batch, I am looking at 17.25 pounds of grain, and a need for more than 5 gallons of mash water.

With that being said, here are the steps I followed:

#1 Purchase a cooler with the proper amount of room needed

I went with a 52 quart cooler, as it will allow me to have room for larger grain bills when I want to brew up big beers.

For the conversion pieces, I consider myself lucky.  I'm a plumber and all I had to do was rummage through my box of leftover parts to find what I needed.

The list of parts is as follows:

Quantity        Item
2                     1/2" x 1 1/2" brass nipple
1                     1/2" brass ball valve
3                     stainless steel washer with a 7/8" inside diameter
1                     1/2" brass 90 degree elbow
1                     1/2" barb x 1/2" male thread adapter
1                     small piece of rubber gasket material (available at Ace hardware)
1                     roll of teflon tape

For the false bottom I used:

Quantity         Item
4                    1/2" copper 90 degree elbow
1                    1/2" copper street 45 degree elbow
1                    1/2" copper female adapter
3                    1/2" copper tee
 80 1/2"         1/2" copper pipe

You can ignore the other items in the next picture, I was going to make the standard stainless steel braid screen but changed my mind part way through and made a type of false bottom that I will describe a bit further down.

# 2 remove the nut from inside the cooler

This nut will unscrew fairly easily and allow you to remove the drain valve from the base of the cooler.  When you do that, save this washer as you need to reuse it.

# 3 make the internal section of the assembly.

Screw one of the brass nipples into the copper female adapter.  Slide a stainless washer against the cup of the adapter and then reinstall the black washer you saved when you unscrewed the cooler drain valve.

# 4 attach the ball valve

For this step, pass the assembly you made in step 3 through the cooler from the inside and stack the remaining stainless steel washers on the outside of the nipple.  Then tighten the ball valve onto the nipple.  It should look like this:

Now you need to test it before you do anything else.  Fill the cooler with warm/hot water and let it sit for 15 minutes, checking for leaks every once in a while.  If you have a leak, try to tighten it up a bit and see if that helps.  I ended up having to cut some washers out of gasket material and install it between the washers to take up some space.  Now it looks like this:

# 5 make and install the external section

For the outside I wanted to point my drain down, as it keeps my tubing from kinking and it also allows me to just put my pot directly under the drain valve and dump into the pot.

You will need the other brass nipple, the brass elbow, and the brass barb adapter.

It wouldn't hurt to test again right now either.

# 6 make the false bottom for inside the cooler

I made mine out of copper pipe because it is something I have in my garage.  This will not be something you need to solder together, as you need to be able to take it apart to clean it.

The parts I used are listed above, and the pipe lengths are cut as follows:

Quantity      Item
4                   8 5/8" pieces        2 for the top, 2 for the bottom
2                   9 1/4" pieces        1 for the far right, 1 for the center
2                   4 3/8" pieces        both for the left side
1                   18 5/8" piece        this will run from the left side to the
                                                  female adapter you used in step 3

Once assembled it will look like this:

Inside the cooler, it will slip under the internal assemble made in step 3, and the long pipe will slip right into the female adapter.  It is a snug but not tight fit in the base of the cooler.

# 7 drill holes in the bottom of the pipes to allow for drainage of the wort.

Remove the entire assembly from the mash tun and flip it over.  You want to drill small holes in the bottom of the pipe only, I used a 5/32" drill bit.  Don't drill the tops of the pipes and don't drill the long piece at all.  By drilling the bottom only, suction causes almost all of the wort to be pulled out.  I tested it and was left with less than 1/4" in the bottom of the cooler.

Once you are satisfied with the drilling, go over the holes with some fine sandpaper to make sure there are no burs and then wash everything off to make sure all the debris is gone.


OK, if you made it this far, thanks for sticking with me!  The pictures made this one a longer feeling blog, but I hope it was helpful to you.

Brew Day - Front Porch Summer Ale

I don't know about anyone else, but when it comes to Summer brews, I look forward to something cold, crisp, refreshing, and session-able (being able to have more than one at a sitting).  With that in mind I still wanted to brew an Ale, but one that was lighter, and close to a Lager but without the long lagering times involved (although I have had some limited success with a short lager method that only takes 2 weeks-maybe that one should be saved for a future update).  

Once again, I was off to the recipe section of Homebrewtalk.com to find some inspiration.  After looking at all of the excellent recipes that other home brewers have listed, I came up with my own partial mash version that looks like this:

Front Porch Summer Ale

Partial Mash Recipe

2 lbs light DME

5 lbs American Vienna 

2 lbs American Pilsner

1/2 lbs rice hulls

.75 oz Perle hop pellets (6.9% AA) at 60 min

.50 Tettnanger hop pellets (2.4% AA) at 45 min

.50 ounces Tettnanger hop pellets (2.4% AA) at flameout

Safeale US-05 yeast, re-hydrated
Irish Moss

According to my brewing software, it should come out close to:

1.049 OG,      1.009 FG      5.31% ABV     19.79 IBU's       4.95 SRM

In actuality I ended up with:

1.054 OG       1.012 FG    which is not too far off course

I would like to thank Yooper for posting her recipe of Fizzy Yellow Beer, which is where I got the inspiration for my version.  For those of you who would like to see the original recipe, please visit this link:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=120939

With that being said, here's how the brew day went

I always start the same way, everything gets laid out in the kitchen and compared to the recipe to make sure I haven't missed anything.  I do this because on my very first brew I bought a kit, and didn't check the contents.  The included yeast package just happened to be missing out of the one I bought and I had to drive back to the LHBS to get another.

As this is a partial mash recipe, I put the grains into the Corona mill and ground them to the size that I like prior to putting them into the mash tun. This one had 7 pounds of grain to grind up and it took about 15 minutes to grind by hand.  The following weekend I altered the mill so that I can run it off of my drill.

My mash tun is nothing fancy, just the standard 5 gallon Rubbermaid cooler modified with a ball valve.  As I get closer to all grain brewing, I know I will have to get a bigger one, but for now this is good for what I am doing.  The strike water was 168 degrees, and once mixed with the grains it fell to 152 degrees, which is what I was shooting for, so I left it be for an hour while I messed around with my brew dogs.

This is Diamond and Hunter, my brew dogs - hence the name of my blog as well!

After the 60 minute mash, I fly sparged the tun and everything went into the brew pot.  Roughly 4 gallons went into the pot and as soon as it came to boiling, the first hop addition started, followed by the other 2 as time progressed.  At flameout is when I went with the addition of DME because I wanted to keep the beer as light in color as possible.  I also prefer to use hop bags because I don't like dealing with the hop debris when I bottle. After the 60 minute boil I had roughly 3.25 gallons of wort in the pot.

After cooling to 75 degrees everything was transferred to my fermentation bucket and topped off with cold water, bringing the temp down further to about 65 degrees or so.  I added the rehydrated US-05 at this time and put everything into my fermentation chamber to sit for a while.  My chamber is a take on the Son Of Fermenter that you can find plans for online.  It's fine for one bucket at a time, and I like it because of the small footprint it takes in the basement.

This beer is a rather quick one to ferment.  A secondary isn't truly necessary, but of course if you secondary all of your brews as a manner of habit, feel free to, it can't hurt at all as long as your sanitizing practices are in place.  I did a very simple 2 week primary and bottled after that, using light DME in place of priming sugar.  As a matter of practice I wait 3 weeks after bottling to have a sample and this is what it looks like.

This is a very good beer!  My wife - who is very supportive of my homebrewing hobby - asked if this can be in the permanent lineup of what we keep on hand.  It's crisp, pretty clear after the chill haze disappears, not dry at all, and has enough hops to please my IPA drinking buddies but at the same time, not too much to fend off my BMC drinking buddies.  As far as it goes, I think it is an all around crowd pleaser.  

MY MOVE FROM EXTRACT TO ALL GRAIN
So, originally I got into home brewing with the plan that I was only going to brew from extracts.  The reasons for this were I could start with premade kits to make things easy on myself, the initial output of money for equipment was less, and where I live, there is a homebrewer who has made award winning recipes from extracts.  If it’s good enough for him to win awards with, it’s definitely good enough for a novice like me to brew with!
With that plan in mind I made a few extract kits from Brewers Best – gotta say I do love their kits, good ingredients, easy instructions to follow, and I was able to move from straight extract kits to steeping grains as well.  Even my wife, who does tolerate my brewing hobby remarked that they were getting better and that she liked how the house smelled on brew day.
From there the rest you can pretty much put together in your mind………made a few recipes without premade kits, tried my hand at partial mashes, and now, I am ready to move to all grain brewing.

Where to start from here?
Looks like I need some new equipment now.  Unfortunately I am living life on a budget and SWMBO has heard me tell her how much a top of the line all grain system can go for.  Took a bit of convincing but I was able to get her to agree that I can give this a go as long as I was responsible about it.  At this point I turned to my 2 best home brewing friends to assist me with some research, namely Homebrewtalk.com and Internet Explorer. 

This is what I feel I need to add to my existing equipment list:
1) a bigger boil pot
2) an outdoor propane burner
3) a larger mash tun – my 5 gallon one is a bit too small for some of the brews I want to get to
4) a more accurate scale than the spring one I am currently using
5) brewing software
6) devise a better way to chill hot wort than just my immersion chiller by itself
7) a new stir plate, as my current one burned out – it’s a long story
8) a new Erlenmeyer flask, as mine broke – yup, it’s a really long story
9) a longer mash paddle than the current stir spoon I am using


In my current set up I already had a temp controller, and I made a Son of Fermentation chamber, so I was all set in that regard.

Now that I have a list of what I WANT to add, I trimmed it down to what I NEED to add:
1) a bigger boil pot
2) an outdoor propane burner
3 a larger mash tun

First and foremost, I needed a bigger pot for boiling, and a propane burner as my stove just gets 4 gallons to a small boil, I don’t think it can get 7+ gallons to a boil at all.  A bit of research and I was able to see that there were a lot of people out there like me, who wanted to go all in, but were limited by budgets.  The 2 biggest things I learned online – THERE IS NO SHAME IN USING ALUMINUM, and a turkey fryer is not a bad way to get yourself into an all grain set up on the cheap.  A buddy of mine did warn me that he uses a 40 quart boil pot and still gets the occasional boil over, so I should look for something a bit bigger, if I can afford it (thanks for the tip Al).  That’s when I found this, The King Kooker 5012 on Amazon.com.

A 50 quart aluminum pot is included!!  Not a bad price at all, even better when you consider that it is also available “Used” for even less.  Now that doesn’t mean it was used and abused, because according to Amazon’s standards, anything that has been opened and has a damaged box is now “Used”.  Top this off with the fact that when it arrives, I can send it back if I think it is not in great shape, and I am ready to give it a try.  I read through quite a few of the reviews, and it seems like other home brewers have used it, and the reviews are positive.

I popped down my credit card number and waited for it to arrive and a few days later here it was:












Ok, ok, ok......not the best box I have ever seen, but it was packed inside a larger box with padding.  I was pleased with what was inside the box though, because the pot only had one insignificant scuff on it, and it was plain to see it had never been used, the hardware to put the burner assembly together was still bagged.  About a half hour later I had it together and it looks like this:


Luckily the next day we didn't have much going on, so while I was working in the shed (project to be shared with you later) I set it up to boil 10 gallons of water.  If you ever use aluminum pots as your boil pot, I have read that it needs to have water boiled in it for an hour prior to the first use to oxidize the container. 

 Filled it up with 10 gallons of 68 degree water from the sink.
In 28 minutes I had 10 gallons of water at 165 degrees, which I would use for mash temp.
In 48 minutes from the original start time I had 10 gallons of a rolling boil the likes of which I had never seen on my stove in the kitchen.


All in all, I am pretty happy with this, and as soon as I put some things together I will be able to have my first all grain brew day.


Thanks for sticking around to the end of my first blog.  I will have more to come and hopefully will update on a regular basis.

Chris