Building a mashtun…

It’s friday! woohoo! I took the day off to get away from work and relax a bit. After dropping Wendie off at work, on my way home, I stopped by Home Depot to pick up the fittings for making myself a mash tun.

A mash tun is essentially a container to hold the grain and hot water at 155F for an hour. In all-grain brewing, you do not need to use liquid malt extract or dry malt extract because you can collect those sugars from the mash tun. Without going into to much detail, the hot water and 8 to 20lbs of grain sits in the mash tun for an hour while enzymes are created which convert the barley grains to fermentable sugars. Draining the left over water, and rinsing the grain to collect most of the sugars will result in a boil pot full of wort ready to be boiled down and hops to be added. All-grain brewing provides the brewer another level of control of thier product and I’m told makes a noticably more tasty beer because of using fresh cracked and high quality grains. For about $30 I was able to purchase the various pieces I would need to make a mash tun, here’s how I did it:

Parts:

1. Cut both ends off of the hot water hose, soak in warm soapy water for a few minutes, then slowly pull the plastic tube from inside the stainless steel braided protective tube. I then trimmed off the random stainless steel wires poking from the hollow tube. Also folded one end of the stainless steel tube so that it was tightly shut.

2. Using white teflon tape, I wrapped the brass tube and then attached the open end of the stainless steel tube and used a steel clamp to secure the two peices together.

3. Removed the drain from the cooler, and pushed the drain tube through the coolers drain hole.

4. Assembled the spigot and ball valve with couplings then screwed that to the end fo the drain tube. Made sure everything was tight and there were no leaks..

The parts, ready to be assembled:

The mash tun assembled:

A couple more detailed shots of the drain:

ugh.. I’m sore. (signs of a good weekend)

Just realizing how sore I am today… After I brewed up the Bigfoot brew this morning, we hiked Bald Hill outside of Corvallis, in about 45 minutes. Typically we do the hike in about an hour so we were really putting some effort in on this one! I kept the pace going pretty well with my long stride, but got pooped out by about 3/4 the way through.. We tried out our new hydropacks (thanks Ann!!) and they work great, I like having my hands free of a water bottle while I walk.
My tailbone situation hasn’t really gotten any better despite trying the physical therapy and back to acupuncture.. it has been a long and frustrating search for a fix. Physical therapy gives excellent results for a day or two, but I need to figure out what is causing me to get out of whack and the pain return.. I feel like my attitude has improved tremendously because I’ve been doing between 1.8 and 2 miles on the eliptical every weekday for the past 4 weeks. It hasn’t been easy getting up at 4am but I’m starting to get used to it. I find myself watching some cheesy AM news show hearing about all of the messed up things going on in the world on the previous day. On the bright side, I’m firming up a little bit and trying to shed some inches before we go vacation in Hawaii and Mexico this summer..

~~Random moment celebrating Annelieses (belated) Birthday friday night~~

We had sake bombs and sushi!! A shot of sake dropped into a 6 - 8oz cup of Sapporo and gulped. mmmm interesting taste, guaranteed to leave you cross eyed. Tons of the best salmon, eel, octopus, tuna, and teriyaki! Thanks for driving, honey!

Brew #8 : Bigfoot Clone!

I really enjoyed the Bigfoot brews I recently had and wanted to brew up a batch to see how to handle a big brew. This beer should finish around 10% alcohol and have a very healthy attack on the senses. Thursday night I made up a starter after work and it was bubbling away in short order. I’ve read that its advised to make a starter when the beer is going to have an original gravity over 1.070 and this Bigfoot should hit around 1.100! Take a peek at the starter :

This morning was going to be the day to give this brew a shot. The weather was excellent, even though the wind was lively.

1. Started with 5ga of water, 1tsp Gypsum, heated to 155F and left 13oz of 60L grain to soak for 30 minutes.

2. Added 4.8lbs of Amber liquid malt extract and brought the wort to a boil.
3. Added 2oz Nugget hops, 1oz Perle hops, 2tsp Irish moss and boiled for 30 minutes.

4. Added 7.5lbs of Light Dry Malt Extract, slowly, while stirring vigorously at times, tiring my arm, kept stirring, avoid a boil over, and stir. (15 minutes)
5. Added 1oz Cascade hops and boiled for 14 minutes.

6. Added 1oz Cascade hops, turned off the heat and let the hops sit for a minute or two after which I chilled the wort to 78F with the wort chiller.

7. I strain the wort, with Wendies help (there were a TON of hops), through my bottling bucket and drain through its spigot into the primary fermenter. I shook the heck out of the wort in primary to aerate the wort so the yeasties can do thier thing. The original gravity turns out to be 1.095, this is big!

8. Pitched the whole starter right into the primary fermenter and had immediate positive pressure. The starter was made with White Labs American Ale Blend WPL060. I’ll probably have to attach the blowoff tube before bed tonight, this thing may very well have a really active fermentation.

The wort coming to a boil:

The first hop additions:

Siphoning to the primary fermenter:

4/29: SG 1.029, 4 or 5 points from being right on target, tastes great! Dry hopped with 1/4oz Cascade and 1/4oz Willamette
7/3: FG 1.020 and bottled.. tastes like a champ!

3/3/2007: I smell a little bit of a floral and malty aroma. This thing is sweet, highly carbonated, highly hopped, and hot on the alcohol, and a big creamy mouthfeel but finishes dry..I think it’s balanced though, just a big bold personality. good stuff.. too many of these and you will start to slobber. I’ve passed quite a few of these out over the past year and those folks seem to enjoy it very much!

Happy 13th (91st) Birthday Shoobie!

Happy Birthday Shoobie!! He’s such a great dog, and he’s got such a cool personality.. he’s generally laid back, except for an ocassional run around the house with his squeek toy squeeking away at like 2 fricking AM in the morning.. ok, so it’s only happened a couple of times, but quite annoying. Why would he want to play fetch at 2AM, go to sleep dog! :)

Here’s the birthday boy:

And you know this can’t just happen without some celebration! So we’re chilling with Shoobie, letting him lay around on his blanket, on the couch.. and doing what he does best, lay around. I’m enjoying the consumption of a Bigfoot myself. WHOA, this is seriously powerful and overly delicious! I must make some, soon.