American wheat beer brew day

Brewing my lightly hopped summer wheat beer the other day I had a bit of a misstep. In the mash or in the sparg I had 1 gallon too much water. I did save the extra gallon and canned it for use as a starter down the road. My OG was also a bit low because of this but not drastically. This along with the heff I brewed 2 weeks ago will fill out two spaces in the kegerator I finished building. The one spot currently flowing is a porter that I brewed a while back. It is also a good thing it is on the cold side here in Texas. I am letting the new beer ferment in the ambient temperature of the garage since I pilfered the Johnson controls from my fermentation fridge to put it on the kegerator. Now I need to come up with the next beer to brew at the end of February on a brew day / BBQ I am hosting.

Kegerator Construction

Here are some pictures of the kegerator project.

Step one was cleaning the freezer.

Here are the collar parts stained.

This is the collar assembled just before I added weatherstripping.

Getting the freezer ready for the collar by removing the lid. This freezer had no light in the lid so there was no electrical to deal with on the top end.

Here is the collar on the freezer body. I used L brackets in the corners of the collar for strength and a clean, no fastener exterior. I had some Simpson L brackets that I bent to a Z shape for attaching the collar to the freezer and to give it directional stability.

Here is the lid reattached. The top two screws in the hinges I replaced with wood screws fastened into the collar. For the bottom two I very carefully drilled new holes in the back of the freezer. I didn't want to hit any coils if there were any there.

Here is the freezer placed into its final home next to my upright fridge that I use for fermenting.

Five taps are installed as well as a bottle opener and a cap catcher I made from some scrap. I made a mistake when I ordered the four keg kit. I should have upgraded the manifold to the five keg version. I will pick up a Y hose barb at a hardware store to make the 5th tap usable. I am also going to pick up a quick disconnect like air tools have. This way I can disconnect the CO2 tank and take it with me along with a picnic tap. I can also connect it to my commercial tap that way as well. Grated I may use that only once a year but it is worth it not having to pump a Bronco tap.

Here it is in all its exterior glory. In total I think the freezer could hold eight soda kegs. I will probably keep the extra open space for bottled beer. I have many friends that are set in their ways of drinking only macro lights. One day I will get around to brewing a super light lager for them.

Keging Beer

My last post saw me buying a keg setup for homebrew… I should have jumped a little higher than I did. Even at the time I knew one keg and one faucet just wouldn’t last. I just ordered a 4 keg and faucet addition from the same place I mentioned before. I also procured a 15 cubic foot chest freezer from craigslist. Practically brand new for $70. What was more shocking is that when I saw the listing and sent the poster an e-mail, the listing was all ready several days old and I still got it. I bought it, picked it up and it is now in a state of being converted for beer usage. I will post some pictures as soon as I finish it, probably this weekend.

The Best Laid Plans

AHHH… The fruits of getting older. Every year brings more knowledge, more goals both near and far and new adventures in brewing. This holiday season has started the ball rolling on some long held plans that will bring about the demise of bottling beer. I have placed an order for a keging setup. I placed an order with kegconnection.com on black Friday. They have a sale running on a fridge conversion kit including co2 tank, keg, lines, dual gauge regulator, faucet and shank for $129.95. My local shop is twice that. Check it out and consider giving them some business if you are looking to get into keging your beer. Now I need to find a chest freezer or another fridge to turn into a keg chamber seeing as I don’t want to sacrifice my current fridge used as a fermentation chamber.

My Hombrew Community

Being from the area around Houston you would think that there would be a large populous of brewers. Houston is the 4th largest city in the US and it feels like we have a very small population of home brewers. I would be surprised if per capita it is way down the list. There is only two supply shop that I know of, one of which is way, way, out of the way. That is until I just scoured Google and there appears to be one other possibility. Of all three only one has a web page. There are 2 clubs I know of but again are way out o the way. So how do I get my fix? I brew beer, read books, the internet and try new beers at a local liquor store that has a great selection. I continually try to get more buddies involved in the hobby. Some are quite interested but have not taken the leap. I’m thinking about hosting a monthly brew event for anyone I know that is local to come and learn and or brew on my equipment. I figure that way they can try their hand at brewing by only buying the ingredients. I have the fermentor space and secondary space to do this. If they wanted to do small batches it would be even easier since they could ferment in the 5 gallon carboys I have. It’s a good excuse to continuously brew and have friends get together.

Plans Kyboshed By Work

My plans for hunting this weekend were kyboshed by work. I am a PM and I couldn’t get a hold of the end user of one of the jobs I am running. So instead of being able to take all of next week of I am back at the office bright and early Monday.

Even though I was not able to go hunting I did brew beer. The first time I have brewed since May for various reasons. And such a wonderful brew day it was. The morning started out cool even though I got a late 9am start. Everything went overly smoothly for not having brewed in so long. I even employed a new rolling tool cart I have and it assisted quite well. It allowed me to be able to roll my cooler mash tun to the kitchen so I wouldn’t have to run constantly in and out of the house. I was able to prep and sanitize everything while heating mash and sparge water and even start the mash all in the kitchen. The cart was at the perfect height that allowed me to have the wort drain directly into the boil kettle while it was on the burner base. This let me have the burner start heating before the sparge was complete saving a lot of time. The cooling of the wort was also fast since the ground water has cooled substantially here in Texas over the last month. All in all from the time I rolled in the cart to the final cleaning of the last piece of equipment was 5 hours. That is the fastest I have ever pulled off a brew session. No I wait and hope that my first attempt at a brown porter comes out well.

FF "Why do I brew?"

Why do I brew?

I remember why I started brewing the first time. It wasn’t legal for me to buy finished beer in the store. You see, I was 18 and living in a dorm room as a freshman in college. Just extract brews all kits. Nothing fancy or worth writing home about, it was simply a means to an end which was getting drunk. After my freshman year I packed everything up and didn’t look at it again for several years. In that time I worked in a bar, started a small business, wrapped up school and closed a small business. All the while I continued my outdoor hobbies, found other hobbies, and realized I had a taste for the finer things in life. By the time I closed down my small business to move away from the college town to the city to take a newly offered position I had a scotch collection that surpasses most. Unpacking my alcohol reserve supply of a small country I rediscovered my brewing equipment. Realizing that the only beers I had been drinking were of the craft brew variety I decided it was time once again to try my hand at brewing beer. This time around it was not for the only reason of getting trashed cheap. The last five years have seen brewing become a true escape and a means to relax form the beginnings of crafting a recipe to the magic conversion of the last drop back to water. It has witnessed the gathering of friends, solo brew journeys, crazy experiments with ingredients people would never brew with, sun rise, sun sets and all manner of weather. So why do I brew? It’s fun, that would be the short answer, but it is so much more. It’s a way to slow down time for a short while, maybe to live a bit of history, to create, to slow down and watch the world go by. Maybe it’s that elusive dream of finally creating the ever elusive perfect beer. Its enjoying the perfect beer, the one you created, flaws if any and all, cold from the fridge, while brewing the next beer to become the perfect beer.