Brewing With Brad

Well we sure had a great brewing session over at Brad's house.
I woke up at 6 AM and had my usual 2 cups of coffee and headed over to Brad's house.
When I got there Brad was already in the garage and was busy sanitizing the brewery hoses and pumps and plumbing. That took about 15 minutes. Then we both reviewed the printout of the day's brewing session and proceded to create the 5 gallon batch of Copper Ale. It was a spin-off of a recipe that was published in this month's Zymurgy magazine but with a couple of changes to the hop bill and grain bill as well. Brad lit the burner and proceeded to get the filtered water up to the dough in temperature of 163 degF. Our target temperature was 152 degF and he hit it right on! Needless to say that the rest of the brewing session went without a hitch, and from what Brad tells me, the beer is fermenting like crazy! He had to install a blow-off hose as it was blasting out of his 6 gallon carboy like crazy! This beer is going to be a winner, and I can't wait to try some. But wait we must....patience is the name of this game.

Below are a few shots of Brad's brewing setup which was based after my system. Speaking of my system, I have already reconfigured my plumbing situation and also lowered the sparge tank and placed it to the right of the mash tun at the same height. Doing this has simplified the plumbing layout and it will now be easier for me to monitor the sparge level in the tank. Enough already!
Enjoy the shots, and I'll see ya next week and we'll talk about the design of the 1 burner brewery.

Cheers! (_)3



Here's Brad firing up the burner at sunrise.



An over the shoulder shot of the lit burner:



Here's Brad's brewery layout and homemade stand!



The HLT, power box, pump and digital temp comtroller.



3 wise men! the HLT, mash tun and boil kettle:



Here's the mash tun and the heat exchanger, powered by a 1500 watt heating element:
The mash temp is controlled by this setup and the digital temp comtroller monitors the mash temp and runs the pump if the temps get too low. This setup can hold a +/- 1 degF all day long!
Actually, the pump only came on once during the entire 90 minute single infusion mash!



Here's a peek into the mash tun. Plenty of room for more grain!



Another shot of the setup.



Hey...it's light out!



Another shot of the HLT...



Here's the wort at full boil.





Here's the 8:15 am breakfast, ummmm Porter and doughnuts!



The heat exchanger setup again.





See ya next week! Any questions??