Moving the Brewery Outside, Part I

I'm considering moving my brewery outside. This has many ramifications. Some pluses and minuses to this are outlined below.

First, the biggest plus is that I can use a burner with more BTUs. This has been a plague since I moved to the stainless steel boil kettle. I simply cannot get enough heat to get a good boil going. I've not been able to get a good hot break, which leaves some haziness in my final product. By moving the brewery outside, I can go from about 20,000 BTUs over two natural gas burners on the stove to about 75,000 BTUs on a single propane burner outside.

The biggest minus is brewing during the summer. Summers in Tucson can break 110° F, which would be miserable to spend all day in, over hot brewing equipment. Summer temperates in Tucson can last from mid May to mid October. During the hottest months, June, July, and August, I imagine that I will not be brewing. One thing that can offset this is perhaps to move indoors during the hot months.

Another big plus to moving the brewery outside, is that it frees up the kitchen and makes SWMBO happy. To be honest, she has never complained that much, except when she wants to cook something, or I do something stupid, like not tighten down the hose to the washer hookup good enough and spill water everywhere.

A big minus is that I'll lose quick access to kitchen things, like a sink, hotpads to grab hot pans with, glassware to take a runoff sample in, and so on. When I need something quick, it is all right there.

That is about it for moving the brewery outside. Next time, I'll put up my plans I've been diagramming.