Beer Homebrewing thread

[Niode]

Fucking. Word.

Another brilliant post that contributes to the topic.

Other than slagging off homebrewers and saying all homebrew is worse than domestic brews, what have you brought to this topic? Nothing.

I never said "I hate home brews" I said "I haven't had a good home brew yet".

Basically the same thing.

Contribute to the topic, not just say "Bullshit" and "Word."

What have my friends may have done wrong in the process? Was their equipment crappy? Did they not know how to properly brew?

I didn't have time to create a constructive post. The king said it all for me. Take a look at the 'what are you drinking' thread for constructive input on this topic. I don't need to justify myself to you. I already know my beer is good.

What have my friends may have done wrong in the process? Was their equipment crappy? Did they not know how to properly brew?

I don't know what your friends are doing. I have no idea about their equipment, or their ability as a brewer. How the hell can I comment or provide constructive criticism of something that you may have pulled out of your arse? You may think their beer is shitty because you might not know what good beer was unless it slapped you in the face. You may prefer beer that tastes of practically nothing and something with strong flavour offends you. Is this really contributing anything to the discussion?

Your intention was to incite, to get a rise out of somebody. As much as you're trying to weasel out of this situation with the above comments, it's fruitless. You're the equivalent of the guy that goes into a bar and starts running his mouth hoping to get a rise out of somebody. Then things get heated and you start backtracking. Seriously. What's the point?


Anyway.

Here's my set up.

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35 litre thermos coolbox conversion. Ball valve fitted to the bottom. Ball valve is important because you don't want too much negative pressure. It allows you to control the amount of flow from your mash tun. You want the grain to filter itself without getting sucked into your manifold. This causes stuck mashes and is just a pain in the fucking arse, especially if you want to fly-sparge.

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Home made manifold built to fit exactly. It's not fully inserted in the picture but it fits bang in the middle. This is important because you want a nice even flow through the grain when sparging. Water has this annoying tendency to take the path of least resistance, causing some of your grain to be wetter/dryer than others and more importantly, when sparging, causes your sugars to not be rinsed off the grain evenly. Causing your mash to lose efficiency.

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Underside of manifold. Slots cut at 45 degrees. Originally tried holes but these caused problems. Took a dremel to it and made the slots. Improved the design massively. Much smoother flow and at least 15% increase in efficiency.

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30l Burco tea urn conversion. Managed to get this bad boy for free from a friend. The element was totally shot along with the thermostat. Think somebody had tried rewiring it and made a complete hash of it and then turned it on. Totally melted. Anyways. £30 for a new element and thermostat and 30 minutes later I had this bad boy running like a dream. It acts as my hot liquour tank and my copper.

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You can see my hop stopper in here. Super simple. Works perfectly. It's just a couple of elbow joints and a long piece of copper pipe with lots of holes drilled into the underside. It has a reducer at one end with a silicon o-ring so that it can be removed and cleaned and the end stopper is removable as well to make it super easy to clean.

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Hideous immersion cooler. It looks like ass because I had to bend it by hand with a pipe bender. It works really well though, so looks aren't everything I guess.

So yeah, that's my set up. Simple and effective. I have omitted the various utensils and gadgets as well as my fermenters - big sealable food grade plastic buckets with a hole drilled in the top for a rubber bung and an airlock and conditioning vessels, which are pressurisable plastic 'kegs' with a tap which I can leave unpressurised and then use CO2 when it's ready for dispense or I can bottle from it when I need to.

[Luke]

You shave your hands at your wrists? Might want to rethink that one (Hey, hey, hey. Three personal attacks warrants one comeback no?).


I don't think the coil looks bad at all and the pot looks more than workable. What is your soaking and entire sparging process?

[puke_face]

Since when do we talk about homebrews on Racketboy? This is a retro gaming site...

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... 15&t=38658

Pretty sure that had nothing to do with retro gaming either.

Niode, a friend of mine was working on his immersion cooler today. Yours looks much better than his. He had an issue with his pipe being bent, and it was leaking into his wort, so he scrapped it and is in the process of making a new one. How long did it take you to make your manifold? Did you seal the copper fittings with solder?

When I first started brewing I just used a turkey deep fryer kit and the pot that came with it. Those are pretty cheap and maybe a good place to start before you invest in a pot with a spout.

That is a good idea, I never would have thought of that. I love your cooler as well

[dsheinem]

Since when do we talk about homebrews on Racketboy? This is a retro gaming site...

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... 15&t=38658

Pretty sure that had nothing to do with retro gaming either.

Homebrew. Homebrews.

>>>-------Lame Joke------->

-->your head<--

[Niode]

Niode, a friend of mine was working on his immersion cooler today. Yours looks much better than his. He had an issue with his pipe being bent, and it was leaking into his wort, so he scrapped it and is in the process of making a new one. How long did it take you to make your manifold? Did you seal the copper fittings with solder?

Yeah I sweat the pipe with a blowtorch and lead-free solder.

I borrowed one of those manual pipe benders the ones that are supposed to be used for bending 90 degrees and just took my time with it. Some people have made some beautiful immersion coolers. I'd love to know how they do them.

[Niode]

Just thought I would necro this thread to see if we have any more homebrewers around?

Brewing takes up a lot of my time these days, when I'm not gaming. A good friend of mine has a brewery now and we collab from time to time. It's cool to get beer that I've made into the hands of literally thousands of people.

My last brew was an Imperial Stout called Ewok. It was inspired by last years Imperial Porter called Spaceballs. This time I doubled the amount of hops and tweaked the grist and added cacao nibs and vanilla to the conditioning tank. It was suitably different so it got a different name. It came out at 12%. A rather ridiculously drinkable 12% at that. Made a limited run off into a carboy filled with Coffee. That is just insanely drinkable. It's the closest I've ever had beer to taste like iced coffee. That was definitely a hit with the ladies.