Keezer Pics

Lots of updates

I've been really busy lately, so my chocolate oatmeal stout and Athena's honey brown ale have been sitting on secondary for three weeks or so.  In that time, I ordered the hardware/plumbing for the keezer and came up with a more conventional (cheaper) design and Athena even picked up her own Corny keg.

Keezer Hardware:

• Perlick Stainless Faucets with handles (x3)
• 4" Stainless Steel Shanks (x3)
• CO2 and Beer Hoses (12' of each)
  

Lid Materials:

• 3/4" Oak
• 1/4" Furniture-grade Plywood
• 2" Mold-resistant Styrofoam Insulation
• Weather Stripping

I got to hang out with my dad for the better part of a Sunday afternoon building the lid and staining it.  Later that week I sealed it with a couple coats of polyurethane coating, installed the insulation, and got it mounted to the freezer.

Athena came home today with her keg and I got my drip tray and rubber shelf mats in the mail.  We siphoned both beers into their respective kegs, slowly brought the pressure up to 30PSI while aerating over the coarse of about 30 minutes, then let them chill while we went shopping for dinner.  We cooked up some rib eyes with mashed potatoes and sauteed veggies just in time for our beers to get cold and fizzy.

Nothing like a home cooked meal with a home brewed beer.

Officially Obsessed

Last weekend Tom and I racked his Pliny of the Elder clone and my Fat Tire clone to secondary.  Then on Monday and Tuesday, Athena and I made a batch of Honey Brown Ale and a Chocolate Oatmeal Stout respectively.

 

  That means there are 20 gallons of beer fermenting in my garage as we speak (or type)

  Chocolate Oatmeal Stout on the left, Honey Brown Ale on the right

Now it's a Keezer

Today I wired up my inline temperature controller and set it to 38F.  It was way easier than I thought and the whole thing only took about 15 minutes.

Kegs are here

Woke up this morning with a big box from Midwest Brewers Supply on my doorstep:

I also got my inline temperature controller so I can turn my chest freezer into a refrigerator. Right now I have all the components to build phase one of the Keezer, so I think that will be my project this weekend.

Brew Day +1

Less than 24 hours after pitching my yeast I had an airlock full of foam!  It has since died down, but I still have a nice krausen...yeast starter ftw.

Brew Day!!

Today I bought the last of the equipment needed to start brewing:

• 20qt Stainless Steel Stew Pot
• Metal Brewer's Spoon
• Wine Thief
•  Rubbermaid Bin (to fill w/ ice to cool my wort)

The whole process took about 3 hours from the time I put the water on the stove to the end of cleanup.  The ice bath of saltwater (thanks MythBusters!!) really helped get the wort to a pitchable temperature in record time.  I ended up with a little over 3 gallons of boiling water that I was able to cool down to about 85 F in less than 20 minutes.  I had 2 gallons of sterilized mineral water in the freezer, so when I mixed the two the final temp going into the carboy was about 67 F.  The whole time I was cooling the wort, I had my aerator working its magic, and I left it in the carboy for another 20 minutes after pitching the yeast.  Instead of using a plastic airlock, I opted for a 3 foot section of 1" surgical tubing with the other end in a 48oz beer stein half-filled with vodka.

Now I'm just going to cover it up and let the yeast do their thing.