taking stock

For this first post, I wanted to go through and get an idea of what I have already and obvious things I need to repurchase.

Before I stopped brewing, I was at the point I was exclusively making 5 gallon all-grain batches using a batch sparge. This means that I was filling a cooler with water at a certain temperature and then pouring in grains. The cooler was equipped with a false bottom, which is a metal screen creating some room at the very bottom or the cooler with a connection to the spout, which allows for all the grains to sit above and not clog up the tap and the liquid coming out — wort — to be relatively clear. I leave the cooler for an hour to pull out the sugars from the grain — this is called mashing. Then I would transfer the wort to the boil kettle, which would generally be about 3 gallons or so (half the total volume). I would then refill the cooler holding the grains with a different temperature water to wash the grains (pull any remaining sugars out) and pour that wort into the boil kettle with the rest to total 6-ish gallons. This rinsing process, when done all at once is called a batch sparge.

For the mashing and sparge process I still have the following:

• Rubbermaid 10 gallon cooler with ball valve
• 12” False Bottom
• 12.5 gallon aluminum kettle
• 5 gallon stainless steel kettle

And I am missing the following:

• 3/8” High temperature tubing (4ft+)
• Mash paddle
• Propane burner

The tubing is needed to connect the false bottom to the tap inside the cooler, as well as from the outside of the tap to the boil kettle. The mash paddle is an upgrade, but I need something to mix and stir the grains — something my current plastic spoon always had trouble with.

After the sparge, the process is pretty much the same as other brewing methods. Boil for some time, usually an hour. Add in the hops at the beginning for bittering and towards the end for taste and aroma. Then cool, transfer to a fermenter and pitch the yeast. Whirlpool to pull in oxygen, put on the cap and add an airlock. For this process, I have the following:

• Brewer’s Best copper wort chiller
• Auto-syphon - helpful in transferring liquid from place to place
• Refractometer - measures sugar content in the wort before and during boil and after fermentation to estimate alcohol content
• Airlocks

And I basically needed new fermenters, and some newer sanitizer.