Author: Jeff Halvorson

Jeff Halvorson’s Brewing System

My system is housed in my “Brew House”, a detached workshop which while lacking running water does have natural gas heating, cable TV, and plenty of power (110V/220V). Water is either bucketed down or run through 50′ of food grade RV hose.It is a simple three vessel setup with ring burners (Superb) for the HLT and mash and a jet burner (King Kooker) for the boil. The SS pots are all 15 gallons; the mash and boil are Polarware pots with false bottoms while the HLT is a cheaper Italian model. Sparge water and recirculation is done using two March pumps which are connected using high-temp hosing and polysulfone quick-disconnects. Wort is chilled using a Blichmann plate chiller and pumped directly into a 12.2 gallon SS conical fermentor. The conical lives inside an upright freezer with Ranco thermostat which provides cooling in the summer and a heater for the winter.This system was designed as a single-tier setup however it currently is being used in a two-tier configuration for simplicity. Future improvements are to plumb the ring burners to natural gas, redesign the hood to better collect steam, and add additional temperature stable areas for beer storage (secondary, lagering, etc..).

December Meeting Recap

There were lots of new faces at tonight’s meeting. Thanks
to Todd the plumber for the information about ventilating a basement area for brewing indoors. Check the link under resources at left.

Kristen showed us the difference between a kegged and bottle conditioned Belgium style beer. If you are bottle conditioning use Danstar Nottingham yeast, “it drops like a rock” (quote from Eric).  So now we know that heather in a beer does not make it a Scottish ale!

There was no heather in Kris’s Scottish beers; it was an example of a
making three beers from one mash, a method called gyling or
parti-gyling.   60/-, 70/-, 80/- or 90/- are not styles of beer, the shilling ” /-” value was a reference to the wholesale price of a 54 gallon hogshead of beer. There more information about Shilling beers and recipes from Kristen at Ron Pattinson’s blog.

Threepeat

This year, 2009 we held on to our claim of being the AHA Homebrew Club of the Year.The Ninkasi Award was won by Gordon Strong, our Ohio-based member for a second year running.  Meadmaker of the Year honors also remained with SPHBC for the third year in a row, with Thomas Eibner taking the award this year for his cherry tupelo melomel.Congrats to all club members for their help, participation, and beer entries!