After a little more than a year of planning, designing, budgeting and engineering I finally fired up the new brewery and brewed a batch of HAHB – An IPA today.  It has been a lot of fun doing this project and I could not have finished it without the help from a couple of friends and I picked up a few new skills along the way.  I learned a bit about stainless steel welding, electrical, plumbing, construction and various other types of fabrication.  You can see tons of other pictures in the photos sections of this site.

The brewery is definitely a pleasure to operate.  This is definitely a step up from my benchtop brewery.  I still plan to keep the old system, it holds sentimental value.  Dick, from Dick’s Beer, gave me the kegs a few years ago.  Unfortunately, he passed away suddenly on October 25, 2009.  That is definitely a huge loss.  I was planning on putting the old system on Craigslist, but now I will keep it.  I think it will come in handy for root beer and cider or things that I do not want to taint the hoses with on the new system.

The last piece that held up production was the ventilation for the boil kettle.  I definitely kept on over thinking it.  I looked for used commercial range hoods and other alternatives that would have cost well over $1,000.00.  This little beauty cost under $200.00 and does the job just fine.  I had the cone built by a local sheet metal company, bought the rest of the supplies from a hardware store and used a six inch 250 cfm inline duct fan.  It is quiet and effective.

This baby has power.  I plumbed in propane from a 120 gallon tank so that I do not have to mess with a 20 gallon tank; hauling it back and forth to the filling station.  Five gallon tanks would not have been powerful enough to keep three 103,000 – 32 jet burners going and as I quickly found out, 32 jets were way too much.  I took out and plug 16 of them in the outer ring.  That is okay, I designed this frame a little large to easily upgrade it from a 20 gallon system to a full barrel, simply by replacing the pots with larger ones.

It was a fabulous day and my first batch on this system went without a hitch.  The best part is that most of this was designed to clean in place so that at the end of the day a bunch of the work was a little easier.  I definitely look forward to brewing on this system again.  I think I will do Marie’s Beer next weekend.

One of my most interesting projects this summer was building my rolling kegerator (pics here).  I love tackling new home brew projects and this one was quite enjoyable.  It was inspired by a magazine article in Brew Your Own.  In the November 2008 issue, Kevin Mattie talks about how he built his rolling kegerator.

Well this seemed like something right up my alley.  So I decided to take it on.  First I gathered all of the parts.  Then I measured (twice), cut and/or drill all of the parts, then assembled this bad boy.

After carefully measuring, marking and then drilling pilot holes, I got the first tap in.  That is when I decided to take my first “union break” and have a beer.

 I then assembled the last two taps and attached the drip tray.  The trip tray is attached with strong magnets so that I can quickly pull it off to dump the waste.  Since stainless steel is not magnetic, and the tray is stainless, I had to weld two one inch galvanized washers to the bottom.  That worked like a champ.

On the second day, I assembled the inside of this kegerator.  I cut the Styrofoam sheets, taped the edges with duct tape then wrapped everything with construction grade trash bags.  I then assembled the CO2 and beer lines, tested for leaks and installed them inside.

I used a portable CO2 portable pneumatic system from a local big box hardware store per Kevin’s recommendation.  That works remarkably well.  I am very impressed.  And, believe it or not, I got this finished just four hours before a huge party.  I was very nervous cutting it that close.  I did not have the chance to play with CO2 levels and anything could have failed.  As it turned out, the CO2 level was perfect, everyone enjoyed the beer and we went through three kegs with no incident.

Here are some happy customers.  You should pick up this issue of BYO and build this.  It is fairly simple and very rewarding.  You’ll definitely be the hit of the party.