Hello to everyone. I've returned to home brewing after a number of years and I've built myself a RIMS/BIAB system and the first brew, an American IPA has just gone into the fermenter this evening. I based my setup on the Grainfather and Brewolution Brewster systems using an old Baby Burco boiler that I rescued from being thrown in a skip. I replaced the original tap which leaked, put a coil of 10mm copper tubing in as a hop strainer, made a branching tap system to provide a drain outlet and a feed to a recirculating pump that leads to a sparring ring under the boiler lid, and insulated it all with some camping mats. It's got a boil capacity of 24 litres and I lose about 1.5 litres to the dead space and trub at the bottom of the boiler. I'm manually checking the temperatures with a meat thermometer but I plan to add on a controller based on an STC1000 at some point so I don't have to babysit the brew.
The complete system.
The hop filter
Sparging ring under the lid
Part of the plumbing of the recirculating system.
The brew session took about 5 hours including the cleanup afterwards and I've got 22 litres of what smells really good in the fermenter. I'm cooling it overnight and pitching the yeast in the morning as I had some teething troubles with the counter flow wort chiller (it leaked!) and I'm hoping it will be good for drinking at Christmas.
I've also got nearly 100 litres of Yorkshire Windfall Scrumpy fermenting too.
The brew session took about 5 hours including the cleanup afterwards and I've got 22 litres of what smells really good in the fermenter. I'm cooling it overnight and pitching the yeast in the morning as I had some teething troubles with the counter flow wort chiller (it leaked!) and I'm hoping it will be good for drinking at Christmas.
I've also got nearly 100 litres of Yorkshire Windfall Scrumpy fermenting too.