Firstly thanks for bewildering range of advice and ideas I've picked up lurking, any of the good parts that follow are due to the great information here.
So, my Dad has a decent homebrew set-up for kit beers, and has made a couple of AG kits using his friend's equipment. For christmas I have the possibly naive idea of constructing some AG equipment so that he can do his own.
I am lacking in budget, skills and tools though, so I thought I'd lay out my plan and see if it seems feasible or indeed sensible.
For a mash tun, I'd get a 28L Thermos box, make a 20mm hole through the inner wall and a bigger hole through the insulation to the outside (40mm?), cut up 22mm copper pipe into a manifold with hacksaw slits in the bottom, connected with unsoldered elbows/tees, and one 22->15 reducing tee connected to 15mm copper pipe, through a filed out 15mm compression tank connector (hopefully that comes with a washer), to a full bore 15mm female compression brass ball valve tap.
I think this is doable, though I don't have any hole saws (do I have to get a special bit as well as the hole saw itself to stick on a normal drill?).
And do people usually put hose tails on their mash tun taps? I've seen ones for 1/2" bsp thread (like below) but not 15mm pipe.
The boiler is more tricky, I'm thinking something like the Malt Millers boilers, i.e. a big stainless pot to be heated on a couple of gas hobs on the stove.
A big shiny pot isn't really in budget for me, and my Dad can probably get ahold of a stainless pot easier, so I'm going to leave that up to him.
The plan is a big (32L ish?) stainless pot with a 20mm hole cut out. I'd get the bulkhead 1/2" x 15mm compression extended fitting to go through the hole, a couple of washers and a 1/2" stainless ball valve tap to screw onto the outside of the fitting with a little PTFE tape, and a hose tail.
The hop strainer would be made out of drilled 15mm pipe leftover from the mash tun and connected into the bulkhead fitting, either with a 15mm compression end bit or is just crimping the pipe up adequate?
Should be easy enough to assemble, after cutting the hole in the pot with one of those Q max steel punch thingies.
My main areas of concern are:
- Is boiling with a 32-40L pot on a domestic gas stove top (across a couple of hobs) possible or practical?
- without a HLT, I imagine the process would go like heating the water to a bit above strike temperature in the boiler, using some to warm up the mash tun first, then mashing the grain with more water at around the strike temp for the ~90min, heating more water for sparging and transferring it to some other pan, pouring out the wort into the boiler and batch sparging with water from the pan. Then lifting the boiler full of wort back onto the stove top and boiling away. As I can't stretch to an immersion chiller either, I guess an ice bath or something would be required next, then into the fermenting vessel as usual.
Is this all way too complicated? Is lifting the wort-filled boiler back up to the stove top after sparging going to be too difficult?
- Have I missed anything obvious? Any easy ways to reduce costs?
The 1/2" x 15mm long fittings and s/s ball valve are harder to find and more expensive, BES seems like the best place to get them, but that ruins my plan of getting 22mm x 1m and 15mm x 1m of copper pipe if I get everything from there. Another alternative is to get 15mm x 2m and make the manifold out of 15mm pipe, but seems like people think 22mm is better at reducing stuck mash.
Sorry for the brain dump, I hope some of that is comprehensible, it mostly confuses me.
So, my Dad has a decent homebrew set-up for kit beers, and has made a couple of AG kits using his friend's equipment. For christmas I have the possibly naive idea of constructing some AG equipment so that he can do his own.
I am lacking in budget, skills and tools though, so I thought I'd lay out my plan and see if it seems feasible or indeed sensible.
For a mash tun, I'd get a 28L Thermos box, make a 20mm hole through the inner wall and a bigger hole through the insulation to the outside (40mm?), cut up 22mm copper pipe into a manifold with hacksaw slits in the bottom, connected with unsoldered elbows/tees, and one 22->15 reducing tee connected to 15mm copper pipe, through a filed out 15mm compression tank connector (hopefully that comes with a washer), to a full bore 15mm female compression brass ball valve tap.
I think this is doable, though I don't have any hole saws (do I have to get a special bit as well as the hole saw itself to stick on a normal drill?).
And do people usually put hose tails on their mash tun taps? I've seen ones for 1/2" bsp thread (like below) but not 15mm pipe.
The boiler is more tricky, I'm thinking something like the Malt Millers boilers, i.e. a big stainless pot to be heated on a couple of gas hobs on the stove.
A big shiny pot isn't really in budget for me, and my Dad can probably get ahold of a stainless pot easier, so I'm going to leave that up to him.
The plan is a big (32L ish?) stainless pot with a 20mm hole cut out. I'd get the bulkhead 1/2" x 15mm compression extended fitting to go through the hole, a couple of washers and a 1/2" stainless ball valve tap to screw onto the outside of the fitting with a little PTFE tape, and a hose tail.
The hop strainer would be made out of drilled 15mm pipe leftover from the mash tun and connected into the bulkhead fitting, either with a 15mm compression end bit or is just crimping the pipe up adequate?
Should be easy enough to assemble, after cutting the hole in the pot with one of those Q max steel punch thingies.
My main areas of concern are:
- Is boiling with a 32-40L pot on a domestic gas stove top (across a couple of hobs) possible or practical?
- without a HLT, I imagine the process would go like heating the water to a bit above strike temperature in the boiler, using some to warm up the mash tun first, then mashing the grain with more water at around the strike temp for the ~90min, heating more water for sparging and transferring it to some other pan, pouring out the wort into the boiler and batch sparging with water from the pan. Then lifting the boiler full of wort back onto the stove top and boiling away. As I can't stretch to an immersion chiller either, I guess an ice bath or something would be required next, then into the fermenting vessel as usual.
Is this all way too complicated? Is lifting the wort-filled boiler back up to the stove top after sparging going to be too difficult?
- Have I missed anything obvious? Any easy ways to reduce costs?
The 1/2" x 15mm long fittings and s/s ball valve are harder to find and more expensive, BES seems like the best place to get them, but that ruins my plan of getting 22mm x 1m and 15mm x 1m of copper pipe if I get everything from there. Another alternative is to get 15mm x 2m and make the manifold out of 15mm pipe, but seems like people think 22mm is better at reducing stuck mash.
Sorry for the brain dump, I hope some of that is comprehensible, it mostly confuses me.
Nice shiney pots look good but are expensive. Far cheaper to go decent plastic bucket and Tesco elements as mentioned. You could make an HLT and boiler for the price of 1 shiney pot. They cost about £15-20 each and another £40 for the elements. You would only need a 38mm hole cutter and one suitable for the bulkheads. You would still need to lift 30lt of wort in the boiler unless your dad has a shed and can construct a 3 level unit to take the equipment.
