BamfBeer Blog

Some prep work had to be done on brew day. This is my handy work - a hole cut in the top of a keg that we’re using for our boil kettle. Don’t do it this way. I was under pressure to get it done, so I used a sawzall, which doesn’t cut in circles. Either use a jigsaw with a metal-cutting blade, or (much preferred) get a welder to do it with a plasma cutter. Regardless, don’t forget to deburr the edges and clean the keg to insure that there are no metal shavings in the finished product. I washed this one keg out probably 5 times before I was confident that there was nothing left.

Another hack courtesy of me. This was our old boil kettle, but we decided to use it as our new mash tun, replacing a very, very old coleman cooler. I just cut that notch into it so that the false bottom (also new) would fit in the hole. I then hooked up the false bottom to the valve on the outside, and it was just about set.

Matt was in charge of wiring up the new pump, which took some time as well, so I didn’t feel too bad about taking so long cutting and cleaning kegs and stuff. This really should’ve been done and tested during the week, but you know how laziness can be. Here, Matt goes over the quite obviously copious documentation for the March pump. When it was all done, I have to say, Matt did a pretty masterful wiring job.

With pretty much everything in place, we dumped in our grains, and started heating our striking water. You can almost guess from the pic that we’re using 2-row pale malt, along with medium and dark crystal malt. If you want more details, search for “red ale” on this site. It’s in the recipe section.

So we struck and held the mash at 149F for 20 minutes. It was at about this point that we started finding that the recipe was off in some water calculations, and assumed we were directly heating the mash tun, so we made a couple of adjustments, and quickly went on our way to heating up the water to bring the mash up to mash-out temperature.

At this point, we also discovered that the pump was dead, and so we went from a really clean setup to pure insanity in moments, because we had to revert to an all-gravity system in seconds if possible. We did it in minutes. Not bad on zero notice. The bucket on the top held sparge water. We stacked up the two kegs you see there, so the water went from the bucket, to the top keg in the keg stack, and then finally out to our boil kettle (not shown), which was sitting on the ground. Ugh.

LESSON LEARNED: Gravity Never Breaks. Also, the mash is a fairly time/temperature-sensitive stage, so you should be prepared to rely on gravity at a moments notice if necessary.

So we finally made it to the boil. Seemed like it took forever, but in the end, we really didn’t lose too much time. Our new Phil’s Sparge Arm worked flawlessly, but I guess we were so caught up in marveling at it, cursing the busted pump, recovering from the whole meltdown, etc., that we nevergot a picture of it in action. Next time! Anyway, we added the hops and stuff, and finally got to relax a little bit.

While the boil was happening, another thing we had to revert to all-gravity was routing the boiling wort through the wort chiller and into the fermentor. This wasn’t too bad thanks in part to the fact that the wort chiller is very small. If it was a counterflow system or an immersion system, we would’ve had bigger problems getting one vessel high enough over the others, and it would’ve taken longer to hack it all together. However, the setup you see in this picture worked flawlessly. You can just about see the chiller sitting near the base of the keg. Go to the “reviews” section to see a review of the chiller.

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The first day we used the Shirron Wort Chiller was the first brew day of the season. It was one of a number of upgrades we had applied to a pretty old, all-gravity system. By the time we got to the wort chiller, we were pretty hesitant, since equipment failures had forced our hand a couple of times already during the day. However, the Shirron did not let us down.

The hardest part of using the Shirron was the setup. We had to find some 1/2″ NPT female connectors with the PEX endings so we could connect the hose easily, and we got quick disconnects for the garden hose. If this sounds easy to you, you’re right…. and that’s the *hardest* part of using the thing!

We ran the wort straight out of the boil kettle at 212F, into the wort chiller, and it came out VERY cold. It was really kind of surreal. Here’s a unit that’s about 10″ x 3″ x 1″, it looks like nothing - and you can barely hold the hose bringing the wort from the boiler, and the hose coming out of the chiller is actually *cold*. We’ve determined that next time we probably should not run the garden hose at full steam, which means we can easily do the job without wasting near as much water.

Another worry I had was what the flow rate was going to be like, being that we were doing this purely with gravity - no pumps. We ran an entire 5-gallon batch right into the fermentor in under 10 minutes. Perfection has been achieved!

We bought the Shirron figuring that if it seemed like a workable solution, maybe we’d upgrade to the Therminator at some point. However, this worked so exceedingly well that we cannot imagine what the Therminator could possibly do to make it sell for over $100 more than the Shirron. At $85US, the Shirron seems like a no-brainer to me.

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The recipe for the ale we brewed two days ago is a pretty well modified version of the recipe for Trout River Rainbow Red Ale that appeared in the March-April ‘06 issue of Brew Your Own magazine. Almost all of the step-by-step process was different for our setup than what is given in the magazine, but here’s the ingredient list:

• 10lbs 2-row pale malt
• 1lb medium crystal malt
• 0.5lb dark crystal malt
• 2 oz. roasted barley
• 1.0oz of Northern Brewer hops @ 9.3% alpha acids
• 2.0oz Cascade hops
• Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) yeast

The change in the amount of grain (we used more) necessitated more water. Further, the recipe looked pretty optimistic in terms of the gallons of water used. In the end, we used two gallons more water than was called for, increased the time for the protein rest, and wound up at an Original Gravity of 1.047, which is exactly what was called for in the recipe.

We also used a starter for our yeast, so it was fermenting nicely in no time at all.

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Well, we’re boiling the wort as I type this. It’s been a rough road to get to the boil, truthfully.

The main problem is that our pump was bad. We ordered a March pump from Northern Brewer, and it just didn’t do anything at all. Nothing. I called NB support, and lo and behold, the guy knew a thing or two about the product! We went through a quick test while I was on the phone with him, and told him about our setup and stuff, and in the end, it couldn’t be determined that we had done anything wrong, and our pump test failed, so he said he’d send out a new pump along with a shipping label so we could send the old pump back. Perfect! You can’t always expect every single product shipped to be perfect, but when a problem arises, this is how it should be handled.

So we had to quickly revert to an all-gravity system. We whipped out the tables and chairs, and an extra 5-gallon bucket to sparge with, and we were on our way.

I’ll say this: the one new part of the system that worked pretty much flawlessly was Phil’s Sparge Arm. I feel a little jipped because we could’ve probably come up with a similar solution for about half the price, but hey, now we don’t have to do that, and the thing works. The nice part, too, is that we can easily replace pretty much anything on it that ever breaks.

The other thing we learned today is that, when you’re doing 5-6 gallon batches using all-grain setups, you really need to develop your *own* recipe and step-by-step. We wanted to keep things simple on the first brew of the season, so we went with a recipe and step-by-step from a magazine. Bad move. They made all kinds of assumptions about our ingredients and our setup that just weren’t true. For example, we have a single mash/lauter tun, and we don’t heat our mash on the burner. For another, our hops, though they were the same name, had 9.3% acid, not 8%. I don’t fault the magazine — they can’t account for every possible variable. It’s just another lesson learned. We’ve never really gone by a recipe out of a magazine or off the ‘net before.

More later.

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Ok, so here’s the thing. We want a new wort chiller. We have one now - a counterflow system that Matt built with his bare hands. I think it’s pretty cool, but truthfully, it doesn’t quite get us in the temperature range we want. So, the goal is to come up with a solution to the problem of getting 212-degree wort down into the 70-75-degree range in as little time as possible.

So, each of us reads up on thermodynamics, we talk to engineers who are supposed to know this stuff, we look at how the products that are out there work, and we treat the whole experiment as a meritocracy: that which does the best job wins.

As is usual with Bamf, we consider something to “work best” when it requires the least amount of work on our part while still getting the job done. Laziness must be factored into the decision. If it cools 5 gallons of wort to 70 degrees in less than 10 minutes, that’s great…. unless it means Matt and I turning a handcrank, reloading ice, and hiring 40 women with pottery on their heads to run down to the river for water.

So we tossed around ideas for engineering a wort cooling system based on plate chillers we’ve seen online. This is a non-trivial engineering problem. A neighbor pointed us to a site that sells chillers for aquatic systems. No go, but some good ideas were there too. We mucked with the problem and wasted lots of paper and ink on the issue for about two weeks.

Then it happened. Finally, a catalyst made its way into the decision making process. Something that made the decision so easy it practically made itself. The efficiency with which this all took place is not to be believed. From the discovery to the decision took all of 20 seconds - perhaps less. Are you ready? Here it is:

Matt needed a place to keep his Harley.

So here’s the entire Bamf decision making process as it was played out in this case, in its entirety:

Matt: Dude, I’ll give you $30 a month to store my bike in your garage.

Brian: Dude, just buy the plate chiller and we’ll call it even for 6 months.

Matt: Deal.

And that’s it. No engineering, no crazy fabrication. Done.

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Ok, so the first brew of the new season is scheduled for May 28th, 2006. We’re brewing a Red Ale. We got a recipe from a magazine I had laying around, but of course, it’s a guideline (as usual). We’re following it more closely than usual, because we haven’t brewed in a while, so we wanna play it safe the first time out to avoid wasting the first 5 gallons of beer of the season. After that, of course, all bets are off, and we’ll return to our regularly scheduled program of sheer reckless abandon, which has, in the past, produced some really good beer.

The holdup in brewing has been a planned equipment upgrade. Our setup is slightly fancier now, all owing to our complete and total laziness. Matt and I are not fond of lugging 50 lb. vessels of boiling stuff around the back yard. We’ve purchased a pump, so that now instead of having to make sure this vessel is above that one, we can just pump the wort from one vessel to the other.

We’ve also replaced an old Coleman cooler chest with a stainless steel keg for our mash/lauter tun, and we’ve purchased an ABT false bottom for the keg. So now every vessel in our setup is a stainless steel keg, which is nice. It’ll be a little easier to clean, easier to move if we need to, and it can be repurposed to do just about anything, because you can apply heat directly to a steel keg. It’s not recommended that you do that with plastic Coleman cooler chest, for those who are wondering
One thing that might also happen before we brew is a conversion of a pressure cooker into a simple steam injection system, which would allow us to do step mashing without fiddling with the water in the boil kettle. It could simplify stuff, or it could get us both injured. We’ll keep you posted…. I hope.

We’ve tossed around a bunch of other ideas, too, but most are kind of boring. We want to build a stand, we might want another burner, which means we won’t build the stand out of 2×4s, for example. By the way, it’s bad to install burners into wooden structures. This is why your typical gas stove is made of metal and not wood.

This reminds me that we should probably make the following disclaimer (which will appear on future articles on the site):
“We at Bamf Beer claim no responsibility for our dumbass ideas and moronic actions. Use at your own discretion”

That was Matt’s take, which is probably a lot more useful than mine, which was:

“We are momos. Don’t do any of this”.

If you have a good disclaimer idea, let us know.

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bamf beer is a hobby. My buddy Matt and I, many years ago, while we were still teenagers, somehow discovered that drinking beer was about more than just getting loopy and projectile vomiting. I don’t know how this happened. We may well have been sloshed when we realized that there was some kind of weird Zen thing about beer. We grew to appreciate different kinds of beers, in part because we found that the fancier the beer we walked to the liquor store counter with, the less likely the guy behind the counter was gonna card us. Those “fancy” beers were just real ales, stouts, and lagers, as opposed to the crappy, cheap, wannabe, watered down crap most of America seems to drink. We discovered a whole world of flavors in beer. Floral aromas, chocolate overtones, nutty undertones, a touch of coffee here, a hint of citrus there. Before you knew it, we were hooked, and we began to brew.

Actually, Matt began to brew. I was a little intimidated by the whole process. Matt was more daring, and put out the first batch in his mom’s kitchen using (if memory serves) canned malt extract. I believe this same batch, or the one that followed, wound up on the ceiling of Matt’s bedroom. The stories started there, and have just kept getting better.

We haven’t used canned malt extract since those first experimental batches, after which we switched to an all-grain process. We haven’t looked back.

The beers we tend to come up with usually reflect our brewing process, and are usually not exactly what we set out to create. Since we’re more Zen and less science, we tend to debate the merits of things like adding hops in the last 10 minutes of the boil vs. letting the malty sweetness stand firm. I’m a hop-head. Matt’s more of a renaissance beer drinker. I’m a little more paranoid, while Matt’s a little more relaxed. Matt’s the chemist of the team, while I’m a high-level concept person. There are a lot of these complementary personality traits that I think make for interesting observation, a good laugh, and perfectly balanced beer.

So anyway, this site is here to hold our notes, our recipes, our compromises… basically, our beer journal. If we ever figure out how to post pictures in WordPress, we’ll add those, too.

Our first brew of the year is scheduled, tentatively, for May 27th, 2006. Check back after then and see how we did!

Brian.

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