Brewery Gear



A 40qt Turkey Fryer is used to do the final boil of 6 plus gallons of wort (Wort is what beer is called during the brewing process). The 7.5 gallon capacity is pushing the limits and a constant eye is required to prevent boil overs. For now it does the trick, but I'm keeping my eyes out for a couple of 15 gallon (1/2 barrel) kegs for the beer stand that I am currently dreaming/planning.

The mashing of the grain is done in the Mash Lauter Tun, or the MLT. The MLT is a 5 gallon cooler, so that limits the amount of grains that I can mash at one time. About 12 lbs. of grains is cutting it pretty close. When I build my beer stand I will build a bigger capacity MLT.

Here is the a close up of the ball valve used to drain the wort and sparge water.

Inside the MLT is a stainless steel strainer. This allows wort and sparge water to be drained off leaving the grain husks behind. The strainer was purchased from Home Depot and is from dishwasher supply line hose. The trick to removing the braided steel from the hose is to PUSH the braiding off of the hose...pulling creates the "Chinese Finger Cuffs" effect.

The Immersion Chiller is a relatively inexpensive tool that is a huge time saver. Getting your temps down quickly after boil is important to getting a good cold break and minimizing the risk of infections to your wort. Basically the chiller consists of 25' of copper tubing that is coiled up with a faucet connection on end and a piece of hose on the other. The chiller is placed in the boiling wort to sanitize and then once the boil is complete, connected to cold water. Cold Water is fed through the faucet end and, after circualting through the copper, discarded as hot water.

Here is a shot of some of my equipment stacked away. Looks sad just sitting there, no? Can you hear that? It's calling me..."Come, make beer!"