My 2nd AG Brew day with a home made boiler....

I have got the brewing bug after my first go at AG brewing. My first brew was only 5 litres due to the equipment I had to hand and it took 4.5 hours to do. So I have been thinking about getting an Ace boiler as they seem quite well respected on here, but cant stump up the �£100 at the moment. So I had a moment whilst in my local Wilkos when I spotted an FV for �£8 and not too far away were the value kettles for �£5 each! So I had an impulse buy and bought 2 FV's and 2 kettles. Got home and took the guts out of the kettles and attached them to one of the FV's. I had an old ball valve in the shed from a previous job so fitted that and ended up with a 25 litre boiler for about �£20 including the tank adaptor for the ball valve.



I have also bought Graham Wheelers book and adapted one of his recipes for the Old Speckled Hen clone. I am aiming for a 19l batch...

3130g Maris Otter
315g Crystal Malt
24g Chocolate Malt
470g White Sugar
32g Cascade @90mins
11g EKG @10 mins

I also have learnt from my previous brew that my mash tun loses a little too much heat, so this time I wrapped it up in a sleeping bag and loads of old towels to keep the heat in. It worked great and I only lost 1°c over 90 mins.



The new boiler worked great and I could maintain a rolling boil with just one element switched on. I did find that the markings on the side of the Wilko FV are way out though, so I got my sharpie out and drew my own on there whilst filling up the sparge water. I dunk sparged and then drained in to the second FV I bought. Ha, it almost looks like a 3 vessel set up, except I then had to tip the runnings in to the boiler...





Once boiled and cooled using the coiled copper tube chiller I made, I opened the tap and drained in to the FV. I put a hop sock over the end of the silicone tube to catch all the 'stuff' that was in the boiler and pitched the yeast at 22°c.



The set up worked well and being a beginner it has been good to try out new ways of doing things. I did end up with less wort after the boil than I expected and had to top up with about 2 litres of water. This bought my OG down to 1.046 from the expected 1.050 and according to Brewers Friend I have 64% efficiency, so need to work on that.....

I also need to be more efficient as it took me 6.5 hours from start to finish But it was such fun, I love brewing and can't wait for the next one :thumb:


Here is my 'brewing cupboard' under the stairs. On the left is a Festival kit - Razorback IPA, in the small pressure barrel is my first AG brew, and on the right is my second AG brew. Cant wait to tuck in to that lot and compare them against each other :thumb:



Jas

6.5 hours sounds about right to me.

Great job mate and cool setup on a budget! I need to add the filtering hop sock I think... did you boil that first?

Wilfy said:

6.5 hours sounds about right to me.

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Really? oooh that makes me feel better then :smile: I thought I was being really slow....

Jas

mak said:

Great job mate and cool setup on a budget! I need to add the filtering hop sock I think... did you boil that first?

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Thanks Mak. Yes I like to do things on a budget if possible, but I know one day I will buy a big shiny boiler :thumb:

Yes, I boiled the hop sock first. I didn't plan to use it, but there was a hell of a lot of break material in the boiler after cooling with my chiller. So I quickly boiled up a pan of water and chucked it in there for 10 mins. It collected a lot of stuff and the wort in the FV was quite clear. There was no hop material to collect as I put them in hop bags during the boil.

Jas

I so need to start doing that, I cleaned a corny out yesterday and there were some hop leaves floating around in the bath :whistle:

Like the bulldog clips too I was thinking about using some on my FV with some net across to catch debris, aerate and stop flies whilst filling

Also, before you drain it, get your big spoon and give your wort a nice big stir. Getting it swirling around. Let it sit for 10 minutes or so. Then when you drain it, all the materials stay in the center. It really works well.