Author Topic: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff  (Read 9071 times)

Offline dirtdart

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #60 on: January 14, 2011, 01:19:17 PM »
Made my first all-grain on WED.  The New Belgium Ranger IPA clone in brew your own magazine last month.  It is happily swirling away, so something went right.   :cheers:
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Offline VonMessa

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #61 on: January 14, 2011, 02:00:10 PM »
 :rock
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Offline rogwar

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #62 on: January 14, 2011, 02:39:29 PM »
I wonder about growing hops in the Dallas/Ft Worth area.


I used to brew a lot with two other buddies. It was good sharing the expenses and batches as well.

Offline VonMessa

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #63 on: February 01, 2011, 07:12:54 AM »
I wonder about growing hops in the Dallas/Ft Worth area.


I used to brew a lot with two other buddies. It was good sharing the expenses and batches as well.

They would probably love the sun, as long as they had enough water.  I guess it all depends on how dedicated you are to making sure that they have enough to drink.

They usually like temperate climates, but hell, you could research and cross-breed some different varieties to grow better where you live.  You could invent the Longhorn Hop variety that have huge cones and yield lots of hops  :rock

I hear that everything is bigger in Texas  :D
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Offline VonMessa

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #64 on: February 01, 2011, 07:54:43 AM »
Ran oxygen for the first time ... holy conversion Batman.. spent the day cleaning foam.  Can't wait to taste this one.

I've been thinking for quite a while of the best way to do this, myself.

I was discussing it with my cousin when we brewed last weekend.  It is a topic that we have discussed, before.  

My brother had come over, as he now has the addiction since his fiance bought him a Mr. Beer for Christmas (don't worry, we fixed that).  We gave him a crash course in all-grain brewing.

It was a classic case of not being able to see the forest because of all the trees on my part.  We were talking about it (once again) and  :headscratch: about where to get oxygen including the logistics of how/where to get/put it, what to use as a regulator (because it is oxygen, it would have to be non-reactive, etc).  My brother, who is not mechanical by any stretch of the imagination, points at my gas-welding rig that I have been using to weld   the chromoly tube and plates for my wing steel/fuselage tubing and says, "What's in the big green tank?"

DOH!   :o

I'll be getting a diffuser stone this week and making a "HEPA" filter of sorts out of a air-line filter/dryer and some cotton balls (saw a write up on homebrewtalk.com).   :aok

I've had my oxy-acetylene setup for years...  :furious
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Offline VonMessa

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #65 on: February 01, 2011, 11:14:25 AM »
What parts are you making for the mill, needs pics.

All of it  :D

I love a good scrounge.  I also enjoy the challenge of re-purposing items that have outlived their usefulness.

The milling station stand began life as a TV/VCR stand with a "Lazy Susan" bottom.  I took the turntable off of the bottom, stood it on it's side and the door where the video tapes went is now the lid.





A big funnel will make an excellent hopper.  It has a nice flat on it so I cut a hole in the "lid" with a flycutter  :noid  and used a well-worn fermentation bucket with the bottom cut out for more capacity.  I cut a slot out underneath of where the rollers are mounted for the grain to fall into another bucket that will be there to catch the grist











The frame and adjustment knobs for the roller assembly were made from some aluminum stock I had laying around for jig/fixture making.  The plastic guard is from a piece of Lexan that I found @ my work (Window & Door installation company) which I heated and bent on my brake.  The hole was cut with a hole saw.  I was skeptical about having a single hole in the center until I saw something similar on YouTube and it seemed to work just fine.

The rollers themselves are from some unknown material that I got from a local scrap yard with about 100 lbs of other crap for $1.  I know it is steel of some kind because it is magnetic.  The way it machined made me think it was stainless or nickel except that it was magnetic and very badly pitted/rusted.  It machined like crap, didn't cut a good chip and heated up quickly.  I wound up burning out all the indexable cutting edges of one of my triangle carbide inserts.  It started out 1.75" round, but by the time I got through the rust and pits down to a smooth surface, I finished out @ 1.5"  Cutting the knurls was even worse.  The bushings I purchased from McMaster-Carr, made from bronze and are a press-fit into the aluminum frame.  I didn't want to take the chance of grease or oil getting into the grist if sealed bearings decided to take a dump.  The gap is adjustable as the bushings on the movable roller were installed on an eccentric inside the knurled aluminum knobs and can be set with feeler guages. 

cutting the rollers  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y4BF2IcRXk








Only one roller is driven, the other will spin from the action of the grains being pulled through the gap.  I was going to put a sprocket and bicycle chain on the driven roller, hook it to a stationary bike and make the wife pedal it.  When I pitched the idea to her, it was not received well.   :noid 

I have decided to re-purpose yet another item.  A car buffer which I had lent to a friend a while back who, in turn, broke the pad.  Since it was a cheapo Harbor Freight model, I couldn't get another pad.  I didn't look very hard for one either as I have no immediate plans to buff the "custom pinstripes" out of my Wrangler any time in the near or distant future.  It has a gear driven, right-angle head and adjustable speed which is perfect because optimum milling speed is 200-500 rpms and I didn't want to mess with a belt drive, sheaves and a guard for them. (Less $, too)  I am just going to mount the motor to the back of the unit and run a direct-drive shaft, perhaps through a pillow block with another bushing for rigidity.  I'll turn the shaft down, tonight.





The last details will be casters for portability, cover the back, mount a door on the front and pot a port for the shop-vac to keep the dust down which can be explosive in a confined space, believe it or not.  Something as simple as a spark from the buffer motor could do it.  Besides, milling in the brewhouse is not a good idea because the dust from un-mashed grain contains bacteria that can cause infections in beer that hasn't fermented yet.

The following is an example of that, except this was an intentional Lactobacillus infection that I introduced by leaving the mash @ ~ 100 deg. F after the mash was finished and tossing in a handful of un-mashed grains and leaving it sit for a few hours.  I was making a Berliner Weiss.

mmmm     :noid



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Offline Nefarious

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #66 on: February 01, 2011, 01:14:42 PM »
My brother had come over, as he now has the addiction since his fiance bought him a Mr. Beer for Christmas (don't worry, we fixed that).  We gave him a crash course in all-grain brewing.

LOL.

I've been spying this thread, and finally had to comment after reading this.

I also was a person who received a Mr Beer for Christmas along with a Refill pack. I am down to the last can of HME, so I called a local brewer supplies place. This Friday I am going to pay him a visit and get started down the path of brewing my own beer.

Great thread, hopefully I can start contributing my experiences to it. :aok
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Offline Babalonian

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #67 on: February 01, 2011, 02:28:54 PM »
I think my brother has got all of us licked; what's better than being passionate enough about beer to regularly brew your own quality beers at home?...  Simple, marrying a woman who is even more passionate about it than you and who insists you stay out of the kitchen and her way the entire time she's doing it.  All you get (tasked) to do is help bottle, label, and drink it.   :aok

Actually, I might have it best of all, I always get the call to come over and pickup some fresh brew when it's done and only have to provide more criticly-important and labor-intensive quality empty beer bottles.  :D
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Offline VonMessa

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #68 on: February 01, 2011, 03:51:02 PM »
I think my brother has got all of us licked; what's better than being passionate enough about beer to regularly brew your own quality beers at home?...  Simple, marrying a woman who is even more passionate about it than you and who insists you stay out of the kitchen and her way the entire time she's doing it.  All you get (tasked) to do is help bottle, label, and drink it.   :aok

Actually, I might have it best of all, I always get the call to come over and pickup some fresh brew when it's done and only have to provide more criticly-important and labor-intensive quality empty beer bottles.  :D

R & D is important !!!

My wife is also very passionate about the beer, just not with helping to make it  :rofl
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Offline VonMessa

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #69 on: February 01, 2011, 03:51:44 PM »
LOL.

I've been spying this thread, and finally had to comment after reading this.

I also was a person who received a Mr Beer for Christmas along with a Refill pack. I am down to the last can of HME, so I called a local brewer supplies place. This Friday I am going to pay him a visit and get started down the path of brewing my own beer.

Great thread, hopefully I can start contributing my experiences to it. :aok

Good Luck, Nef.

I'll be happy to help, when and wherever I can.
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Offline dirtdart

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #70 on: February 02, 2011, 07:02:46 AM »
When you figure out your cost on the mill please let me know.  I use an aquarium tank pump through a filter to a diffusion stone.  It ran 35 bucks or so.  Today I am bottling my first IPA and am curious how of will taste. This being my first all grain and dry hopped run. 

I met another Guy who brew but he likes to use adjuncts and makes nehi instead of beer.  It is tough.  You meet someone passionate about brewing but their pallatte and yours are so different.  I think his stuff tastes like soda. I smile and say not bad.... bit damn.  You guys know what I mean...

I let my Mead age for a couple of months now and the honey is starting to come out a bit more than before. I still think its tastes like wine not beer.maybe net time I score that much free honey I will use an ale yeast instead of a champagne yeast.
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Offline Ghosth

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #71 on: February 02, 2011, 07:17:06 AM »
IMO mead shouldn't come out tasting like beer.

Theoretically its somewhere in between I suppose depending on what ingredients you used.

I've been working on teaching my son in law, but he's a bit busy now with work, daughter is pregnant with twins, etc. So I may have to wait a year or 2 for things to settle down. :)

Offline VonMessa

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #72 on: February 02, 2011, 07:51:16 AM »
When you figure out your cost on the mill please let me know.  I use an aquarium tank pump through a filter to a diffusion stone.  It ran 35 bucks or so.  Today I am bottling my first IPA and am curious how of will taste. This being my first all grain and dry hopped run.  

I met another Guy who brew but he likes to use adjuncts and makes nehi instead of beer.  It is tough.  You meet someone passionate about brewing but their pallatte and yours are so different.  I think his stuff tastes like soda. I smile and say not bad.... bit damn.  You guys know what I mean...

I let my Mead age for a couple of months now and the honey is starting to come out a bit more than before. I still think its tastes like wine not beer.maybe net time I score that much free honey I will use an ale yeast instead of a champagne yeast.

I think that there are mead specific yeast strains available.  

The honey should ferment out completely (i.e. almost not taste like honey, once finished)

I have been told that it takes almost a year, minimum before mead is even close to being ready (not fermenting, but clearing, settling, mellowing, etc)

Going to AZ with the wife and kids sometime this year to visit a friend of the wife that moved from here to AZ.  She married a guy out there about 10 years ago.  He is full-blood Navajo and his grandmother lives on a reservation up near the four-corners.  He said that if we come out at the proper time that we can go harvest salamanderly pear fruit as long as we leave enough for his grandmother to make some jelly with.  I am DYING to try the Papazian recipe for the salamanderly pear mead.  :rock

So far, the only cost I've incurred for the mill was for the bronze bushings  :D

IIRC, you live near me, correct?  If you are looking just for the guts, I'm sure we can work something out.
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Offline Dragon

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #73 on: February 02, 2011, 12:18:28 PM »
I think that there are mead specific yeast strains available.  

The honey should ferment out completely (i.e. almost not taste like honey, once finished)

I have been told that it takes almost a year, minimum before mead is even close to being ready (not fermenting, but clearing, settling, mellowing, etc)



I would let it set for 2 or more.  If your not bottle finishing them, then the length of time is not as important, but, I like my mead bubbly. 

Stick with the champagne yeast or mead yeast.  Ale yeast will leave you with something resembling urine colored Kool-Aid.   :cry
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Offline VonMessa

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Re: Upgrading My Beer Making Stuff
« Reply #74 on: February 07, 2011, 02:35:04 PM »
Just pulled the trigger on 440 lbs of grain  :rock

(55lb bags each)

(2) pale malt

(2) pilsner malt

(2) wheat malt

(2) munich malt

You guys busy?   :D
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