Bottle Design is Important.

I bottled the Citrus City Ale last night and I came to the conclusion I will be throwing some bottles away. I use a butterfly capper for bottling and it works much better with deeper ridged bottles.

This bottle does not have a deeper ridge. No leverage leads to a greater potential of cracking the bottle.

The bottle on the right does have a deeper ridge which makes it a lot easier to cap.

I have a couple bottles that gave a little crunch as I was capping it. I haven't thrown those away, it may still be good.

So, all Anchor Steam and poorly designed bottles will get the turf treatment.

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.

More Supplies

Today, I bought more supplies from Brewer's Direct. It's a Manitoban run business so I figured I would give them my patronage. Here's what I purchased:

Bucket Fermentor (I was told I didn't need an airlock for the primary - just put the lid on loosely)
Plastic Carboy
Air lock and bung for Carboy
Syphon combo (which I still have to figure out how to use)
Spoon
Hydrometer
Floating Thermometer
100 bottle caps
Hand capper
Sanitizer
Dextrose
Dry Malt Extract

That came to a total of $95

Stefanie (my wife) bought me a propane burner for my birthday that was $65. I still need a couple boil pots but I'm waiting on more Airmiles gift certificates so I can get a big boil pot. I will probably borrow the smaller ones from my friend.
After that, a cooler to modify into a mash would be my next purchase. So far it looks like the gear is going to cost about $200. I think the cost per beer at first will be about $4.50. Fairly pricey but I need to stay committed to make it worthwhile.

Making a Wort Chiller

I recently cashed in some of my Airmiles and ordered a $40 gift certificate from Rona.

Off I went to purchase supplies:

10 ft of 1/2 inch copper tubing - 23.98
sink adapter - 5.98
hose coupling - 3.99
3 hose clamps - 2.94
8 ft vinyl tubing 1/2" Inner dia- 4.64
tax - 41.53
Total - 46.51
Total minus Airmiles - 6.51

Make sure the inner diameter of the vinyl hose is the same as the the outer diameter of the copper tubing so it would be able to fit over top. I shimmied it down a couple of inches. It doesn't need to be too far down because the vinyl tubing should not be placed in the boiling water.

Find a cylindrical object to twist the copper tubing around. It will be easier to shape that way.

It was pretty easy to make. It took about ten minutes to twist and clamp and another ten minutes to tweak it while water was spraying everywhere. You want all the clamps as tight as possible because you don't want tap water dripping into the wort. That would be awful. There was some crimping of the copper tube as I brought the bottom end to the top, but water was still able to flow freely through the unit.

Equipment

I feel that the start-up may initially jack the price of the beer to probably 3 dollars a beer. This means I have to stay committed and make at least 3 or four batches to make it worth the money.
I will find out soon enough.
Here is the list of equipment that I need - I will include the prices once I buy the stuff. I have a chef friend that is willing to loan me some equipment at no cost so that will be a big help.
-One - 6 to 7 gallon stainless steel boil pot
-One - 3 or 4 gallon stainless steel boil pot
-Mash tun (converted camping cooler)
-Growler or large mason jar for yeast starter
-Plastic or Stainless Steel stirrers
-Food grade tubing
-2 quart juice jug
-Propane burner (people use turkey fryers but they can be pretty expensive in Canada)
-Wort Chiller (W/O a wort chiller, you're looking at an hour or so cool down time - w/ about 15 minutes)
-Two or more 6 gallon carboys
-Fermentation locks
-Siphon tubes (wine thief)
-Hydrometer
-Thermometers
-Bottles (not going down the keg route right now)
-Bottle caps
-Bottle capper