After a long period of not brewing while this little brewery was being slowly designed and built, last week the sweet wort flowed again in our little slice of heaven. We kicked off the inaugural run of the Silver Luce Brewery on 10/27/07. There are still additions and modifications that need to be made to the brewery but it’s functional enough to make beer.

I was fairly busy during most of the brew keeping everything operational and didn’t get a lot of pictures but in the end we brewed 10 gallons of American Brown Ale:

• 18 lbs American Two-row Pale
• 4.25 lbs of Crystal 40 L
• .5 lbs Chocolate
• 1.25 lbs American Wheat
• 1.1 oz Chinook (60 Min)
• .5 oz Northern Brewer (60 Min)
• .5 oz East Kent Goldings (30 Min)
• 1 oz Fuggles (30 Min)
• 2 oz Fuggles (1 Min)
• 2-3 tsp Irish Moss (10 Min)
• WLP060 American Ale Yeast Blend
• Mashed @ 154 F for 60 Min, 175 F Sparge water, hit a slightly lower OG than expected 1.057.

I made a starter for the yeast a few days before and used two 2000 ml flasks, which I alternated on my home made stir plate:

On brewday there was still a lot to be done. All the valves and connections had to be taped and tubing connected, the final pieces bolted (and duct-taped) on and everything had to be washed. Luckily I had some help:

Notice the cast on Harley’s arm. What a trooper, he worked through the pain:

The Silver Luce brewery as it stood just before the connections were made for the first run:

Flame on:

The insulated MT held this temp for 60 minutes without any movement! I’ve never had a mash not drop at least one degree before. I’m so happy with the insulation results. Say hello to 154 F:

Oh how beautiful the sight of a clear runoff can be:

Not to mention a full boil at sunset:

10 gallons equals a lot of spent grain. The plants are going to love the compost:

Starters are the way to go. We pitched and within an hour I had activity. Happy yeast are productive yeast:

The first brew on the new brewery went amazingly well. There are a few modifications to make and I’m still working out the details of a few new additions to make this thing really amazing but for now I’m going to get some brews under my belt while the rig keeps evolving.

Next up is a Robust Porter tomorrow night that I’m brewing with a neighborhood friend. Coincidentally it happens to be “Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day” so that will be cool. After that is a Oatmeal Stout that will be bottled and aged for a while. Then I’m thinking about making a Red but I still have to work out the recipe. Oh yeah, I also have to build the keggerator!

Once again it’s been a while since I posted but work has continued on this little project despite the lack of reporting. In fact the brewery was put through it’s paces last week with a 10 gallon run of an American Brown Ale. More on that in another post. This post is to show the newly insulated MT.

I got hold of some sheets of Armaflex insulation and proceeded to glue it on to my MT. Worked like a charm. After a 60 minute mash not a single degree was lost. I could have done 90 minutes without any loss I think.

So here it is:

Since this brewery will eventually be a HERMS system I have no need for a burner under the MT and so I insulated it with the leftover scraps of Armaflex.

Bottom view:

Of course I insulated the top too. The insulation sits on a wooden lid that I made out of 5/8 in plywood. I attached a stainless steel sheet to the bottom and put a hole through the center for the tubing of the manifold to go through. Note that the plastic ties are temporary until I finalize the design and mount it more permanently.

Lid:

Doesn’t the label look great on the black?!

I knew there was a reason why I had not finished building the return manifold for the mash/lauter tun up till now. I was never fully satisfied with the flexibility of my initial designs, given the variations in grain bed height for various recipes and switching between 5 and 10 gallon batches (if I were to do that). I think now I’ve hit upon a design that will be adaptable enough for any mash I conduct. OK, I did have a little help working out the design:

The biggest question I had was how best to adapt the length of the return pipe so that the manifold would be at the right height for each and every mash without the intake portion sometimes being way up in the air and other times right next to the lid.

I had originally planned on building various segments that I could screw together or be taken apart to get me to the right length pipe. Today I hit on the idea of using a length of tubing instead of the pipe. this way I could raise or lower to any length by attaching a simple hose clamp above the lid. The excess tubing could lie on top of the lid or be replaced entirely with a different length when the situation called for it.

I also incorporated a thermometer into the intake portion to give me another way to monitor the wort and/or H2O coming through the manifold. Used in conjunction with the temperature readings I’ll get from the MT and the HLT directly, this should give me a fairly good idea of what is happening inside my MT.

So it will work like this. The strike H2O and/or the recirculated wort will be pumped up to the intake manifold and enter in through their respective nipples (not shown). This design should allow me to keep both lines hooked up throughout the process when I finish putting the HERMS coil into the HLT (not the first batch):

The liquid will then travel down the hose, past the clamp and stop (a threaded fitting the hose will pass through, which will go through the yet to be built lid):

Finally it will travel through the “H” type manifold which will be suspended at the perfect height (as determined by the clamp placement) and gently distributed onto the grain bed:

If I need to, I will cut or drill additional holes or slats into the top of the manifold to better distribute the return. That will be a determination to be made later after some testing and usage determine the efficiancy of this design.

A look at the whole system. Don’t mind the tape, I haven’t connected the various parts yet:

The only question is how to mount it to the MT so that it’s positioned correctly. I need to think about that a bit. I’ll probably cut a hole around the top skirt somewhere so it sits something like this:

Overall I think this should work well for the system I’ve designed.

At last one of the aspects of this brewery build is behind me. The wiring is done!

I must take a moment to once again than my good friend Andy for talking me down from the edge when the first check of the wiring revealed that it was screwed up. He figured out that I had “zagged when I should have zigged”, as he put it. Basically I just wired the plug wrong and was running the power backward through the system. Have I mentioned that I hate electrical work? And plumbing. And roofing. And laying floor, in case any one was wondering.

Anyway after talking to him, the plug is rewired, the system is functional and I’m one step closer to brewing again. Wanna see it?

Proof that I’m no electrician:

The top boxes are the switches and the bottom an outlet individually controlled by the left top box switches. The right side is the master power and the light switch. The piping in the back houses the wiring up to the light:

A shot of the boxes and light housing. I’ll get better lights, those were just to test the power:

Nifty little bend in the wiring casing that was a pain in the ass to run the wiring through and get through the wood correctly:

The brewery mocked up:

A look underneath:

Still need to mount the brackets for the burner, hook up the water filter system, make tops for the kegs and finish putting the manifold together. Then it’s a full system test with H2O only and if everything works right, brew time!