30 gallons, 3 tuns, 3 pots, & 5 fermentors

Wednesday, 23 April 2008, by Benjamin R

In early May the second annual heritage festival will be held in forest park.  The festival is a celebration of local brewers and breweries, and for the first time, the St Louis Brews will have their own tent.  In honor of this occurrence, I’ve offered up 30 gallons of my own tasty brew.  I looked over the list and opted for a style I didn’t see already represented, Oktoberfest.  My current set up can easily handle 10 gallons, but 30 gallons, I was going to need some help.

I shot out a request to anyone who had ever brewed a beer at my house and got a great reception.  In all I had more than half a dozen brewers show up to offer their help.  I took a page out of the AB playbook and opted for a blending method.  First things first though, I needed some equipment.  Another quick shout out for help and I secured 2 additional mash tuns, burners, and keggles.  It looked like everything was set.

We got started about 9 am on Sunday.  The weather looked overcast, but that wasn’t going to keep me from brewing some good beer.  We put together a bit of an assembly line and were able to mill up three separate grain bills, all identical.  Mash in was right at 10 am staggered by 15 minutes, and we were taking first running’s by 11.

 The 15 minute stagger worked out great.  By the time one was finished running, there was just enough time to add sparge water and move onto the next.  My sparging schedule is pretty strait forward, mash for an hour, sparge for 30, then for 15, then run it strait trough, so by the second sparge, we were juggling all three pretty consistently.

After the second sparge we carefully moved the wort upstairs and got all 3 pots heating towards a boil.  Our total volume per pot at this point was about 7 gallons.  As the pots were coming to a boil I was still sparging into a bucket and adding it equally to each of the boil pots.

 You can tell from the above picture we made the propane distributors pretty happy that day.  The boil was pretty simple with only 3 hop additions, 9 total, again we staggered the batches by about 15 minutes, with the first coming to a boil around 12:30.

This was my first brew using a couple of new tools.  First off, I recently added a pump to the mix.  This was a real life saver, we were able to just leave the pots outside and with the help of a extra long hose, pump the hot wort strait from the burner to the pump, through the CFC and into the fermentors, which brings me to my second new piece of gear, a 14.5 gallon conical.  I’ll dedicate a post to this later.

This is where I employed my blending technique.  I spread my brew out between 5 vessels, 4 6.5 glass carboys, and my new SS conical, which held about 10 gallons.  As we cooled the wort, I rotated though each of the fermentors while my helpers switched out empty pots for full ones.  It was nearly perfectly timed.  By the end, we had 30 gallons of beer, pitched and stored, and were cleaned up by 2:30.  It was a great brew day, if slightly hectic.  Oh did I mention harv brewed up another 20 gallons at the same time?  I’ll leave that post to him.

Brewing Pliny

Monday, 03 March 2008, by Scott T.

March 2 brought a literal change in the weather.  After nearly two weeks of cold, wet, blustery conditions, Mother Nature decided to give us a taste of spring.  Temps in the upper 70s proved perfect for an outdoor brew day.

Greg and I had discussed creating a clone of Russian River brewery's Pliny The Elder for some time - hop shortage be damned!  Between the two of us (with help from Benjamin, Anthony and Jill), we put together enough hops to make this bitterest of IPAs.

We had never added hops to the mash before!

Whole hop additions were allowed to float freely in the brew pot, but pellets were dumped into a strainer bag supported by a collar.  The bag was full at the end of the 90 minute boil.  We couldn't have added any more - we had simply run out of room!

The puppies were exhausted from watching us brew all day.

That's Brady snoozin' and her sister Brix in the foreground.

250 IBU's?  Oh yeah!

Over the Hills and Far Away

Tuesday, 26 February 2008, by Doc Thirst

It’s been a rough 2008 so far huh? New Years, Burn’s Night, Marti Gras, a couple Brews meetings and several gallons of brew sessions; a blurry ’08 for sure! So I thought I deserved a much-needed break from the burner to partake in another favorite hobby, watching other people brew! In this case, it was off to the IL Boys’ garage where Dave’s eldest, Nate was trying his hand at the family hobby. 

I woke up and early and made a call to check the brew session was indeed still on. A groggy wife confirmed so I loaded up the dog and headed out. There was little to no traffic so I made it downtown quick. There was a ton of ice and steam making the river look especially cool (no pun intended…well maybe a bit). I tried in vane to snap a picture, but realized I was doing the exact thing that scares the shit out of me when I drive, so I put my hands back on the wheel, our loss.

I arrived at the IL Boys place(s) just in time to for mash in, and fortunately, in time to see Dave firing up his new tool, The Stir-a-nator (still working on the name)…

 

The Destruct-a-whirl slowly worked the mash around a steady pace that just screamed higher efficiency and faster conversion, however, despite this clear advantage (think more surface area), I have a few reservations about the Super Spin-steer (insert milking grain for all its worth joke here). First off, you still need to let the mash sit to establish a grain bed. Second, does the constant stirring of the mash cause extreme temperature drops? Lastly, there is the hard to shrug off feeling you will never see clear beer using a Roto-masher. Regardless of my reservations, the finished wort (an Irish Red by the way) was spot on for color, and pretty darn clear. 

Anyway, the mash process was a site to behold and reminded me of the giant mashes you see on an AB tour. Anyway, the brewers were concerned we didn’t have a good handle on the style so during the sparge and boil, we sampled a variety of commercial examples. Smelling a freshly opened beer, another Brews member, Bill, swung by to toss back a few and give his take on the Frankin-turner, and before I knew it, it was time for chilling.

 

Check out that shinny ass keg, pretty huh, mine look like they came out of an Iraqi 7-11. It’s a sight to behold, here’s a better shot of the wort…

 

Can you pick out the Red? Nah, me neither, but not because it didn’t end up nearly perfect, barely .001 off the target gravity. Looks like the Red isn’t the only tasty beer headed down the pipes over in Illinois. 

I finished my day by eating enough pulled pork to kill a small African nation and sampling some really tasty stew. I heard through the grapevine, the Red will be making an appearance in an upcoming meeting, and I can’t wait to taste it, but I’m even more interested to see if the Robo-twister has an effect on clarity. Until the next brew day…

Super Martis Brew 2008

Monday, 25 February 2008, by robbins

Here are some pictures from the STL Martis Brew '08.  Not sure if there will be a Martis Brew '09 as it's a delicate balance between collecting beads and brewing beer.  This brew session was based on BierMuncher's Centennial Blonde.

Preparing to brew.

Oddily enough we were across from the Brewers' House.

Mashing back in a few.

Raise your hand if you love AB.  Delicioso.

Staying warm.

A special thanks to Raiden.  A wise and powerful force to add to any brew session.

Chillin'

Whose driving me home.

You can see Anthony's beer in the last picture, but I failed to actually get a picture of Anthony.  Thanks again to Ben, Tonya, Uncle David, Byron, Anthony, and everyone who could attend.  See you next Martis Brew. 

Cheers!

p.s.  Martis Gras Blonde is on tap now and turned out to be a tasty brew!

Got weldless?

Tuesday, 12 February 2008, by Anthony H

Interested in converting that Sanke keg or new cooler you have but don't want to spend the $25-35 for a weldless fiting?

Well then you are in luck! The part list is below, and here is the link to the full article.

http://www.antiochsudsuckers.com/tom/DIYweldlessfittings.htm