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Transferring from Barrel to Keg – the Bulldog

Now that I have beer in the barrels, I started to look at the different ways to transfer the beer from the barrels to the kegs.  I was going to use a pump and a hose, but remembered that when I did this from my fermenter to kegs, the beer was oxidized.  This seems to be a common issue with pump transfers at this stage on a homebrew scale.  In my research, I came across a piece of equipment called a Bulldog. Continue reading “Transferring from Barrel to Keg – the Bulldog”

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Adding Barrels to the Brewery

I was finally successful in acquiring a couple reasonably priced barrels for use in the brewery.  I am lucky enough to have a friend who runs a great barrel-only fermentation brewery and he was kind enough to pass on some savings, so…no links for purchase.  This is more for preparing the barrels for use, maintenance, and care of the barrels.  I’ve also build a multi-use stand for the barrels that will be detailed here.

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Building a Yeast Bank

We like to make a variety of brews and with the cost of yeast, we have made starters for our brews for a while now.  One of the added benefits of creating a starter for your yeast is that you save money since you do not have to purchase multiple packs of yeast for a brew.  We brew ten gallons at a time, the yeast packs that are sold at your local homebrew store or that come with ingredient kits generally contain enough yeast for a five gallon batch.
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15 Gallon Conical Fermenter and Chamber

This is (for now, but who can really tell) the last of the big builds for our brewery.  We started looking at the FastFerment conical fermenters, but at less than 8 gallons, it was pointless.  This sent me on a search for something we could use for our 10 gallon batches.  After looking in to many choices, we decided that stainless was just too damn expensive.  Plastic seemed to be out of reach, too, until I found Continue reading “15 Gallon Conical Fermenter and Chamber”

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Dual Stir Plate

I had a double brew day coming up and needed a way to do two yeast starters at the same time.  I didn’t want to build another single stir plate, I knew we would be doing high gravity beers and if we wanted to get a partigyle batch off it, then we would need 2 starters going.

I also wanted to make this one look a bit better, too.  Here is the equipment list I put together:
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