Home Brew System Questions

[forextc]

HI new here and working my way through the posts.

A couple of quick questions that I am looking for advice on.

Brewster, Grain Father, Bulldog, Ace... a bit confused and I guess I need to just make a decision (possibly on cost). I'm looking to do maybe 2 brews a week and mainly want to produce a hoppy, citrus IPA, a red/amber (something along the lines of Adnams Broadside) and also some smooth stouts later in the year.

Would I be able to accomplish this with the above systems or would I find myself limited in terms of equipment or functions?

Also I like experimenting in the kitchen and so would like to take this over to my attempts at brewing. Roughly what sort of costs per brew are involved (hops, ingredients) to produce beers along the lines of those described. I'm thinking as opposed to using pre-made kits.

Any advice greatly appreciated. :smile:

 

[bigbud78]

HI new here and working my way through the posts.

A couple of quick questions that I am looking for advice on.

Brewster, Grain Father, Bulldog, Ace... a bit confused and I guess I need to just make a decision (possibly on cost). I'm looking to do maybe 2 brews a week and mainly want to produce a hoppy, citrus IPA, a red/amber (something along the lines of Adnams Broadside) and also some smooth stouts later in the year.

Would I be able to accomplish this with the above systems or would I find myself limited in terms of equipment or functions?

Also I like experimenting in the kitchen and so would like to take this over to my attempts at brewing. Roughly what sort of costs per brew are involved (hops, ingredients) to produce beers along the lines of those described. I'm thinking as opposed to using pre-made kits.

Any advice greatly appreciated. :smile:

Cant help on the brewing system as I'm on a gas powered 2V system but ingredients wise, £12 ish for a bitter, £18 for an ipa and £30 for a hop bomb.

A lot of factors involved, buying in bulk saves you £6 a time on postage and its cheaper in 25 kg lots, are you using dry yeast or re using liquid yeast.

 

[chewie]

GEB do a 25kg sack of base malt for a little over £17, which is 5x5kg brews, add in £1.50 for hops per brew and another £1.50 for a specialised malt and £2.50 for a packet of yeast.

That's 200 pints of 5% abv for around £50 after delivery costs are added or .25p per pint for a basic beer. Costs could be reduced further with things like pick or grow your own hops and reusing yeast. If you take a view long term on consumables, equipment, electric/gas and cleaning costs even at 100% then there is still a relatively low cost product at the end of it.

 

[forextc]

Awesome thanks for the quick replies. Are there any good sources online or organic ingredients, accepting that the costs would be higher?

 

[bigbud78]

Awesome thanks for the quick replies. Are there any good sources online or organic ingredients, accepting that the costs would be higher?

Malt Miller and geterbrewed are the best two I've used, contact them.

 

[IainM]

If you are doing 2 brews a week then an all-in-one system is definitely the way to go. You shouldn't find them limiting unless you want to brew more than 25L at a time.

 

[chewie]

Aye as Iain says those machines are designed for a max brew of 23-25 litres, if you want to do two brews a week it will be a time saver to do them both one after the other as you should be able to rattle out 2 in 6 hours compared with 1 brew at 4 hours. To get 2 done in 6 hours you need a second way to heat strike and sparge water whilst the first brew is boiling.

 

[forextc]

Thanks for the replies everyone. This is a great help. Any votes for any particular all in one systems?

 

[Norfolk79]

I can recommend the Grainfather, very good piece of kit.:)

If you create an account you can use their recipe creator, which links automatically to the Grainfather connect box using Bluetooth from a phone or tablet. Makes controlling temperature etc a breeze and it tells you when to add hops, Irish Moss etc to the boil.

 

[Batlugs]

Aye as Iain says those machines are designed for a max brew of 23-25 litres, if you want to do two brews a week it will be a time saver to do them both one after the other as you should be able to rattle out 2 in 6 hours compared with 1 brew at 4 hours. To get 2 done in 6 hours you need a second way to heat strike and sparge water whilst the first brew is boiling.

I have a Grainfather, which is fantastic, also have a Grainfather boiler. Other boilers are available obviously but I like my GF.

On a double brew day I use the hot water from the counter flow chiller for the strike water for the second brew. The hot water from the second batch chilling is use for cleaning up.

As was said it's more time and cost effective to do two batches back to back.

Ingredients are cheapest bought in bulk and if you're doing two batches a week you'll certainly get through it. I recommend The Homebrew Shop in Hampshire, good prices and excellent service.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[IainM]

Mine is the Bulldog Brewer, and for the price it is a bargain. That said, most people seem happy with their system whether its the Bulldog, Grainfather, ACE or Braumeister. If you do decide on a Grainfather, and want to do double brew days as chewie suggests, you can also buy the grainbrother to go with it (link).

 

[forextc]

Interesting. I've been looking at the Bulldog.. looks good and obviously a bit cheaper which is a big consideration.

 

[forextc]

Although these systems are billed as all in one, realistically I guess I need to buy some other bits to get up and running. Things I'm thinking I will/ may need -

- Sparge water heater?
- Fermenter
- Stirring stick
- Hop spider?

Also do I need to factor in any other pipes and connectors to get an all in one working i.e. tap connectors, pipes not included etc?

I haven't even thought about kegging or bottling yet...

I was hoping to brew some beer for a party in September figuring that I would have been able to produce something half drinkable by then. About 50 people will be attending. And yes most like a good drink... :-?

Is this feasible? Or is this likely to cost a small fortune in terms of getting something in place to store the beer?

Sorry for so many questions!

 

[chewie]

For that many expected guests you could easily put it into 2 litre PET bottles (old lemonade or coke bottles) just start to gather them up now as you need 20 per brew.

You don't "need" a hop spider or a sparge water heater, yes they make things a bit easier but there are cheaper alternatives that achieve exactly the same thing, instead of a hop spider look at muslin hop bags. For sparge water you could just put about 10-15 litres or so into your fermenter that has been boiled in your kettle and use cold tap water to bring it to 70c or so just before you sparge assuming you can lift it, if not use a fermenter with a tap on it and place it on a higher shelf to gravity sparge using a bit of flexible silicon hose.

To hit a september deadline you would need to get brewing all you need now so depending how much you want to make then you may need 2-4 fermenters, the best advice that most folk on here will give you is 2+2+2 which is 2 weeks fermenting, 2 weeks conditioning and 2 weeks priming (carbonating) and with 8-9 weeks until the start of september you need to start now.

If you haven't done any brewing before i would be 100% certain of doing my cleaning and sanitation, this is the single most important thing and with wanting to brew quite a bit in one go making sure you get it right from the start is critical otherwise you will be feeding 50 people vinegar.

 

[Linalmeemow]

The all-in-one systems are much of a muchness, just at varying price points and with slightly different features. The Ace seems to be the cheapest but doesn't come with a chiller and seems to have had some reliability issues (see recent post about a melted switch). The Bulldog Brewer is around £30-40 more than the Ace, comes with an immersion chiller and IMHO is very good but is the only one I can comment on with any confidence as it's the only one I've used. The GF seems to be the best build quality and has that lovely counterflow chiller but is going on double the price of the Ace or Bulldog. Beyond that you're in the realms of the Braumeister which is going on 4x the price of the Ace or Bulldog and is for people with more money than sense.

 

[JFB]

And of course if your just starting out, a cheap and simple all in one system is to BIAB. I think its fair to say most new brewers do there first all grain to this method.
I've been doing it for 18 months now and can see no reason to change.

 

[Linalmeemow]

BTW, if you have any Bulldog specific questions fire away...

 

[IainM]

Although these systems are billed as all in one, realistically I guess I need to buy some other bits to get up and running. Things I'm thinking I will/ may need -

- Sparge water heater?
- Fermenter
- Stirring stick
- Hop spider?

Also do I need to factor in any other pipes and connectors to get an all in one working i.e. tap connectors, pipes not included etc?

I haven't even thought about kegging or bottling yet...

I was hoping to brew some beer for a party in September figuring that I would have been able to produce something half drinkable by then. About 50 people will be attending. And yes most like a good drink... :-?

Is this feasible? Or is this likely to cost a small fortune in terms of getting something in place to store the beer?

Sorry for so many questions!

Wow, that is ambitious. I like it. It is doable but frankly, you don't have time to make mistakes. An all-in-one system will help you hit your temperature and efficiency targets. There is plenty of good advice online that will help you with the brewing, so I won't give you much advice on that, other than stick to tried and tested recipes, and don't cut corners with sanitation or with fermentation temperature control. This time of year is generally too hot for brewing without a fermentation fridge, so you will want to either make a fermentation fridge pronto, or at the very least find somewhere with a consistent temperature below 22C. With everything on your plate, I wouldn't bother mucking about with liquid yeasts, starters, or yeast propagation, so choose dry yeasts and stick to ones that can handle the heat and ferment clean, like Nottingham, Wilko ale yeast, or US-05. Make sure you have a high enough pitching rate using a pitching rate calculator.

For beer storage, I'm not a big fan of pressure barrels, but in this case they might be the right thing for the job if you can chill them down. I did a couple of brews for a wedding in pressure barrels and the venue had a walk-in fridge, which really helped. Nobody wants warm beer on a summer day. One of the down sides of pressure barrels is that you can't get highly carbonated styles in them, so if your buddies are ale drinkers then that is good. On that note, the style of beer you want to make is important. You don't have a lot of time, so you want beers that will be ready soon. Generally, these are lowish alcohol (<6% abv) and pale in colour. You could get a decent dark beer if it is low abv, so a mild could be on the cards. Hoppy beers would be good too, as the hops can help mask any flaws in the underlying beer. IPAs are good in this regard, so I'd focus on them, either American or British. You don't have time for lager, but I wouldn't recommend a pseudo-lager either, as there is nowhere to hide. If the crowd is up for it, then a wheat beer could work, as these tend to be ready almost as soon as they are carbonated, but they do require higher carbonation so they wouldn't work so well in a pressure barrel.

 

[Norfolk79]

All you need to keep the fermenter temperature down this time of year is a sleeping bag and some frozen 2l bottles of water.

Put the fermenter in a bin bag, with a couple of the frozen bottles and wrap it up in the sleeping bag. Change the bottles every day and you've got temperature control. I've got a proper job clone here fermenting at 19 degrees and it's 24 in our utility room [emoji3]

 

[forextc]

WOW! Awesome responses. Thanks everyone.

I'll probably be trying to brew some IPA and hoppy stuff so that seems to tick a box for now.

I hadn't thought about keeping the fermentation down so I like the idea of the frozen 2L bottles.

I'm in the process of putting my list of bits together so should have everything in place for the weekend.