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.

The All-Grain Evangelist is one of my newest favorite blogs and this writer  does a pretty good job of keeping content fresh.  He is definitely a model for where I want to be.  This guy appears to be a complete renaissance man and he shares his views, mostly about beer.  However, he sprinkles in other thoughts from time to time.

When it comes to beer; he knows his stuff.  He has a great article on DMS and the reasons for a complete open boil , which led me to his blog.  I knew there was a reason for adding extra water, only to boil it off later.

I have added his link into my Blogroll section and with inspiration from him, I hope to be more consistent with my postings; one of a few of my 2010 resolution that I hope to…