VaWineSnob
Joined: 14 Jun 2011
Posts: 89
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 Link Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2018 6:03 pm Post subject: Need to Downsize |
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I built an ebrewery for 5 gallon batches and have enjoyed the size. I am the only person in the house that drinks beer which made 5 gallons easy to maintain a balance between consumption and an enjoyable brewing frequency.
Unfortunately, I have arthritis in the back and a bulging L4/L5 disc. I simply cannot lift five gallon kegs, buckets of spent and wet grain, 7 gallon fermenters, or the kettles for cleaning.
I've been trying to figure out a plan to downscale to 2.5 gallon batches. By down scaling, I will need to brew more often and thus would like to scale back the brew duration. My current battle rhythm is to brew often during the winter, and infrequently the rest of the year. I'm an outdoors person and spend most of my spring and fall building and enjoying my garden. We do quite a bit of travel during the summer season, which works well for infrequent brewing - I plan brew sessions to ferment while traveling.
I started ebrewing with a JKARP counter top brutus. I used 240v element, 10 gallon kettle, and 10 gallon cooler for 5 gallon batches. Building a 120v counter top brutus for 2.5 gallon batches is an option I'm considering.
The counter top brutus is based off a two vessel system. I like the idea of a two vessel system with Blichman 7.5 gallon kettles simply because I'm not a fan of having a cooler in my brewery. It's still a work in progress, but I've put a lot of work into it to get it relatively nice. When it's finished, the cooler is the absolute last thing I'd want on display.
My current thought is to build a hybrid counter top brutus / two vessel Blichman system using my copper counterflow chiller as a heat exchanger. Kettle 1 would have a 4500w 240v element and would serve as both HLT and BK. Kettle 2 will be the MT. Process would be:
1) Fill MT with calculated amount of mash water and BK with calculated amount of sparge water to achieve correct pre-boil wort. Bring both to mash temp by recirculating the BK water and MT water through copper heat exchanger.
2) Mash in. Continue recirculating to maintain mash temp.
3) Raise BK temp to mash out temp and continue recirculating until mash reaches mash out temp.
4) Change hoses to recirculate BK water through MT to rinse grains. During this step the water and wort are essentially combining and recirculating through the mash.
5) Turn off BK side pump and close BK valve, this will stop the re-circulation with all wort ending up in BK. If I've done my calculations properly (and I expect this to take some practice), I'll have the pre-boil volume in the BK.
6) Boil as usual.
I realize I'm going to be sacrificing some efficiency and will need to adjust my recipes accordingly. Truth is, I often adjust my recipes to get the alcohol at or below 5%.
I also understand the process laid out above is not saving a lot of time.
Does anyone have any thoughts, ideas, or opinions? I'm not going to give up brewing, and if necessary I'll just buy (gasp) commercial brews to fill the homebrew pipeline gaps.
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