Moving the Brewery Outside, Part II
As I mentioned last time, I've been thinking about moving the brewery outside. To consider this, I've diagrammed what it might look like.
The images below show the different steps to brewing on an outdoor system, which I have yet to build. Basically, the whole setup is based upon a stepped, three tier wooden frame, built from two-by-fours and plywood, all sitting on casters. It should be noted that the bottom most tier is actually the ground, and between the top most tier and the middle tier is a shelf to hold a propane tank.
This first image shows the mash. In this image, the top tier does not have anything on it. On the middle tier is a 40 quart, Polar Ware, boil kettle, which holds the mash liquor, sitting on a BE410 burner from MoreBeer. The bottom most tier has my MiniBrew Mash/Lauter Tun.
The next image shows lautering. The top most tier is the hot liquor tank, a Polar Ware kettle, sitting on the MoreBeer BE410 burner. The middle tier is my MiniBrew Mash/Lauter Tun. The bottom most tier is a Polar Ware boil kettle that I use to collect my sweet wort. The whole thing sits about six foot high.
The third image shows the boil. The top most tier now holds an empty Polar Ware kettle with piece of plywood on it, to extend the height. On top of that is my cold liquor tank, a blue plastic tub full of ice and water. The BE410 burner has been moved from the top most tier to the middle tier. My Polar Ware boil kettle has been moved from the bottom tier to the middle tier, on top of the burner. Green garden hoses go from the cold liquor tank to the copper immersion wort chiller in the boil kettle, out to the yard. The bottom most tier now holds my conical fermenter, a Blichmann, 7 gallon Ferminator. The whole thing sits about six foot five inches.
All the images shown are to scale, so I have an idea what things look like relative to each other. This gives me an idea at to what my brew day will look like, and what I need to build. I'll definitely need a step-latter to reach the top most tier, to place a full hot liquor tank on it, or to pour ice and water in my cold liquor tank.
That is it for now. I'll keep you guys informed when it comes to building the thing.
6 comments:
Nice diagrams! You've put a lot of thought into your outdoor brewery. I take it that you use a tub of ice water instead of just attaching a garden hose to the house water is due to the temperature of your water being too high. You may need to keep a lot of ice on hand and a 2nd hose to restock it as one big blue bucket may not have enough water to fully cool your wort.
I'm jealous of that Blichmann stainless fermenter. Wow. That's one nice item. I've never fully understood just how those are supposed to work best. The cone shape of the bottom better collects the sediment and allows you to drain clearer beer from the top valve? Then you can collect yeast or dump trub through the bottom valve? Is that how it works?
What you do it get it down as far as you can with water from the house, around 80 degrees F, and then hook it up to the blue tub. I use between 4 and 6 bags of ice, depending on how cold I want it.
The conical works exactly as you described it.
You can't beat brewing outside on a sunny day
This looks a whole load more organised than my collection of buckets, upturned beer crates and an old table!
Your diagrams are pretty spiffy and are much better than what I came up with when I put my system together!
The one thing you should really think about is the step of lifting the boil kettle up to the middle tier, after your runoff is complete. I used to do that with the help of my wonderful, understanding and athletic wife, and it always scared the crap out of me. Lifting 12+ gallons of 150 degree liquid is a recipe for at least two different kinds of disaster. I modified my idea so that my HLT is on the ground, and I use a 1-gallon Pyrex container to introduce the water into the mash tun.
I also have preferred gravity feed systems and living in New Orleans know the aggravation of hot weather brewing...but AZ is dry heat...it's still hot...being baked (AZ) or boiled LA is still bad.Do U own all of this equipment already? I would consider a rolling cart-see http://hbd.org/rlaborde/rig.htm. I agree with "yimby" about lifting..I use a harbor freight 60 buck hoist in my garage ceiling and gravity flow hot water to tun on ground from a burner on a 4' high surface,hoist it to 4' level which is the height of my cart and roll it to garage door and gravity flow to boil pot which is out side in shade on patio,back to beneath hoist and onto ground level.
A few general comments...
-Propane is closer to 110-160K BTU whereas stoves are usually 8K/burner so U will see a BIG time change so U will shorten the brewday a lot
-Prechillers on hose water do NOT work on a practical basis-google "prechillers" or visit tastybrew.com forum and U can see a rather lengthy discussion about it-see "hank" as author.Immersion chillers will take wort to within 20 degrees of the coolant,CFCs to within 10 and Cu in convoluted Cu (my fav) near 6 degrees
..here's a nice discussion I just found on chilling from a fellow hot weather brewer Floridian
http://www.spearfishingspuc.org/dean/chilling.html
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