It's been seven years since my last brew day, but I jumped back in the saddle this weekend. Brewed what I'm calling a Belgian Golden Ale, but it's only 1.057 so I guess it qualifies as Belgian Single and not a Golden Strong Ale. I mentioned in another thread that my neighbor gave me a kegerator, so it inspired me to get off my ass and just do it. I went through my old equipment and made a few changes, threw some busted stuff out, and improvised a few steps until I can get some new equipment.
I kept the old Cube mash tun, but swapped out the manifold. My old setup was just a piece of bent copper, but I scrapped that and built a CPVC manifold.
Here's what the old one looked like, for comparison:
Still got the old Corona mill. Couldn't find a bolt to put into it to use a drill, so I hand-cranked out 20# of grain through it. She ain't pretty, but I ended up with 78% efficiency, so it works.
Years ago I had built a brew stand, had two keggles (HLT and boil kettle). I didn't want to mess around with the big HLT and didn't have an easy way to get 9 gallons of water heated to batch sparge once I filled the kettle with the first runnings, so I improvised and used some Cambro coffee containers. It actually worked out pretty well, but did take some running around as they only hold 3 gallons. I guess that was a good amount to be able to lug around and lift up though.
I ended up doing the no-chill method since my fermentation buckets are HDPE. I finished up around 9PM last night, and got the yeast pictched this morning around 7:30AM. I sure hope it turns out well going that route. What I was reading about no-chill involved using 5 gallon "cubes" to store the hot wort before transferring into primary, but I didn't have enough time to get those delivered. So my concern is the headspace in the buckets turning my beer into creamed corn, but either way it'll make beer (I just may not share htis one ). I had to toss out my old CFC, so I'll probably get another one built before the next brew.
My brew buddy this time wasn't even born when I did my last batch:
Last time her big brother helped me out (he's 10 now):
All in all it was a great time and I had a lot of fun doing it again. Life is stressful and this was a great distraction, just what I needed right now!