On The Loose Brewery: Looking forward to 2.0

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A few things have changed since the last brewery tour. This spring I ordered up a Barley Crusher malt mill, silicone tubing (soo flexy!) and-tri clover attachments for all hose connections! Also, the brewery has been moved onto the back deck for ease of cleanup and to take advantage of the nice summer sun!

It's been real fun crushing grain into the mash tun and I'm saving some $$ by buying my two-row in 50 lb sacks. I love the tri-clover fittings! It takes me back to my Magic Hat days and I like the easy on/off and the fact that there is a nice sanitary fitting with very little moving parts to break and no place for bugs to hide!!

Looking forward to Brewery 2.0 here are some changes I would like to make:

1) Fermentation temperature control!! It's time to invest in a fridge and temperature control. I botched my last batch of IPA by fermenting it too hot (80F)=Fusel alcohols =(

 2) Speaking of fermentation: Stainless fermentor(s): I'm planning on repurposing some 15.5 gal kegs as fermentors. I'm getting tired of lugging giant-glass-slice-your-arm-off vessels everywhere. Plus it would be nice to move the beer around using CO2 rather than siphoning. I would love to have a conical..but that will probably have to wait until OTL 3.0 (or maybe 4.0)

3) A HERMS system for the HLT. I want to emulate the design from The Electric Brewery. Eventually I would like to have the HLT electrified and automated so I can start heating up the mash water before I wake up on brew day. But for 2.0, I just want to have the stainless coil in there to recirc the mash through for improved temperature control.

4) New brew stand. I botched the dimensions on stand 1.0 and it is not possible at this time to gravity feed the mash into the boil kettle during sparging. This must be remedied. If I come across some extra cash I'll have a metal stand welded up, otherwise I'll tear down and rebuild the current wooden one.

Keep an eye out for brewery tour 2.0 later this year, probably late fall. If you're interested in OTL 1.2 pics, let me know and I'll post them up here.