The Grain Mill Bike

In my last post I mentioned that I use a bike to drive my grain mill.  Here is the actual set-up

And here it is in action

The drive on the mill is attached to a cog from an old rear wheel that we bolted to a v-belt pulley.

Brewery Upgrades and Newest Brew Day (Parti-Gyle Imperial Stout, Porter, Braggot)

I've made some upgrades to the brewery in the past month.  Today was the first brew on the upgraded system.

Built a small patio next to the porch.  The mash tuns sit on the porch, the brew kettles sit on the patio.

Bought a March Pump so I wouldn't have to lift gallons and gallons of hot water.

Bought a counter flow chiller and installed a pex line to run from the patio down into the basement through the counter flow chiller.

Added quick disconnects to everything.  I took the advice of BobbyfromNJ

You can buy the fittings from Bobby at brewhardware.com.

Today's brew was an Imperial Stout, Robust Porter, and Barley-Mead (Braggot).
Today's Grain Bill (in lbs):

British Pale	33
Wheat	0.5
Crystal	2
Roast Barley	2
Choc. Malt	1

I used my malt mill which is attached to a bicycle to grind the grain.  My lovely wife Krista assisted.  My setup is similar to the one shown in the video below except that I removed the rear wheel and have a long chain from the cranks to a cog mounted on the grain mill.

Mashed in at 150F by pumping 172 F water into the grain sitting in the mash tuns.  Mashed for 60 min.

Recirculation was easy with the new pump.  The mash drained into a boil kettle.  The outlet of the boil kettle has a stainless steel screen on the outlet pipe to strain out grains and hops (start at 1:50 on this video to learn how to remove the stainless mesh from a washer supply hose).  The screened output from the boil kettle went to the pump and then back up to the sparge arm on the mash tun.  After recirculating both mash tuns, I hooked them up so one drained into the other.  I have two mash tuns because I frequently mash more than one 48 qt cooler will hold.

The first 6.5 gallons of wort got 3 oz of Chinook when the wort came to a boil and then 1 oz cascade at 5 min. to flame out.
The second 6.5 gallons got 1 oz Chinook at boil and 0.5 oz Norther Brewer at 5 min. to flame out.
The third batch got 0.5 oz wild hops at 60 min. and 3 lbs of Honey at 5 min. to flame out.

I pumped appx 5 gal. Iodophor solution through the pipe to the basement.  Then I attached the pump input to each beer in succession.  The iodophor to Imperial Stout transition was easy to see.  When the iodophor was done coming through, I caught the first pint of stout to take a specific gravity reading.  There was still some stout in the line when the kettle was empty, so I hooked the line up to the porter and started pumping it.  It was possible to tell when the stout was out of the line because there was an air bubble between it and the porter.  Once the porter was drained, I switched to the braggot.  The air bubble again marked the transition from one to the other.  I followed the braggot with some hot (near boiling) water and then with some sanitizer.  I capped both ends of the line, so the line is currently filled with Iodophor sanitizer.  This should keep it clean for the next brew session.

With clean-up, it was a pretty long brew day (appx. 8 hours).  I probably could have shaved a half hour off of that if I hadn't run out of propane on one of my burners.  I run 3 tanks and do 3 simultaneous boils.  Solution for next time:  either get a tee to run 2 of the burners off one tank or make sure to have a 4th tank in reserve.  Long term solution:  convert to natural gas.  I could probably shave an hour or two if I had a helper.    With practice, I can probably shave an additional 30 min, simply by not having to think about every step (since it is a new system).  That means I can probably go from grain to three 5 gal. batches in 5 hours.

Parti-Gyle Brewery

I use the parti-gyle method to brew three - 5 gallon batches at a time.  For example, I recently brewed a Barley Wine, strong IPA, and a weak pale ale.  I'll use this as my example

I have 3 brew kettles which are approximately 7 gallons.

I have 2 mash tuns made out of coolers with slotted manifolds -- one is 12 gallons, rectangular, the other is 10 gallons, circular.  I need both to mash 44 lbs of grain.

I have an additional 5 gallon cooler (circular) which I use as a hot liquor tank.  These are arranged so gravity can help (as shown in the picture below)

1.       Fill all 3 kettles with water and bring to mash-in temp.

2.       Mash 44 pounds of grain with appx. 15 gallons of water. 

3.       Mash tun 1 drains into mash tun 2.  I recirculate from MT2 into MT1.

4.       MT 2 drains into boil kettle (BK) 1.  Meanwhile, I add sparge water from BK 2 (heated during mash).

5.       Once I have my wort in BK1, I move any remaining sparge water in BK2 to a hot water tank located uphill from MT1.  Fill BK2.

6.       Move sparge water from BK3 into HLT

7.       Fill BK3.

8.       By the time BK3 is full, I'm usually done with my boil on kettle 1.  This drains down to the basement through PEX tubing into a counterflow chiller and then into a waiting 6.5 gallon carboy. 

9.       BK2 and BK3 get drained similarly once they are finished.