My Mashtun

Saturday, March 12, 2011


Today, I built the mashtun.

My friends Erin and Tim gave me a used 48 Liter cooler (thanks) and I bought 5 feet of food grade hosing with a 3/8' Inner diameter and 1/2' outer. The tube fits very snugly and on the other side, I attached a gutted, stainless steel toilet supply connector. Make sure you get that instead of some other water supply hose. I made that mistake and I couldn't get the inner tube out. It was a black flexible hose. I spent about 2 hours trying to take that tube out until I cursed and gave up. I had watched a few 'making ofs', and it was never that difficult to remove.

I went to the hardware store to get another. An employee tried to give me a hand but he never gutted a supply hose before. He wished me luck and moved on quickly.
I found a hose that fit the bill and I bought it. It took me about 5 minutes to remove the tube. What a waste.
Oh well.
I clamped the hoses together and I'm done.
Stefanie thinks my hose looks sad but it did the job well and did not get stuck.









Here are a few pics of the Mashtun in action.

My First Beer Recipe

Brewday is coming up fast (probably March 13th) and I'm pretty sure I have decided on my first brew. I searched many recipe databases such as ratebeer.com, hop-ville.com and brewdudes.com and narrowed my choices down to an Irish Red, a Honey Amber and a Dry Stout. I quickly ruled out the stout because even though I thoroughly enjoy a stout, I wouldn't want to drink one a day. So, a stout should be my second or third beer. It boiled down to the honey or the red so I flipped a coin and the Honey Amber came out on top. I found this recipe at ratebeer.com with only a couple modifications:

HONEY AMBER ALE:

8 LB Domestic 2 row/ Malteurop (Malted here in Winnipeg)
1 LB Vienna
10 OZ 70 L Crystal Malt
12 OZ Biscuit Malt
8 OZ Cara Pils
2 OZ Willamette Hops
.5 OZ Mt. Hood Hops
1 LB Clover Honey
10 Gallons Spring water

Mash at 153 F
Willamette Hops at 60 mins
honey at 20 minutes
Mt. Hood at 5 minutes
6.5 gallon boil - 5.5 gallon batch

I went to the beer calculus at hopville.com, punched in the recipe and received my gravity.

OG - 1.057 ACTUAL OG - 1.060
FG - 1.014 FG - 1.004
IBU- 40.7
ABV- 5.7% ABV - 7.3

I'm almost ready - but still have to make my mash tun.

UPDATE: I brewed this recipe on March 13th and it seemed to work out alright. My mash temperature was lower than I wanted and it was very hard to get it up to the right temp. It mashed at about 146F. Other than that and a little stress and paranoia due to yeast, everything went well. The original gravity was a little higher due to the boil size was 6 G instead of 6.5 and the final batch size was 4.5 Gallons.

This is the colour of the brewed wort. I was going for an amber colour and I think I got it. The wort will clarify over time and not look as murky as it does.

This isn't a very exciting moment of brewing. While it boiled, I spent the time cleaning up the mashtun and getting the fermentor ready.

This was my brewday brew. It was quite nice, medium bodied with a nice flavour. It went down easily.