Friday, March 9, 2012

Its nearly ready....

It has been a bit quiet on the brewing front recently and there is a good reason for it. Over the last few months I have been slowly pulling together all the pieces for my shiny new SS home brewery. I have pretty much gotten everything at this stage and have done some work converting the garden shed into a brew shed. Next steps are to put everything together and give it a test run. New additions to my brew equipment include:

  • A 50 liter stainless steel mash tun.
  • A 40 liter stainless steel kettle
  • A solar pump
  • Quick disconnects
The pics are to give a snapshot of current progress, hoping to give everything a test run this weekend (water in the system only) and then to have my first brew day on the new equipment over St Patricks weekend.

You may notice that there are only two brew vessels instead of the standard three. I do have a 33 liter bucket kettle that I can add to the system to act as a HLT, however with the new set up my plan is to try the no-sparge AG method. This, as the name suggests, means that you put all of the required brewing water in the mash tun and then drain to the kettle. The downside is a slight loss in efficiency, probably down to 70-73%, however I feel that the benefits outweigh this. If it does not work out I can always add the 33 liter HLT into the system.

3 comments:

Kennypo said...

Is that an insulated ss mashtun on the right? If so, where did you get the mashtun? I've looked on ebay as some have suggested with no luck. Thanks!

Kennypo said...

Is that an insulated ss mashtun on the right? If so, where did you get the mashtun? I've looked on ebay as some have suggested with no luck. Thanks!

Mark (Halite) said...

Yes its an insulated mashtun with a hop screen. I got this online from Hop & Grape in the UK (www.hopandgrape.co.uk/), very good quality and highly recommeneded.