Monday, May 11, 2009

My Equipment

I thought I'd write a post outlining my equipment. Here goes:



5 Gallon bucket with spigot. Since I only have one brew pot and one fermentor, I use this to drain mashed wort, to transfer to secondary fermentor, and to bottle.



Use these to get filtered water.




Bottle caps, hydrometer, bottle capper.



Brew pot (7-8 gallon aluminum, formerly a turkey fryer), giant whisk, grain scale, 1 gallon fermentor, bottle brush, wort chiller, and pitcher for various tasks.



Another view.

Costs, estimates based on what I remember.

Bottling bucket with spigot: $15
6 Gallon Glass Carboy: Free (from friend, costs about 60 bucks new.
Brew Pot: Free (from an old roommate).
Whisk: Free (see above)
Hydrometer: $5
Bottle Capper: $15
Grain Scale: Free
1 Gallon Glass Carboy: $5
Wort Chiller (20 feet of copper): $65 to build.
Siphon: $10 to build.

I've also been using a big 10+ gallon cooler/mashtun owned by a roommate. I'm moving out this month so I'll have to invest in one of my own.

Chimay Red Clone - Sort Of

I've brewed beer about 4 times in the past, and have been involved in brewing with 2 friends on a few occasions as well. I thought it would be good to document my recipes, as the last 2 batches of brown ale were absolutely terrible (but drinkable). Here is a picture from the last brown ale:



Here is my Recipe for my current brew, which is supposedly a clone of Chimay Red I took this from a website.

Grain Bill:
11 lbs American 2 Row Malt
1 Oz. chocolate malt (Does this even do anything?)
1/6 lb. Aromatic malt
1/2 lb. Victory Malt (Briess)


Hop Schedule:
2 Oz. Chinook at 0 minutes(11.6%)
.75 Oz. Tettnanger Pellets at 50 minutes(6.15%)

Mashed all grains with about 3.5 gallons of water for an hour, stirring three times and adding about .5 gallons of boiling water to keep temperature at around 152 F. Sparged at 170 F exactly with about 4 gallons. Boiled wort for an hour, chilled, siphoned to fermentor, and pitched 2 packets of dry yeast (kindof old). Woke up today (after 12 hours of pitch) to fantastic fermentation! Took a lot longer to begin fermenting than my previous 2 batches, so hopefully its a good sign.

OG (5/11/09): 1.0420 and adjusted for 80 F temperature is about 1.0438 (not happy with this).
FG (5/31/09): 1.0067 and adjusted for 75 degrees is 1.0085.
Alcohol Content at bottling (5/31/09): 4.8%


Here are some pictures: