Wort Chilling - done quickly!

Thanks to Jeff, we are now using a Blichmann Therminator to chill our wort. Before, we had a double immersion chiller setup. One chiller was in the wort and the second chiller sat in an ice bath. It pushed the wort into an ice bucket with a sump pump, which would push the ice cold water back into the wort chiller. It was a very effective setup for 5 gallon batches. When we started brewing 10 gallon batches, it would take over an hour to chill the wort to 80 degrees (usually closer to 2 hours).

Now with the Therminator counterflow chiller, we are able to chill 10 gallons to 60 degrees in less than 30 minutes. Check out the video for our setup.



I read that many people just hook the chiller to their water hose and chill it that way. This works, but seems to waste a lot of water. The sump pump is a great way to save water, and you can chill the wort even faster since it's ice cold. Later you can use the water for cleaning and rinsing the equipment.

First All Grain Brew

Brewed on: Saturday, October 28, 2009

I brewed my first batch of all grain beer. It's a Scottish 80 Shilling Ale from Northern Brewer, which I've brewed previously from an extract kit. I've been an extract brewer (on & off) for the past 10 years, and I've been very active for the past 3 years. All grain brewing seemed very daunting, and the equipment is expensive. But, alas, I finally took the plunge.

The process is pretty simple. Heat some water and let the grains soak for awhile. In this case, I heated 3.2 gallons of water to 170, added the grains and let it sit at 158 F for 60 minutes. Then I heated it to 170 for 10 minutes. This wort ("wert") was removed from the grains and poured into the brew kettle. Then 5 gallons of 172 F water was added. This wort was then pulled off and added to the brew kettle.
Time to brew the beer! Then the wort was brought up 212 F, hops were added and it boiled for 60 minutes. The wort was then chilled with an immersion chiller until the temp dropped to around 70 F. Then I transferred the beer to a carboy, added the yeast and let it feast.

I did leave out 2 key ingredients: yeast nutrient and Irish moss (for clarity). Fortunately, I added some nutrient to the yeast starter, so it was active, healthy and ready to go. Within 6 hours I had active fermentation. The missing Irish moss, on the other hand, is going to bite me in the ass. I think the beer is going to be very hazy. I've been using Irish moss for years, and it makes a huge difference in clarity. I also did not use the airline to oxygenate the wort, but I'm not too concerned about that. I wanted to focus on the other parts of all grain brewing. And I have a strong fermentation, so it's no biggie. Next time, I will lay my steps out better beforehand.

Here's a small vid I made. Nothing too great, and I forgot to record the final steps of chilling and transferring to the carboy.

YouTube Video

And here's the beer fermenting in the bathtub.

Left to right: Bourbon Barrel Porter, Scottish 80 Shilling Ale (all grain beer), Apple Cider

 

Lighting the boil kettle

After several years of home brewing using malt extracts, I've taken the big step into all grain brewing. My birthday present was a 15 gallon brew pot. Only one problem... how to heat it (minor point).
I know the most common way to boil brew is with a propane burner. But, I don't have one and wasn't sure I wanted to invest in one. I'm turned off by the necessity to take the tank somewhere to get it refilled or replaced every so often, and even more turned off by the fact that you may run out of gas partway into an event. When we moved into this house 5 years ago, we had the gas company install a natural gas outlet on the deck for the grill. It makes grilling so easy and convenient.

So, since I have a NG outlet on the deck, finding a NG home brew burner makes sense. Oddly enough, there is only one NG burner readily available on the home brewing websites: the Hurricane Burner has a NG connection. And just recently (about the time I decide to purchase one), it is out of stock everywhere. A representative from Northern Brewer said they did not know if/when they would have them back in stock. William's Brewing keeps pushing the in-stock date out. It seems home brewers are always after the efficient solutions, so I'm really suprised there are not more NG solutions on the market.

One solution that does exist is the use of a jet burner, also called a wok burner. Problem here is that they do not have a stand like the propane burners, and I'm not a welder (yet... it's on my to-do list). I did a lot of research on the burners and found a lot of discrepancies in people's success stories. The small burner has 23 jets and reaches 130,000 BTUs (and they do make a medium, larger and I think extra-large burner). Many home brewers used the small burner had to turn some of the jets off. There is also a "mini" jet burner, and I guess the name is misleading. "Surely a mini burner won't be able to heat 10 gallons of water in a reasonable amount of time." But, I found some people that gave it high marks. The problem I often read about with all of the jet burners is that it's hard to control the output with a ball valve. People said it was all or nothing. In the posts where I found these reported problems, other people suggested the plumbing may not be large enough or they may have the jets turned off in the wrong sequence.

So many discrepancies, and no where to see one for myself. But, my desire to stay clear of propane won and I ordered a 10 jet mini burner on the Monday before Thanksgiving, from ShoppersChoice.com (aka: bbqguys.com). And to my amazement, they shipped it out the same day and it arrived on Wednesday!

The other problem, where to put the burner so that it can heat a 15 gallon pot. I was going to retro fit the stand from a turkey fryer, but the 19" diameter pot felt a little oversized for the stand. Then the magic moment... my grill is the right size and height to hold a kettle that large, I know it can handle the heat, and it is conveniently located next to the natural gas outlet. The burner arrived on Wednesday and I opened the grill up to test the fit. I needed a way to hold the burner in place just below the grill grate. First thought was that I'd buy a square piece of metal and rest it down in the grill. Then I found if I turned the triangle rails used to distribute the gas heat from the grill I could rest the burner on those perfectly (tough to explain, but there's a picture below). This was starting to look like the perfect solution. Now, to get gas to the burner.

We took a trip to Lowe's on Wednesday night (the night before Thanksgiving)... because there's no way I'd go there on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I was suprised to find segments of 3/8" steel tubing in the lengths I needed, already threaded. For less than 30 bucks, I had my plumbing. I assembled the pipes and it fit in the grill like a glove. I removed the flexible gas line from the grill and realized I needed a tapered fitting to connect the hose to the steel pipe. And this was on Black Friday... I'd come so far, only to reach a large stumbling block (see above: "there's no way I'd go there on the Friday after Thanksgiving"). I took a trip to the local hardware store (formerly Ace) and he had exactly what I needed. I sorta felt bad for not buying all my parts from him (note to self: support local businesses).

Everything was hooked on and ready to go. Now for the test firing. My wife's comment, "You're going to light it now!?!" She didn't want us to light the neighborhood up. She was reading the directions on the fire extinguisher and I made it easy for her, "Pull the pin. Point nozzle at husband. Pull trigger." (haha)

The valve is located below the grill. I put the long stick lighter in the grill, ducked down, turned the valve, heard the gas and clicked the lighter - WHOOF! It fired up and produced gorgeous blue flames. I tested the valve to control the flame and it worked like a charm.

The real test would be the next day when I brewed my first all grain beer, but that is another story.

Some photos of the burner assembly in the grill.