Brew Stand Upgrades

The past few weeks have been busy here at SBBC. Joe, Dan, Glenn and I have been working on upgrading the brew stand. Glenn and I built the stand in July and brewed on it in August. We've been planning on the upgrades since we built it. We started with a few coats of gloss black engine paint. This will hold up to the heat from the burners. The newest project is new burners and a single gas manifold to control all three burners. Joe and Dan were able to get the required parts and assemble them. The next step now is that Glenn and I need to fabricate the brackets for the burners to attach to the stand. Once we build those, we can put it all together and test it out. The last step to the upgrade is to finish converting the keg and big ass 14 gallon into a keggle and hot liquor tank. Some of the pics are below. I'll update this post once as the upgrades come along.

A few coats of gloss black paint on the brew stand

New propane manifold

New gas regulator and supply line 

Starting gas manifold assembly

Gas manifold assembled and labeled

Hopfengarten Harvest 09/15/2013

Yesterday was finally the day to harvest my meager crop of hops. My Galena hops grew surprisingly well for a first year bine. The Newport and Willamette were slow to grow and did not produce any hops this year. First years bines are not really expected to produce much, as they are mostly working on growing their root structure for the following years. 

Regardless, I was excited that Galena started blooming away and sprouted hops. Galena produced 3 ounces of hops before drying. The hops were picked and spread out onto a window screen above a box fan and a 500 watt work light to supply warm airflow to dry them. I put them into a zip-lock bag and into the freezer until our next brew day. I'm excited to see how they grow next season. Here are some pics below. 

Hop Bines

Galena hops prior to harvest

All picked

Drying the hops

Another view of our redneck drying system

All bagged up

Ready for the freezer

Red Rye IPA All-Grain Brew - 08/18/2013

On August 18th 2013, SBBC undertook a big step forward by brewing our first all-grain beer, a Red's Rye IPA clone. This is the scaled down version of the process that larger breweries use. This is more labor intensive and a longer process, but it should make better beer. This is also the first time we used the 3 tier brew stand we built in house a few months ago. It is also the first use of the HLT and MLT coolers we purchased from Northern Brewer. Overall the brew went well. We undershot the pre-boil gravity, but I was able to add 1.5 lbs of DME to correct it. The OG was 1.065 which is just under the estimated 1.066. The FG was 1.010. If I did the math correctly, the ABV should be 7.2%, up from the estimated 6.6%. I think we were successful. The beer was kegged and carbed last Sunday and it should be ready to drink this weekend. I'll post an update then. Cheers. 

Yeast Starter on the stir plate

Our 3 Tier stand put to work

Grain bed after draining the wort

Collecting the wort to boil

Getting there

Boiling away

Chilling the wort

Happy, bubbling airlock