I just put in a wood stove a couple months ago-
I figure it's saving me ~$300 a month this time of year, and my house is less than 1000 ft. sq.
It's a little bit of work, but I'm young and I like it
Too bad for the Saudi's and the oil guy - Them= M=:lol:
Andy Le Blanc wrote:I just got the Misses to take up beer over the last couple years.
She doesn't trust that we can make good small batches...... yet
The hardest part is that her favorite beer is made within two miles...
Oak Pond Brewery..... Showhegan Maine.
I've been talking up the idea of a keg fridge, might have a better chance with that.
The key to great beer is sterility on the cold side of the brewing process. Anything before the boil is easy, as it gets boiled for at least an hour. Once you've chilled the wurt, sterility is of the essence. Use your best aseptic technique.
As for the keg fridge, I gave up bottling for a kegging system. Cornelius kegs (soda kegs) and CO2 tank + regulator. I've a 22 cu ft fridge just for my kegs. I've got 3 new batches I'll be brewing hopefully this weekend, a Kolsch, IPA, and Saison. Mmm. Mmm. Good!
We don't get Oak Pond out here in Cali. Lots of good microbrews though.
I was out to a wedding in S. Oregon this past summer, cave jct, lots of IPA, wow.
And the selection of tequila's, O M G, makes everything here back east,
look like trailer milk.
I've brewed enough to appreciate the procedure, can even do a reasonable
job with only what you can get on food stamps out here.
Been dying to step up to a keg-o-later and a larger batch.
Got the Misses baking once a week together, It would be very nice to brew
together too.
The states filling in budget gaps with higher taxes, good beer is getting silly
expensive. Not even good beer..... jeez.... a few large pizza's and a couple
three 6's is pushing $75.....
I figure if I can find her a favorite in a keg its a start.
My total bill for ingredients for these 3 batches (~5.5 gals each) was just over $100. That's equivalent to about 15 cases. So, a case of microbrew is what? $30-$40. Makes sense economically as well.
you bet, and 200gal per person per house hold, per year.
there's a food rated water container at tractor supply, enough to double batch size.
I've been keepin my eye out for a wort chiller plan I can piece together at
the hardware supply.
I've played around with "burtonizing" my water a bit too, Burton on the Thames.
A mineral spring in England, specific salts.... found a reference in an old zygamany.
And I still have hops growing around the property too.
Any food grade container is fair game for fermenting/storage.
Wurt chillers are easy. You can make one with 1/2" copper tubing, a garden hose fitting and some hose clamps. Wind the copper tubing around something round to for the coil, the run the ends vertical for the inlet and outlet.
One thing I do is try to conserve water where I can. So the hot water running out of the chiller is used to sterilize my fermenter(s).
The brew store by me had about 5 different sizes of these copper tubing chillers on the shelf. Not exactly cheap either, so a DIY chiller will yield the same results as the commercially available units.
Do you do all grain, mini-mash, or extract? If not doing all grain, you should seriously consider it. A small investment in equipment , ~$300 if you buy it all new from a brew store, but the results cannot be argued with. You can control your results much better as well since you know exactly what your grain bill was and how much extract potential is there. The liquid and dry extracts are a crap shoot. Just what is in there and in what quantities? Mini-mash helps a lot in getting better results, but still isn't as predictable and you still don't know what your main fermentable carbon source came from.
There is nothing better than kicking back and playing a homebrewed amp while quaffing a homebrewed beer!!
Ah, self reliance. Already do some light gardening, pickled cucumbers this summer, and only do homemade pizza anymore. On my To-DIY list is homebrewing, beekeeping, keeping laying hens, making a wood-fired pizza oven, and roasting my own coffee beans.