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.

Brewing Equipment - Stainless Steel

Stainless Steel (SS) brewing equipment is the dream of all homebrewers, it's shiny, it looks cool and it looks semi-professional, all things that appeal to us brewing geeks. However the major draw back is the cost! All of my all-grain equipment (fermenters, kettle, mash tun) was sourced or made with a total outlay of about €200 (approx. $300). Here is a quick comparison of the costs:

BoilerMaker Brew Kettles, the
Rolls Royce of home brewing.

My kettle is a converted 33 ltr plastic fermentor that has been fitted with two kettle elements, a hop strainer and a tap, this was a DIY project and cost me about €60. An 8g SS kettle with tap, thermometer and false bottom will cost a minimum of €150, the really good ones (like boilermaker) could cost three times this amount.

My mash tun is a converted 28 ltr cool box, I bought this already converted at a cost of about €85. An SS mash tun with tap, thermometer and false bottom starts at about €250.

My fermenters are all plastic, I have both bucket and carboy types, each costing €10-15 each. An SS conical fermenter will cost you in the region of €700-800!

My DIY Kettle.

Living in Ireland adds another layer of cost as these products are not available in Ireland and so you will also be paying to ship them from the US or UK.

The reason for my post on this topic is that I have been considering switching some of my equipment to SS. Initially I think I will look to replace my kettle, I have found a US eBay shop that has 8g SS kettles with thermometer and tap for about €180 (including postage). I will then use my current kettle as a hot liqueur tank (HLT). The next step after this will then be to replace my Mash Tun with SS and then finally (probably in the very distant future) I will look at investing in a SS conical fermenter. All of this is further complicated by the fact that the switch to SS in my boiler will mean that I will also need to invest in a gas burner and some form of stand, as my current set up is all electric.

Whoever said that home brewing was cheap? It may be cheap to get into, but once it has it's talon like claws in you it will drag you down the route of wanting the cool equipment, however it will probably pay for itself in 20-30 brews :-)

For your viewing pleasure here are some links to some shiny brewing equipment:

BoilerMaker Brew Kettles
Hop & Grape SS Mash Tun
Blichmann Conical Fermenters