Cheap Cooler Mash Tun

I was an extract brewer for more than 10 years, and I always wanted to do all-grain batches. There were two big reasons that I didn't:

• Cost. Every mashing option I looked at appeared to be relatively expensive, especially direct fire ones. But I found even the Gott or Rubbermaid options became expensive as well when one factored in the manifolds.
• Time. I was afraid that would spend too much time doing a batch and it would take all of the fun out of it.

I finally found a good, cheap way to use what I had around the house (a basic 24 qt rectangular Coleman cooler) and CPVC tubing. Copper tubing has become cost-prohibitive, and it has the added disadvantage of being (relatively) hard to work with. I was worried about using PVC tubing because although cheap I was worried about the hot temperatures leaching chemicals out of the tubing.

I settled upon CPVC tubing: it has the advantages of being cheap (3.55 for a 10 foot piece of 1/2 inch diameter), easy to work with (rotary tool cuts it easily), and is safe for water as hot as 180 degrees--hotter than anything in brewing. Fitted with some elbows, tees, and plastic tubing, it's an adequate way to get into all-grain mashing. I've found the that it only adds about an hour and a half to my brewing process.

Materials List
From your local hardware or big bloc store:
24 Qt Coleman Cooler

1 10 foot piece of 1/2 inch diameter CPVC piping

5 CPVC elbow fittings

3 CPVC tee fittings (make sure you get the same size (1/2 inch) as the piping

One 1/2 inch CPVC female adapter (that's the white part...the brass part is the hose barb)










From your local homebrew store:
Length of 3/8 food grade plastic tubing
1 large Flow control hose clamp
1 small hose clamp
1 male NPT hose barb

Construction Steps
Note, this assumes the same cooler as above. If you're using a bigger one, than adjust accordingly. I used John Palmer's How to Brew for the dimensions:

1. Cut two pieces of the CPVC tubing to 18 inches long.
2. Cut one piece 13 inches long.
3. Cut one piece 4 inches long
4. Cut four pieces 3 1/4 inch long.
5. Using a rotary tool disc cutter, cut slants every 1/2 inch into the three longer pieces.

Now its just a matter of assembly:

The plastic tubing goes out the drain of the cooler--you may have to use some StarSans to lube it up a bit.

Unfair Restrictions on Homebrew Resale?

Recently a friend brought to my attention the fact that some homebrewers feel that current laws prohibiting the resale of homebrew are unfair. To be honest I had never really thought about it, considering that we're talking about a consumable product.

The thought was that there are many hobbies where people can make money, and therefore attempt to recoup (to a degree) one's initial investment into the hobby. For instance, there are a number of direct marketing companies where one can do it a a hobby and host parties to sell items related to the hobby. True, in most cases they're not selling the finished product but the idea is there.

The more I think about it, the less I think it is a food safety issue. Look at bake sales...I'm not aware of any inspections that bakers have to go through for bake sales.

As homebrewers, we don't have this ability. True, there are a small, dedicated number of homebrewers that become craft brewers or "nano" brewers, but this is very rare and certainly expensive and beyond the means of most of us.

What do you think? Should homebrewers have this ability, in some form or another?

Beer Review: Widmer Brothers' O'Ryely IPA (Rotator IPA Series)

I enjoy many styles of beer, particularly porters and darker ales. I like pale ales and in especially Indian Pale Ales (IPAs), but it's getting harder and harder for IPAs to really distinguish themselves. For a while, it seemed like everyone was trying to outdo themselves with hoppiness. Then came the imperial craze, where high gravity IPAs were brewed--sometimes to their own detriment. Not so with Widmer Brothers' O'Ryely IPA, which stands on its own.

As you might have guessed, there's a touch of rye malt in this beer, and its spiciness pairs nicely with Nelson Sauvin hops, a variety grown in New Zealand.

The beer is a very clear reddish gold color, with a substantial (but not huge) white head that remains even now, almost 20 minutes after first pour. Earthy hop aromas (almost like noble hop aromas, to me) are readily apparent. Taste-wise, the rye is clearly there in the forefront, and slowly fades into that hoppiness that you first recognize upon opening. These hops linger on a bit, but it is not unpleasant at all.

This beer is definitely an IPA, but the rye adds a different kind of spiciness to the flavor than you can get just from hops. It enables the malt to stand up to the kiwi hops. I will be trying to duplicate some of these qualities in my own beer in the future.

This is one of Widmer's "Rotator" series of IPA. It's just the third release in the series. I think it's great that the brewery is not settling for just one IPA, but releasing different ones at different times of the year.

I highly recommend this beer for both the IPA fan, as well as those who are a bit fatigued by the style. You won't be disappointed.

Need to Keep Up the Brewing Momentum!

Now that I've recently brewed again, I really want to keep it up. Ideally, I'd like to get up brew at least once every couple of weeks. That way, I could justify getting a kegging system that I want!

To do this, I'm going to have simplify my brew process somewhat, and invest in additional equipment. Keeping this under reasonable costs is critical. Here are some of the things that I'm thinking I'm going to need.

1. Consolidate my brew equipment. Well, right now it's consolidated in a corner of my laundry room. So every time I brew, I have to drag everything upstairs and set it up in the car port. My dream would be to have a dedicated brewing space in a garage or a shed. The garage will have to wait. A shed however...For some time I was thinking of getting those Rubbermaid plastic sheds (like this) but a) they are not cheap, b) they are reportedly not as easy to build as they look, and c) I really don't have a good place to put it in my yard. What I just thought of was getting the smaller Rubbermaid storage container, putting that in my car port, and keeping all of my equipment there. Of course, I'd still have to bring in the carboys when fermenting, but better that than my entire brewing system.

2.  A better brew pot. This is key. Right now I use an aluminum pot that came with my propane cooker. There's no ball valve or anything...so it's a very manual process (pouring) to transfer both the strike water and the wort. Ideally, I'd get a 15 gallon pot (as depicted), which would open the possibility of doing 10 gallon batches.With a spigot or valve, I could elevate the pot and drain it, at least until I get...
3.  A food grade pump. I have small children, so I'm not crazy about having 5 or so gallons of hot liquid above my head. A pump would enable me to keep everything at the same level. I could pair this with an in-line wort chiller.
4. Water filter. Even though I think our water is fine, I do think using a filter would improve the quality of my beer, especially as I get into lagering.

Those are just for starters, and things which I can see purchasing in the coming year.Of course, I'd like a lautering refigerator and kegerator and conical fermenters, but those things are a little further out.

Beer Review: Fordham Baltic Porter

On Sunday, I had the opportunity to visit The Rams Head in Annapolis for beer and dinner. While I'm no longer quite a regular visitor there, I've had the regular beers kept on draft enough that when I do go, I always try the seasonal offerings. In general, I find these to be superior to Fordham's other beers, which are generally middle of the road brews (and that's not a bad thing, by the way).

The seasonal on this day (and through November) is a Baltic Porter. I was in luck somewhat, since that morning I had just brewed a robust porter at home. According to the BJCP Style Guide, a Baltic porter(12C) is a bit stronger and has more alcohol heat than the other porter styles. You'll also see it occasionally sold as an "imperial porter."

Fordham's offering was solid, although the beer was served far too cold to be able to truly appreciate it. Color wise (and I regret not taking any pictures), it was dark and fairly opaque; holding it up to the light, the reddish-mahogany color was apparent. There was a slight malty aroma with some roasty notes, but these were very, very subdued. It's a very clean beer, with relatively little estery flavors in the beer. It's reminscent of Sierra Nevada's porter in this regard. But the higher alcohol content is apparent.

From what I can tell, Fordham beers are all served at the same temperature (too cold) and the same carbonation. This carbonation (too high in my opinion) took a bit a way from the beer's flavor: you really had to search for those roast flavors.

Despite this, the Fordham Baltic porter is a good beer, and is a good addition to the brewery's offerings.

Return to Beer and Brewing After Long Absence

I've had a few spare cycles recently, and decided to spend one Sunday morning brewing. This marked the first time in just about a year that I've brewed. This was also only the second all-grain batch of beer I have made, using my ultra-cheap mash tun.

I'll get to my mash tun design in a bit.

I decided to brew a porter, which is one of my favorite styles to both brew and drink. As a base recipe, I used the John Palmer's "Port O' Palmer" recipe (from How to Brew) but modified it just a bit by subsituting some of the base malt (pale ale) with a beech smoked malt. I'm hoping this lends a mild smokey flavor to the beer, but I think the quantity that I used (a half-pound to a 10.25 lb recipe) will be too little to impart much of a difference. But we'll see in a bit.

My brew day started out rough. Since it's been so long since I last brewed, I felt I had to substantially clean all of my equipment before even starting. This took just about a 45 minutes or so. Setting up took a few more minutes, but I was able to multi-task a bit by starting to heat the strike water. I use a generic propane cooker for this.

My mash tun, as you see, is a simple 36 qt Coleman Cooler with a removable manifold made of CPVC pipe. I chose the CPVC pipe over copper for two primary reasons: it's easier to cut using my Dremel, and more importantly, it's a lot cheaper.A 10 foot piece of 3/4 inch copper tubing costs over $20, whereas the same in CPVC costs only about $3. It handles temperatures up to 180 F, and according to some building codes can be used in place of copper for drinking water.

I clamp a length of clear tubing fitted with a pinch valve to this manifold, then run it out through the cooler's drain. No fancy ball valve needed! I estimate the total cost of this manifold to be about $10.

I followed Palmer's suggestion of heating the water to a temperature of 165 F in order to get a strike temperature of 156...unfortunately, I was never able to get the temperature that high--it seemed to stay at about 150 or so. I did heat the mash tun prior to dough-in, but I think next time I will have to heat the water to around 170 or so just to get the mash to the proper temperature.

After the hour, I lautered into my brew pot. Here's where I made another mistake. During the entire brewing process, I had a "helper:" my four year-old daughter. There were some shenanigans and distractions...I sparged the appropriate amount I believe (using the batch sparging method), but I think I may have over sparged: I missed my target gravity substantially. No doubt the lower mash temperature also affected this. Luckily, I had some dry malt extract on hand, and was able to get the starting gravity up close to where I want to be (1.051 vs. 1.054).

So now it's in primary fermentation. It'll prob remain there until after Thankgiving, since I'll be out of town for the holiday.

Cleveland Rocks! Up today....Edmund Fitzgerald

This evening I will review the first of several Cleveland's own Great Lakes Brewing Company beer, not the classic Gordon Lightfoot song. That will come later.

A friend brought me back a sampler 12-pack, and I've tried a couple of the beers so far, and overall I am fairly impressed. My original intention was to taste some Great Lakes beers head-to-head against Baltimore's own Heavy Seas. But the beers that I have don't exactly match up well stylistically with Heavy Seas, and besides that would trivialize both beers. (However, I did have a catchy idea for depicting which beer would "win," I was going to post a picture from the winning city's history to show who won and lost...for example, if one of the Great Lakes beers "lost" I would post a picture of the Cuyahoga River Fire, or if it won I would show a picture of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.)

Have to give props to the artwork on the label as well...very nice.

Tonight's beer is the Edmund Fitzgerald, a porter. Both Beer Advocate and Rate Beer (and their audiences) love this beer: Beer Advocate gives it an "A" and Rate Beer gives it a 99. I've had a couple of them over the last week or so, and I can't disagree: I would rank Edmund Fitzgerald at the top of American porters, right up there with my favorite, Sierra Nevada's Porter.

It pours dark, and leaves a moderate slightly off-white head that even now remains nearly 30 minutes after I poured it.  There is a slight hoppy aroma accompanied by some roasty malt tones. It is nearly perfectly opaque: just what you would expect a porter.Malty, with just enough hops to lend a bitterness that complements the roasted grains, which are not overpowering. It stops well short of a stout.

A very good start to my Cleveland beer experience!