Ingermann Brewing: Equipment

My Brewing Equipment and Procedures
I have been brewing since August 1997. I made 6 extract and 1 partial mash that year while reading about and collecting equipment for all-grain. I switched to all-grain brewing in January of 1998. I did one partial mash the first week of January and one extract batch in March and the rest have been all-grain. The first 20 batches that I did I used an 8 gallon enamel kettle to boil in. The rest have been done in either a 15 gallon PolarWare SS kettle, a 10 gallon SS kettle or a 20 gallon SS kettle. The rest of my all-grain equipment consists of two 10 gallon Rubbermaid (Gott) coolers, one 5 gallon Rubbermaid (Gott) cooler, a dual 170K BTU burner, another single 150K BTU burner,a Chillzilla counter-flow chiller, and the rest of the miscellaneous equipment needed (thermometer, SS spoon, etc.). I also have a few gadgets that I use to which include a refractometer, O2 system, and yeast culturing equipment. I usually use the dual 170K btu burner to do two batches at the same time. More beer for about the same amount of time spent brewing. The following images and descriptions give a good look at most of the equipment I use. I have tried to include everything that I feel is important but i'm sure I have missed something. You can check out my How I Brew page here to see how a typical brewday goes for me. You can also check out my Brewday page which contains a few brewing sessions I have photographed and some other brewing information.

	The evolution of my brewing setup: Since I started allgrain brewing in 1998 my setup has slowly gotten bigger to where I can now brew a 12-15 gallon batch and a 6 gallon batch in the same day. I have plans drawn up for my ultimate system but it is going to require a lot of time and money for me to make it happen. Someday I will totally get rid of my coolers and have all SS kettles with a welded stand, pumps, etc. As you can see in the first two pictures I started out with coolers for the mashtun and HLT, a 200K BTU jet burner, and an 8g enamel kettle to boil in. The enamel kettle was fine for a while but I truely longed for a SS kettle or two so I started looking for deals. I found a 10 gallon kettle from Brewer's Resource in California and bought a 15 gallon Polarware kettle from my local brewshop. I found the dual 170K BTU burner on the web which let me make two batches in the same day without a lot of extra time spent brewing. In 2000 I added the 20 gallon kettle and started using cinderblocks to hold my burner and brewstand up. I pretty much left it setup all the time. This same year I also bought a 19.? cu/ft chest freezer to use as a kegerator. We have a single car garage and at this point I am taking up about 1/2 the space in it with brewing stuff. In 2002 I bought the last few pieces of brewing equipment that I have. I bought a used 19 cu/ft chest freezer to use as a fermentation chamber, a single 150K BTU burner for sparge water and my JSP MaltMill. I have not purchased any other major brewing equipment since. In 2003 I decided to cut off the second tier of my wooden brewstand and now have just a tower that I place my coolers on for lautering. The basic configuration has been the same from 2001-2003. I now am taking up about 2/3 of the space in our single car garage.

	Packed Away: Here are a few pictures showing how I store my setup when i'm not brewing. After I cut off the 2nd tier of my brewstand I had a lot more room to stack stuff around it and get it out of the way. I stack most of my cinderblocks on the left side of the stand and put all of my kettles on top of those. The coolers get put ontop of the stand and everything else is put where it will fit. This actually clears out a good area at the front of the garage. We will still never be able to park a car in there but who cares. Looking at the third picture it looks like I have a bit more than 2/3 of the garage taken up with brewing stuff but really I do have some none brewing things in the front of the garage. The last picture shows my storage shelving with my brewing computer, tv and vcr. The computer is a must have in the brewery since I have ProMash loaded on it and it is also hooked to the internet. I can put my batch info directly into ProMash while brewing and chat on the internet during down times in brewing. The tv/vcr is a must have also. Who knows when a good game or show will be on while brewing. The rest of the stuff on the shelves is my carboys, bottles, racking canes and hoses, and other miscellaneous stuff. These shelves are a must have for me because they keep the carboys well out of reach of my children. All of my fermenting is done in glass right now and I would hate to have one of my kids hurt by a broken carboy.

	Scales, Mill, and Grain Storage: I have two different scales that I use. The first one was made by a fellow Brewrat that goes by HHHoagie in the chat. Basically you hang the empty bucket from it and put the counter-weight on the weight (up to 12 lbs) that you want. Dump the grain in until the scale levels out and there you go. It is pretty damn accurate. I have compared it's measurment with my digital scale and it's within a few ounces every time. I don't use this one as often as I should just because it's much easier to weigh stuff on the digital scale. My digital scale weighs up to 6 lbs and I use it most of the time for grain. I also use it for all my hop measurements. Grains: I buy sacks of base malts when I need them and store them in the sack either in my rectangular coolers or buckets. I buy specialty grains in 1-5 pound increments and store them in plastic freezer bags in a big blue tub. The mill I have is a non-adjustable JSP MaltMill. I have read too many time of brewers buying the adjustable mills and never adjusting them after they get them. I figure I can run things like wheat malt, etc. thru the mill twice instead of having to worry about adjusting a mill. It has worked fine for me so far. I get a good crush and decent efficiencies so I am happy with it. I power it with an old 3/8" Craftsman drill that I have. It works beautifully. The only thing I need to do with it is expand the hopper some how. I use the orginal hopper and it only holds 3 pounds at a time.

	Kettles: The first kettle is my 10 gallon SS kettle. I bought it from Brewer's Resource in California when they were still open. It has a 3/8" brass ball-valve on it with 3/8" copper tubing on the inside. I use an Easy-Masher screen to filter out hops from the boil. I have a 1/2" hose barb fitting on the outlet so I can use my Chillzilla chiller. The third picture shows the hops left after draining 6 gallons of Kolsch out of it. I mainly just use this kettle for heating my strike water and boiling 6 gallon batches but I do occasionally use it for mashing. The next kettle is my 15 gallon Polarware SS kettle. I initially bought this so i could brew 10 gallon batches. I used it for that purpose a few times but for the most part it is mainly used for step-mashing and heating sparge water. I recently made a DIMS Manifold for it so I can step-mash and lauter right from it instead of transfering to a 10 gallon cooler for the lauter. It works great but the way I have the burner setup I have to have the boil kettle on the ground to lauter and then lift up to the boil burners. I really need a stand, grant, and pump to optimize this setup. The final kettle is my 20 gallon SS kettle. It is a converted oxygen tank that is fitted with a Zymico Weld-B-Gone™. I only have used this for boiling and probably only will use it for that reason. I have 1/2" fittings on the inside with a 1/2" SS nipple that reaches to the side of the kettle. I use a SS ChorBoy scrubby to filter out the hops. One day I will get off my lazy ass and figure out how to incorporate my Bazooka Screen in there instead so I can quit buying the scrubbies.

	Coolers & Burners: I have one 5 gallon and two 10 gallon Gott coolers but am currently only using the two 10 gallon coolers. The first picture shows both 10's with one setup as a HLT and the other a mashtun but they are both setup as mashtuns now. This page shows how I made a bulk-head fitting for the coolers. I have done both single infusion and step-mashes in the coolers. I have fly-sparged, batch sparged and no-sparged in them as well. Normally I just do a single infusion mash with mashout and fly sparge. Sometimes I mash in a kettle and transfer to the cooler for lautering but with the new DIMS I don't do that anymore. I am finding the batch sparging is working out very well with the coolers. It is much easier to do and I get about the same efficiency. I need to do a few more batches before I decide to move to it permanently. The dual 170K BTU burner was purchased from Northern Tool. It has worked absolutely beautifully. I can get two kettles to sit very stable on it and boil both at the same time. I couldn't ask for more. The single 150K BTU burner was purchased from the evil Wal-Mart in their clearance aisle for $25. It's basically one of those cheap turkey fryer burners but it was only $25 so I bought it. I either have it sitting on the ground or prop it up with one level of cinderblocks. I use it with my 15 gallon kettle for mashing or heating sparge water. The last picture shows the burner and 15 gallon kettle being used with my DIMS manifold.

	Wort Chiller: I had used an immersion chiller for the first few years of brewing and grew very tired of messing with it. It is very easy to use as far as cleaning and sanitizing but to make it work fairly efficiently I had to slowly stir the wort the whole time until it was cool. After I won a couple of gift certificates to Great Fermentations from the State Fair Homebrew Competition in 2001 I decided it was time to buy a Chillzilla Counter-flow Chiller. This is one of the best brewing purchases that I have made. It's easy to clean and sanitize and very easy to use. Attach to the boil kettle, open the ball-valve and forget it. It usually takes around 10-15 minutes for a 6-12 gallon batch to be chilled and transfered to the fermentor at 65-70°. In the winter, with the cool Indiana water, I can get it below 60° easily. To keep check of the temperature of the wort going into the fermentor I pushed a thermometer thru the 1/2" ID vinyl hose.

	Brew Cabinets: I have two different brew cabinets where I store a lot of miscellaneous small brewing stuff so it's not just sitting around in the way. The large one is down at the end of the garage close to my brewing setup. It holds most of the stuff that I use on brewday. The top part of it is a shelf that holds my refractometer, pH strips, thermos, hydrometer, glassware, etc. at just the right level to be useful during brewing. It keeps everything within perfect reach. The rest of it holds my digital scale, oxygenating system, brewing salts and finings, spices, DME, cleaning supplies, bottle capper and other small junk I could't put anywhere else. The small cabinet is close to my storage shelves and contains my drinking glassware, brewing books and magazines, competition scoresheets, towels, miscellaneous glassware and other small items I couldn't put anywhere else. The three-door plastic shelf holds my airlocks, hop bags, bottle filling tubing (see Misc. Items below), and labels for my kegs. It's pretty much a junk catch all just like the whole cabinet. These cabinets are a necessity in the garage since I am brewing in a small space. It keeps things well out of the way and also protects them from my three kids. I have way too much glassware out there to not have them in cabinets. Not to mention the refractometer and other things that I would go nutz over if they were broken.

	Chest Freezers: I have two 19.? cu/ft chest freezers in the garage. I bought one brand new in 2000 to use as a kegerator and to cold condition my beers. The other one was a used one I found in 2002 that I use for a fermentaion chamber. It worked fine for about a year but finally died in the spring of 2003. It worked great all summer of 2002 keeping ale temps. Thru the winter I used a hair dryer to keep ale temps when the garge got too cold. I used it the summer of 2003 to keep ale temps by using ice jugs to control temps. It worked pretty good because it's pretty much just a big cooler. I have two different temperature controllers for the freezers. On the kegerator I use a Ranco controller and on the other I have a Johnson controller. Both work equally well but I prefer the Ranco because of the digital readout. I will eventually get another one of these to replace the Johnson. The first picture shows the fermentaion freezer complete with ice jugs. From front to back are: American Amber Ale in primary, American Pale ale in secondary with dryhops, Kolsch in primary, and an Old Ale in secondary conditioning. The second picture is of my kegerator. Shown are ten 5 gallon kegs, one 10 gallon keg and one 3 gallon keg. I am pretty sure that shortly after I took this picture I rearranged the kegs and ended up with eleven 5 gallon, one 3 gallon and one 10 gallon keg in there. I keg all of my beers now and I only use Ball-lock kegs. I had a bad experience with Pin-lock kegs once where I lost over half a batch of BarleyWine to a leaky poppet/QD connection and have not used them since. I'm sure it was my fault but that experience with the Pin-lock made me not want to deal with them again. Besides, it's easier to have just one style of QD fitting around instead of two.

	Cleaning and Sanitizing: When it comes to cleaning and sanitizing I don't go the cheap route. This is one of the most important areas of brewing that you have to master if you want to produce anything that is going to be better than just drinkable. I use Five Star Chemicals products for almost all of my cleaning and all of my sanitizing. For cleaning I use PBW (Powdered Brewery Wash). It cleans glass, SS and plastic items equally well. I mix it per the directions on the container, 4 TBSP/ 5 gallons, and use it to clean my carboys, kegs, kettles, buckets, bottles, etc. The solution can be used over and over so I end up cleaning several carboys, kegs, or whatever at a time and will save the solution in a carboy for a month or two to use again. As long as it's not too dirty looking I will use it over. I will admit that lately I have been trying bleach to clean my carboys and it has been doing a good job. It is cheap and strong I just have to make sure I thourougly rinse to remove all traces of bleach. I don't have to worry about that with PBW. The only product I will ever use (as long as it's available) for sanitizing is Star San. This stuff absolutely KICKS ASS! I mix up a solution of Star San to RO water at 1 oz/ 5 gallons. I generally add a bit of 10% Phosphoric acid just to make sure the pH is down where it's supposed to be. As long as the solution is clear and the pH is near 2.0 it's good. I keep it stored in a plastic bucket with a lid and use it for months. Occasionally it will need a little "sweetening" by adding a little more StarSan to it but for the most part it remains good for a long time. I dump it once I get too much "crap" floating in it from transfering to everything. I bought a gallon of it well over a year ago and still have 3/4 of the gallon left. A little goes a long way. I also keep a spray bottle of Star San around for quick sanitizing. I mainly use it to spray around airlocks before removing them from the carboy and to spray my QD keg fittings before attaching to the keg. The first three pictures show two carboys after primary fermentation. I put PBW in the first one and let it soak for two hours (2nd picture). Transfer to the 2nd carboy and rinse the first and it's perfectly clean (3rd picture). Sometimes a quick swish with a carboy brush is needed to break some gunk off the sides but for the most part just soaking will get it. The last picture shows the bucket I store Star San in and the spray bottle I use.

	Miscellaneous Stuff: In this section I just wanted to show some of the small, miscellaneous crap that I use. The first picture shows (from l to r): Two SS racking canes, my copper racking cane with an easy-masher screen, the measuring stick marked for all three kettles, spoons, my 2 quart SS ladel and my 1 quart Pyrex measuring cups. Most of this stuff is obvious what it's used for. The copper racking cane is for transfering beer from the secondary when I have dryhopped with loose whole hops or transferring wort from the boil kettle in emergencies. I use the ladel for sparge water. I don't have a pump so it I sparge by hand. I vorlauf (recirculate) with the Pyrex cups. The second picture really has a bit of everything. My two smaller kettles are in the back. They are a 3 gallon SS and a 4 gallon enamel that I use for various things ranging from heating sparge water, boiling down first runnings, to cereal mashing. Brewing salts (Gypsum and CaCl), Phosphoric acid, Whirlfloc tablets, oxygenation system, digital thermometer, refractometer, ColorpHast pH test strips, iodine and a ceramic plate for testing starch, and my bottle filler. The bottle filler is the piece of tubing in the front. I use this to bottle from the keg for competitions or just to give beer away to friends. The third picture shows the whole house water filter and hose. I use an Omni Whole House Water Filter. I beleive the model I use is the Model OB1 whole house filter. The actual filter cartridge is the TO1 carbon wrapped cartridge. It does a kick ass job of removing chlorine/chloramine and other stuff from the water. I store the cartridge in a plastic bag in my kegerator between uses to keep it fresh. THe hose is just an RV drinking water hose I bought at the evil Wal-Mart store. Finally we have a picture of my different starter jugs. I have a total of three 1 gallon jugs, four 1/2 gallon jugs, and a couple of small flasks in the 500ml to 1000ml range. I don't use the flasks much anymore since I broke my 2000ml one.

That pretty much sums up my brewing setup. Like I said before, i'm sure I have left something out but the majority of what I use is here. LATER!

My Brewing Equipment and Procedures