Inside Kegerator (2) five gallon Cornelius Kegs

Everything is working great!! A little work saves you a lot of money instead of buying one of these premade.

Here are some pics:

70 qt Coleman Extreme Cooler

Valve

Copper Manifold (Slits on bottom of manifold allows the wort to strain though Mash)

Next project is convert a Keg into a Keggle (Boiling Kettle), this will allow me to make 10 gallon batches instead of 5 gallons.

• German Munich Malt
• German Pilsner Malt
• German Vienna Malt
• German Caramunich Malt
• Belgian Aromatice Malt
• 1 pkg Light Dried Malt Extract
• 3.3 lbs Malt Extract
• 2 ounces Hallertau Hops
• 1 Oktoberfest Smack Pack Yeast

We started around 11am by getting the 5 gallons of water to 170 degrees, our mash temps needed to stay between 150-155 degrees, we did this in a make shift double boiler. My dad cooks chowder a few times a year and has a nice 16 gallon kettle, but I thought by using the double boiler method that this would help regulate the heat a little easier. I was wrong. We where able to maintain our mash temps for the entire 60 minutes, but the next issue was bringing the wort up to a boil. Which wasn’t happening!

We ended up taking the burner from the chowder kettle and moved it directly underneath the brew pot, removing it from the dual boiler, this helped considerably except that the wind was now a factor but at least we got a boil. Once we added all the extracts we struggled to maintain a boil and had to make a few decisions on the length of boil time as we missed a good 20 minutes worth and needed to extend our boil to compensate for lose of time. This recipe was estimated around 3.5 hours of labor, but it took us about 5 hours total and that included transferring the wort into the 6.5 gallon carboy.

Yes I said carboy.. No more plastic fermenters for me. In fact this batch I am using a 6 gallon carboy for the secondary fermentation. 48 hours later this batch is very active, a lot more active than my 1st 2 homebrews. Seeing this is an Oktoberfest, I am allowing ample time for this batch to ferment, so we will not be tasting this one for a couple months.

• 1 Can Edme Red Ale Extract
• 3 Cups Muntons Plain Light Malt Extract
• 1oz. Cascade Hops (pellets)
• Yeast supplied with Edme Extract

This time I am not going to list the entire procedures used here accept the things I did differently from the 1st batch.

1. Washed all bottles in High Temp dishwasher
2. Sanitized bottles 30 minutes before bottling, hung them on bottle tree
3. Used Iodophor for all sanitizing of equipment
4. Used a bottle rinser that allows the one step to spray into inverted bottle
5. Used Light Malt extract for priming bottles
6. Batch primed by boiling water and ad Malt extract to boil to kill off any contaminants in the Malt, then reduced heat and mixed into fermenter then transfered to bottling bucket

This batch seems to have turned out a lot better than my 1st, but I am still not 100% satisfied with the overall taste of this Red Ale. The cascade hops maybe a little much for this extract but I went off one recommendation from my local homebrew store.

Cheers!

Continuing from my last post:
Last week Tuesday(10/02/2007) I scrubbed all the bottles out uses a bottle brush and sanitizing solution and placed them onto the racking tree. On Wednesday (10/03/2007) I transferred the brew from the fermentation bucket to the bottling bucket, no problems there except next time I will purchase the automatic siphon!!
Now that I had everything in place it was time to bottle, this is where I noted my ROOKIE mistake. Even though I thoroughly cleaned the bottles the night before, I never resanitized them again before bottling.
So I had the unfortunate job to uncap all the bottles and dump them down the drain and rinse out all the bottles. Cleanliness is key with homebrewing and I missed one crucial step. So I will move onto Homebrew Batch 002 which will be a Red Ale. This time I will recheck all my steps before bottling.
Thanks again Gaylord for the words of encouragement, at least I was able to identify where I made the mistake and will make sure that never happens again.

• 1 Can Coopers Irish Stout Malt Extract
• 3 Cups Dextrose (Corn Sugar)
• 2-1/2 Cups Muntons Plain Dark Malt Extract
• Yeast supplied with Coopers Extract

PREPARATION

1. Sanitized all equipment
2. Added 1 gallon water to stainless steel pot
3. Brought water to a boil
4. Removed pot from burner added all above ingredients except yeast
5. Stirred thoroughly until all sugars were dissolved
6. Placed back on burner and brought to a boil again for 5 minutes
7. Removed pot from burner and placed in sink full of cold water for 15 minutes to drop the wort temperature
8. Filled up fermenter with approximately 3-1/2 gallons of cold water
9. Dumped wort into fermenter and checked the temperature was approximately 79 degrees
10. Topped off with cold water to reach my 5 gallon mark and temperature maintained its 79 degrees
11. Added yeast to top of wort and let sit for 10 minutes
12. Lightly stirred top just to make sure the yeast was covered up
13. Sealed up lid on fermenter and added fermentation tube
14. Placed in basement around 2:30pm on 09/23/2007

As of this morning the fermentation tube was already active and was at 68 degrees. I am allowing this batch to ferment for 10 days, then I will do the bottling and report back with the end results.
Cheers!!