Suburban Brewing

Yesterday I tasted both of my brews. Batch 1 was brewed on 9/27, batch 2 was brewed on 10/3. Batch 1 being the first brew I ever made is still grainy and cloudy but drinkable. I’ve seen posts by new homebrewers who often discard their first few beers because they don’t think they’ll be “good enough” to keg or bottle. I plan on being patient, even with my first batch where I made some many mistakes while making it. I still think the cloudiness will subside over time once I bottle the beer.

My 2nd batch which has been in the primary for a little over a week tastes much better and has no cloudiness at all. There is no grainy taste to it at all and the hop flavor is very well balanced. Yes, I have to confess I did a bit of “continuous hand-hopping” for about 30 minutes, adding one cone at a time to the brew pot. The lack of cloudiness is probably related to the fact that I used Irish moss in this batch (I forgot to use it in batch 1).

The 2nd batch overall is a cleaner beer, thanks to extended Vorlaufing and filtering of the beer before I moved it into the fermenter. I moved both beers from the Primary into a bottling carboy as I’ll be bottling both beers this weekend while Batch 3 is brewing! Oh this is fun, fun, fun!

As mentioned in earlier post things have been coming together nicely over the last few weeks and I’m almost ready to brew my first beer (or two). I’ve put together my brewing tower last week (pictures and details coming in seperate post), all of my equipment arrived with the exception of one pot which could possibly delay my first brew day but I’ll deal with that later.

I purchased 55 pounds of Maris Otter from BYOB and bought 10 varieties of whole hops from Hops Direct. They were blowing out 2008 crop at unbelievable prices so I picked up 10 pounds of hops. Yesterday I went back to BYOB and crushed 25 pounds of MO and picked up While Labs 001 California Ale yeast.

Can you smell the hot wort yet?

After much thought and quite a bit of creative thinking I finally came up with a solution for building an affordable 3 tier gravity system that will house my brewing equipment. After reading many homebrewing discussion forums I’ve noticed many people either build a 3 tier system from wood or they fabricate it from steel. I didn’t like the idea of using wood because of the possible fire hazard and I did not like the notion of building one from steel for the simple reason that I do not know how to weld.

So what else could I use to build my system? How about using store bought shelves to build a 3 tier structure! This structure has to be strong enough to hold my brew pots and burners. It has to be steel so it doesn’t catch on fire and finally it has to be flexible enough to allow for a step design that is typical to a 3 tier brewing system.

Once I had this rough idea of what was needed I started to scour the internet for such modular shelving system. It took me quite a bit of time before I finally came across the Metro Commercial Shelves sold by the Container Store. Here is what they look like in different configurations:

They can be assembled in various configurations so what you see above are just examples of their standard “out of the box” setups.

What I needed was the ability to build my shelves from scratch and to accomplish this I found these components sold individually. Now I had to do a bit planning, things like measuring my burner with a pot on it, the total height of my garage where brewing will take place. Cost is another factor, although the overall structure will not be expensive it is will not be as cheap as a wood contraption.

To be continued…

Today my two Polar Ware pots arrived from Northern Brewer, along with a false bottom,  1/2 ball valves and couple rubber stoppers for my carboys. Pots look enormous! I wrapped some teflon tape around the screw pipes and a proceeded to attach the valves to each pot. The first pot went pretty easily, got it tightened well and all was looking good. I did the same on the 2nd pot but I felt screwing the valve was much harder on this one. Afterward I proceeded to fill both pots with water to see if the valves are tight. First pot was fine but the 2nd pot started to leak under the valve; nothing major just dripping a bit. I attempted to remove the valve to see what the problem was but it would not budge! It is basically stuck –permanently attached to the pot. Looks like I’ll need to call Polar Ware.

Friday I received a copy of my water report from Aqua PA and here are the results:

1. Calcium – 30 mg/L
2. Magnesium – 9.8 mg/L
3. Sodium – 27 mg/L
4. Iron – Not Detected
5. Bicarbonate – Not Reported
6. Sulfate – 46 mg/L
7. Chloride – 40 mg/L
8. Alkalinity (Bicarbonate) – 53 mg/L
9. Hardness – 110 mg/L
10. Chlorine residual – 1.82mg/L

Overall it is not too bad. It will need tweaking for certain once I start brewing but that will depend on the beer styles I ended up making. For the most part Calcium is too low, needs to be above 50 mg/L and higher. Magnesium is also too low, should be in the 30 range.

Interestingly Aqua actually sent people over to my place, I’m assuming to take the sample directly from the tap but since it was during business hours no one was here to give them access to the water. Few days later I received a letter from them which contained two reports: one was from the Pickering East Pump and the other from Pickering West Pump 1. So I’m assuming these samples were taken and analyzed at the pumping station which supplies my neighborhood.  Once I get close to brewing I’ll either request another report or have an independent lab test my water at the destination as opposed to its source.

While I’m still in the “equipment purchasing mode” I decided to find out a bit about the water supply in Drexel Hill. I went to Aqua Pennsylvania’s web site and found a link to Water Quality Reports Search. Here I was able to find  and download this PDF Water Quality Report for zip code 19026. I was so excited about my find until I looked closer and realized these reports are just summaries and they lack details. Specifically details important for brewing are missing such as the levels of:

• Calcium
• Magnesium
• Sodium
• Iron
• Bicarbonate
• Sulfate
• Chloride
• pH levels (these I could measure myself)

I picked up the phone, called Aqua’s Customer Service and asked for a detailed report which they said they do not have. Instead they offered to have my water tested tomorrow and a detailed report generated. They asked me what type of analysis I wanted and what should be included in the report. I provided the above list of elements which were added to my request. I asked for an Order # to make sure my request doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.

Now we wait!