I bought a rectanglar 52 qt. last fall to make into a bigger mash tun. Took a while to find one with a drain. Target had it for 15 bucks i think. 6 months later I’m finally gonna get to it. Not much to it. Cost me 26 bucks for the parts. Took about 20 minutes.

Ran to Menards and picked up:

• 1 – 1/2 inch ball valve
• 1 – 1/2 inch x 1 1/2 brass nipple
• 3 – 3/4 inch zinc flat washers
• 1 – 1/2 inch male hose barb (one that screws into the valve)
• 1 – 1/2 inch female hose barb (one that screws onto nipple)
• 1 – 3/4 stainless steel flat washer (is to tight to fit over nipple. needs to slightly ground)
• 1 – Stainless braided water supply hose 18 inch

And we get started
Had to take the old drain out.

saved the gasket and lil plastic thingy there on the left

got my supplies a ready

gotta grind the SS washer on the inside but it goes. Add the gasket and thingy

Put the hose barb on and push thru the hole

Washer up the out side and screw on the valve and other hose barb

Take your SS water hose and cut off the ends. Jig saw works awesome. Hack saw,, um no.

Pull out the hose from the inside. crimp one end. Or close it off how ever you want. Other end goes over the barb with a clamp

Done. Make some beer.

I have been scouring through recipes this week looking for something to jump out at me. Thats the normal routine lately. And if you have read any of my brew day posts lately you kinda get that idea. All over the map.

I never used to do that. I brewed about three or four different beers and that was it. The stout. The English bitter. A pale ale. A red. And on and off, a porter.
And these beers were good. But I brewed them pretty regularly. Most got changed up as we went and got better. Exactly how it should progress.

Now we come to my beers of the last year or two. I don’t think I’ve brewed any beer twice. And it defiantly shows. I may have had 2 or 3 brews total in that span that I actually like the way they turned out. Nothing terrible mind you, but not exactly what i want to be showing around.

Oh I brewed enough I think. And been using data, observations and techniques from all of brew days to better my PROCESS, but not really taking the time to better my individual beers.

Brew a beer. Keg/bottle it. Drink it. Evaluate it. Move on to the next beer. Never fixing, tweaking or otherwise improving on it.
And I do admit that my beers have greatly suffered because of this. I intend to remedy this.

I am gathering up all my recipes and picking out just a couple styles. Three, maybe four styles that I am going to work on this year and get them to where I am happy with them.
Start with the basic recipes that I have and know are close to what I want and get them done right.
These will be full 5 gallons batches.
But because I do like the brewing process I will continue to brew new recipes/styles, but those will be 2 1/2 gallon mini mash or extract. This way it’s cheap enough to brew every week and get a bit of variety.

I’m guessing some will think this is de-evolving, but I disagree. I think working on subtle changes of body, tastes and aromas of the same recipe requires far more attention than just blindly following recipe after recipe.

As I am writing this I made my choices. The two main beers I wanna get working on are the Wiki’d amber ale that I just brewed. And the Fogger stout.
The third I think I will switch out between two. The cream ale, and a wheat beer.

The amber and stout were at one time my goto beers. Made them a dozen times each, but have only made them once in the last couple years. Want to make them great again.
The cream ale I have made a couple of times trying to get it where I want it. I think it might be close to what I want. The wheat is another one I recently done a couple times. Some changes made to it already but needs work.

Am currently working on getting the mini mash set up rolling again. Seems like old times with it. Can experiment easier with the smaller batches. And recipe gone wrong wont cost me a bunch.

So that seems to be the plan for the rest of the year. Stick around. We gonna be putting the hammer down pretty soon.

(In between times I’ll be getting my larger mashtun ready.)

Finally getting around to brewing again. Don’t know why it’s been this long, but here it is.

Gonna be brewing another one of my old extract recipes that I’m moving to all grain. This one was supposed to be a Wicked Ale “clone”. Original extract recipe is
– 1 can of light LME
– 2 lbs light DME
– 1 lb crystal 40
– 1/4 lb chocolate malt
1 oz cascade at 60
– 1/2 oz. cascade at 10

So adjusting this to all grain I am going to use 10 lbs 2 row instead of the extract, and will add the last 1/2 oz of hops at flame out. Using 05 yeast. The original used coopers. Changing the name to Wiki’d Ale.

-34 degrees outside, Sun. Movie watched was Jingle all the Way
-3.5 gal of 167 water settled at 152. I was hoping for 154 though. Left it. 60 min mash
-First running got 2 gallons. scarey black for only a little choc malt
-2nd batch 4.5 gal of 165. And got that much back.
– 6.5 going into boil. Although it really took a long time to get there. 60 min boil
– nothing unusual except very large boil off again ,Cooled very fast, but not much seemed to drop out. Most of the gunk going into fermenter.
– yeast pitched. Everything looks good.
– yep, forgot to take reading again.

(update: 12 hours after pitch absolute no activity. Does not look good. Will repitch another packet when I get home.)
(2nd update: got home and fermenting fine. I am too used to using Windsor yeast I guess)