Fell off the brewing slippery slope

Just spent the day making 10 gallons of pumpkin ale. Questioning my sanity right now on that quantity, but I went light on the spices so it should have just a hint of pie spice. I did dump in a few pounds of pumpkin (Canned) and a couple of pounds of pureed butternut squash.

Hit my mash temp dead on!

I too would be interested in the EHerms.

Right now I use a second burner, a turkey fryer, and an old immersion chiller as a heat exchanger for raising mash temps in case I either miss my strike temp, or for mashout.

Today was a good day, I hit it dead on with the first try!

I'm hoping the spices don't affect the rubber in my kegs too much.

The spices used here will be fine in the kegs (at least in my limited experience).. At least I haven't had a problem yet.... Or heard of one. Mostly rootbeers problem is the wintergreen, and I doubt you added any of that here...

Nice job hitting temp that always feels good, the squash is an added variable there that makes it a bit more challenging (what is the thermal mass of pumpkin.. Hmm.). If you later decide the spice is to light you can always add an infusion and bump it up a little pretty easy, lowering it is a lot harder and involved making more beer and hoping the blend is good (and I'm with you that less is more here).

I'm also going to say that butternut is best pumpkin (and yes I know it's not pumpkin ) the little sugar sweet pie pumpkins are a close second, but harder to find. The jack-o-lantern types are imho pretty useless for any sort of cooking (maybe OK for soup).

Super score! With any luck I'll have my keg fridge in the garage today. Honey brown is about half gone, hefe is a week away from being carbonated and the usual milk stout is in the carboy. Good pic's of your assembly Darren...I need help!

Real sweet deal Darren Those kegs run $85.00 each here! Have fun with it I would get into brewing, but why? When my son and daughter in law brew, I have no need, let them handle it Official taste tester is my role

Excellent thread and real good deal Darren.
Ryan your knowledge continues to amaze me. You just answered a question that has puzzled me for a long time. The wintergreen oil explains all.
When i was a kid in SA we had a single source rootbeer producer. Loved the stuff. Then it died out never to make a reappearance. (Guess market was too small.) Used to treat myself to one during trips but you know how it goes was never the same. I still try out a new name if i find a brand i have never tried during travels. But i always wondered what it was that reminded me of the smell of Dad. He used to use wintergreen for all sorts of ailments. Lol.

I tried brewing when i first came to Canada. Found a really great place with proper copper kettles and a really well stocked raw ingredients pantry.
But the resulting quantity was too much for me to drink before its disposal date. I gave cases away and dont think everyone receiving them enjoyed the brew variety i did. Always preferred taste and quality over Coors or Bud.
Have also decide to basically give up beer as much as possible to help with load shedding.

Best of luck with the brewing Darren looking forward to hearing more as you get into it.



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Well I can start a thread at some point with the E-herms system when I get moving on it again. Just need some plugs so I can wire my Control box. And Stout is fermenting and Just added the first 2 hops to the Imperial IPA. 90min boil cant wait to try that one!

Thanks Jim, the E-herms sounds like an interesting system, was looking at one on youtube earlier.

I cleaned up and moved the Kegerator down to the sun room this afternoon. Didn't bother cleaning the tower or tap as I'm planning to replace it with a three head since it will hold three of the 5 gal kegs and the co2. Unfortunately the post diameter is only 2 1/4, otherwise I'd have just added a two head extension on top of it, but all I've found are made for 3" diameter posts.


I'm entertaining the idea of making a new post, but I think another project may push my wife over the edge.

Darren Wright said:

.... I think another project may push my wife over the edge.

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Make sure to get a video...if it goes viral you'll be rich!!

That looks right at home there

My fridge buy didn't go as planned...darn it! But I did keg a Hefe today. May just go to a BORG and buy a friggen fridge this weekend. As long as I can get them in the fridge, that's enough for now. MoreBeer dot com has some good taps and spikes...pending Brents approval . Like to see how you hook up everything, I have an idea, but the last idea I had died of loneliness.

Dang, That's too bad Jim.

The only faucet I'd recommend is the perlick. I think I have the old 525, but I think they've been discontinued.

The new one is the 630. They are of a forward sealing design, which has several advantages.

Perlick's 630SS Stainless Steel, Forward Sealing Beer and Wine Faucets are unique in both appearance and function. Perlick's revolutionary ball and floating O-ring design prevents beer from being exposed to air. As a result, the handle lever doesn't stick, and there is no build up of mold and bacteria in the faucet body. The micro-finished interior produces a smooth flow with less foaming ensuring a perfect pour every time. Fewer internal parts means better reliability and fewer service calls. Easy to clean-may be cleaned in place-Saves Time and Money.​

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http://www.homebrewing.org/Perlick-Stainless-Steel-630ss-Perl-Faucet_p_4606.html

You'll need a few other bits and bobs, like a shank, tailpiece, and maybe a growler filler. Being a turner, you should be able to come up with a pretty spiffy handle.

Jim Burr said:

May just go to a BORG and buy a friggen fridge this weekend.

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I'd go with a small deep freeze with an external temp controller like Brent has, I'll probably be picking up a second one like I just bought and using it for keg storage if I get into this. The controller are only about $18. If you decide to add taps, just do the 2x4 or 2x6 ring like he did. Can always convert back to a freezer if you get away from brewing.

I've just got the standard taps with my setup, but will upgrade to the perlick type soon when I convert it to a 3 tap tower.

We bought our son a Wheat beer brew kit last week for his birthday, he sent me some pics today to show how it went. He's going out to sea for a month, so his wife will have to bottle this while he's out. I'm sure I'll be getting a text or two for some how-to's...not that I know myself.



Funny thing, just looking at the pics, it looked like he made a small batch looking at those first two pics. Didn't realize I ordered him the kit with the 40 quart kettle (40qts = 10 gallons), they had one that was 32 quarts.

Brent Dowell said:

Dang, That's too bad Jim.

The only faucet I'd recommend is the perlick. I think I have the old 525, but I think they've been discontinued.

The new one is the 630. They are of a forward sealing design, which has several advantages.

http://www.homebrewing.org/Perlick-Stainless-Steel-630ss-Perl-Faucet_p_4606.html

You'll need a few other bits and bobs, like a shank, tailpiece, and

Click to expand...

+10 to the Perlicks, I actually have the predecessor (Vent-Matic which is apparently "back" on the market rsn but as yet unavailable and given the history I'm not holding my breath) but they're basically the same design. The forward seal taps are sooo much better than the rear seal taps.

When you're buying shanks, etc.. get stainless throughout. That way you only cry once

Brent Dowell said:

maybe a growler filler.

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Hmm, I found a piece of hose that fit tightly inside my taps... but still get some foam. Have you tried the specially made pieces? They look like they're basically the same plus a couple of gaskets but wasn't sure..

Darren Wright said:

I'd go with a small deep freeze with an external temp controller like Brent has, I'll probably be picking up a second one like I just bought and using it for keg storage if I get into this..

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An ancient build log: http://getaclue.org/~ryan/beer-freezer/
I'm not claiming that the build quality is all that, but it works and looks reasonably ok.. I might choose different wood if I was redoing it, but we had a baby beer on the way and time was pressing so it got done when it did how it did.

When I went shopping for that freezer I made carboard cutouts of my kegs and a carboy and went around putting them into freezers to see what size would hold the most kegs/sq ft Made for some strange looks but I've been pretty happy with it partially because of that.

Since then I've upgraded the CO2 manifold to be 4 individual pressure regulators which is really sweet to have but massively overkill. Having two pressure zones is nice though so you can keep the soda water at high pressure and the beer lower.

Darren Wright said:

Funny thing, just looking at the pics, it looked like he made a small batch looking at those first two pics. Didn't realize I ordered him the kit with the 40 quart kettle (40qts = 10 gallons), they had one that was 32 quarts.

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The 40 quart kettle is the way to go, in my opinion for a couple of reasons.

1) Even with a 5gallon batch, if you want to do a full boil and get 5 gallons in the fermenter, you may need to start with 6 or more gallons.
For a 5 gallon batch, You also need to plan on losses from racking, etc. So you may even want to start with more than 5 gallons in the ferementer.
I generally lose a couple of gallons during the boil on a 10 gallon batch.
2) If he wants to move to all grain someday, you may even collect a little more than that in fermenter. Also the bigger the kettle, the more insurance you have against a boil over. Not that you wont get one, but if you brew inside, cleaning up after a boil over is a huge pain.

Ryan Mooney said:

Hmm, I found a piece of hose that fit tightly inside my taps... but still get some foam. Have you tried the specially made pieces? They look like they're basically the same plus a couple of gaskets but wasn't sure..

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The fillers that have the double o-rings that fit inside work great. You have to make sure you get the right one though.
The perlick 525 is apparently a different diameter than the 630, and different from the 'standard' taps.
Gives you a smaller diameter tube to use, they stay put, and very little foam. I've even used to to bottle up a small batch of to-go bottles.

I made a wheeled watertight box that I mounted 2 taps on. It would hold 2 kegs and a 5# Co2 cylinder. I used to put a couple kegs in it and take it to work parties when I had an office to go to. I use the older style taps on those, cause the beer doesn't stay around long and it works fine as long as you clean them out right away.

Darren Wright said:

We bought our son a Wheat beer brew kit last week for his birthday, he sent me some pics today to show how it went. He's going out to sea for a month, so his wife will have to bottle this while he's out. I'm sure I'll be getting a text or two for some how-to's...not that I know myself.

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Funny thing, just looking at the pics, it looked like he made a small batch looking at those first two pics. Didn't realize I ordered him the kit with the 40 quart kettle (40qts = 10 gallons), they had one that was 32 quarts.

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Looks like they did a good job!

I wish I'd had a kettle with a tap and a wort chiller when I made my first batches. That is definitely the way to go. No siphoning!

Bottling without a siphon should be pretty simple too. We'll be here when your D.I.L. has questions!

Brent Dowell said:

The 40 quart kettle is the way to go, in my opinion for a couple of reasons.

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Agreed, I wouldn't do a full 5 gallon batch in less than a 30qt kettle and that can get a bit tight at times and for 10 gallon batches I have a ~14 gallon kettle.

Brent Dowell said:

The fillers that have the double o-rings that fit inside work great. You have to make sure you get the right one though.

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Interesting.. I'm guessing that finding one what fits my vent-matic taps may well be a lost cause, but will have to poke around.

Brent Dowell said:

<snip portable system> I use the older style taps on those, cause the beer doesn't stay around long and it works fine as long as you clean them out right away.

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Same on my jockey box setup, no reason to put the fancy taps there.. Unfortunately it mostly gets used as a loaner and the whole "cleaned right out" bit often laggs more than I'm strictly happy about (it doesn't get loaned out as much as it used to either .. "can you please explain to me why I'm spending an hour cleaning 4 day old stale beer out of my jockeybox that I loaned to you FOR FREE.. WITH A CLEANING KIT for your convenience?" not that I'm bitter about it.. well after like the 4th different person who did that.. yeah maybe just a smidge).

I stopped at a local brew store tonight to get a CO2 bottle, got home and had several packages.

The brew kit, including the large pot and immersion coil.


and the burner.

Still have some more packages to arrive, but may pop the yeast pouch so it will be ready for the weekend. I also picked up an apple cider kit, which might get started this weekend as well, but may wait for the beer to ferment first then start it.

Christmas in September! Yahoo!