CP Home Brewing

[Marcellus]

Here is my brewing set up. I have a counter flow chiller and a March pump to use for cooling and moving wart around.



HLT n the left, boil kettle in the middle, and mash tun on the right.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Here is my brewing set up. I have a counter flow chiller and a March pump to use for cooling and moving wart around.



HLT n the left, boil kettle in the middle, and mash tun on the right.

Nice set up.

From my very first batch I have only brewed all grain. It can be a royal pain with makeshift equipment. I got to the point that I was either going to get a set up like yours or drop out the hobby. I ended up dropping out and that was like 10 years ago.

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by cdcox

Nice set up.

From my very first batch I have only brewed all grain. It can be a royal pain with makeshift equipment. I got to the point that I was either going to get a set up like yours or drop out the hobby. I ended up dropping out and that was like 10 years ago.

Yea its hard to do all grain without decent equipment. I actually got lucky and got both kegs for free.

That being said I probably still have probably $1000 in my brewing equipment. The quick disconnect fittings are the best investment I ever made but they weren't cheap.

Brew in a bag is actually fairly easy and takes about half the equipment but the efficiency is much lower. I still consider doing that ever now and then since its so simple.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Yea its hard to do all grain without decent equipment. I actually got lucky and got both kegs for free.

That being said I probably still have probably $1000 in my brewing equipment. The quick disconnect fittings are the best investment I ever made but they weren't cheap.

Brew in a bag is actually fairly easy and takes about half the equipment but the efficiency is much lower. I still consider doing that ever now and then since its so simple.

I used a 5 gallon stock pot for my brew pot, had a copper immersion wort chiller, used a couple of plastic trash cans for the mashtun, and a had bucket primary fermentor and a glass carboy secondary.

That limited me to 5 gallon batches which took like 12 hours to brew. Kitchen looked like Vietnam when I was done.

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by cdcox

I used a 5 gallon stock pot for my brew pot, had a copper immersion wort chiller, used a couple of plastic trash cans for the mashtun, and a had bucket primary fermentor and a glass carboy secondary.

That limited me to 5 gallon batches which took like 12 hours to brew. Kitchen looked like Vietnam when I was done.

Yea I used to brew in the house early on doing 5gal batches. My wife put a stop to that pretty early.

I can do 10gal in about 5 hours with clean up and all.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Yea I used to brew in the house early on doing 5gal batches. My wife put a stop to that pretty early.

I can do 10gal in about 5 hours with clean up and all.

I was doing recipes that called for a 4 hour boil. I'm not sure that long of a boil was necessary.

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by cdcox

I was doing recipes that called for a 4 hour boil. I'm not sure that long of a boil was necessary.

Interesting.

Unless you are making a really, really, really, strong beer, like 14%, I see no reason for a 4 hour boil. A lot if stuff has changed over the years though.

Anything past 90 minutes doesn't make sense to me unless you miss your preboil gravity by a mile and need to boil off some extra water.

I do mainly 90 minute boils as it removes more of the DMS from the wort than 60 minute but I don't add any hops until after 30 minutes.

I think the longest boil I have ever done was around 1:45 and that was just to remove a little water.