Frivolous Frog brewery - first attempt!

[Kev888]

Thanks chaps! Its quite a relief - it took so long and cost so much to get together (amazing how all the separate bits add up - I've not dared to work it out properly!), so any sort of major failure would have been 'upsetting'. Thankfully the kit mostly works really well, though I need to sort out the hose pipe and boiler emptying before it'll be reasonable to use, its mainly my control of it that needs tweaking..

Really looking forward to playing with ingredients now!

Cheers
Kev

[Naich]

Brilliant stuff! Makes all the hard work worthwhile. It's the first of many happy brewdays.

[Kev888]

Hopefully! My excuse is that to justify the investment of time and money it needs to produce lots and lots of beer over many years, or the price per pint will be ridiculous. Although secretly I did really enjoy building it too

Cheers
Kev

[Kev888]

Well almost a day later - I had a peek and the Fv seems happy; a nice compact looking head on it (which is good as the FV is a bit fuller than normal!).

Been doing some post-brewday calculations too. I got an OG of 1057 (after temperature correction), so assuming the FG is a quarter of the OG then I predict a drop of 42.75, which (depending on whose formula you use to calculate it) should give me about 5.5% ABV. It may not quite reach 1/4 as the mash was quite warm but I guess that sounds reasonable for 10kg of pale malt and 1kg of crystal in a post-boil volume of a bit over 45L.

Without a measure of the pre-boil volume I'm not sure of the mash efficiency, but to be honest I don't normally bother with the numbers provided the OG seems okay. I believe that the theoretical max was 1072, so I guess that my overall/brew-house efficiency was about 79% which sounds alright to me, especially for a first attempt. EDIT: or actually more like 75%, as I forgot to include the wheat component in the calculations and so the theoretical available was more like 1075.

Supposedly I also have around 28 IBUs of hoppiness too, so the IBU/OG ratio is about 0.5. I've no way of measuring the actual hop utilisation, so I guess we'll just see if it tastes approximately like that once its done - I would imagine so as the boil was definately rolling along nicely.

Cheers
Kev

[Spud395]

Nice one kev, being following your build as I hope to upgrade my 33l boiler/HLT and coolbox mash tun reasonably soon.
You might not want to do the figures, but if you were to make a guess?
You need to subtract the cost of all those pints in a pub before you call your set up expensive (I've all my excuses lined up for herself allready)

Getting a 2 hour +/- head start to your brewday would be a great headstart though.
Anyway, good work

[Kev888]

You tempted me into it!

Setting up the three tanks (everything including stainless tanks, insulation, water cylinder, plumbing parts and tubing, pump, elements and flanges, false bottom, IC etc etc) cost about £750 in total... Ouch! IIRC thats almost half as much as brewzone's ready made 100L setup, and took me months of spare time to do.
The control electronics (ATC 800+, sockets, switches, immersion timer, heat proof cable) were about another £130.
The wooden frame would have been about £50 if I hadn't already got some of it
The freecycle FV fridge with heater, ATC and four 50L mango tubs + taps (all of which I already had before the upgrade) cost probably £100.

So my complete brewing setup is heading dangerously towards £1,000 - and thats not including the cornie/dispensing side of things In reality I'm sure its even more than that, I'm the type that already has bits of ply, tools and so on hanging around - but there would also be P&P charges and so on too.

Hmm, I suppose actually thats not too bad though (he said, trying to convince himself), considering how much time is invested in it and how many years it should last for, but its surprising as I bought all the parts in dribs and drabs over the last year or more and hadn't totted it up. No wonder my pocket money has been non existant for a while..

Cheers
Kev

[JontyR]

I need to sort out the hose pipe and boiler emptying before it'll be reasonable to use, its mainly my control of it that needs tweaking..

Kev

Kev,

I've been toying with putting a water supply into my garage. Mine is only a couple of metres from the house so I'm thinking about a dig and laying a permanant pipe (insulated). I did a similar thing to my greenhouse last year and it worked really well. The grey flexible water pipe is really easy to use. Is this somethig that might be feasible with your garage?

[Kev888]

Hi Jonty,

I had toyed with the idea of using the blue service pipe in a similar way, but it needs to be burried quite deep to stop freezing (and garden digging chopping it) and my garage is about 20m away across some thick concrete so I decided not to try it.

However, in a separate thread I asked about sanitising hose pipes. I'd found some clear braided stuff that was rather expensive and a bit stiff to wind up/out but awalker suggested an opaque hose thats WRAS approved so I may well go with that (or take the gamble on a new but normal hose poisoning me and just keep that very clean).

I was also thinking of laying some 32mm waste pipe out on brew day to direct used water and sanitising fluid away to the drain.

Cheers
Kev

[Spud395]

You tempted me into it
So my complete brewing setup is heading dangerously towards £1,000
Cheers
Kev

Oops sorry about that

All things considered thats not bad really, when you take into account what you could spend on a hobby and then have to go and buy beer after that.
One of my other hobbies is mountain biking and for a grand you'd get feck all.
So well done on a cheap upgrade
I was allways good at making excuses!

[Kev888]

Ha ha! Yes, thanks for helping out on that one.

Its true though, its not a lot compared to many pass times and should save money on beer in the long run - I do intend to use it year after year. Its just that I'd imagined the two stainless tanks at around £230 in total would be the bulk of the cost - so to find out that it was only a bout 1/3rd of the three-tank build price, is a bit of a surprise!

Cheers
Kev

[Naich]

Hopefully! My excuse is that to justify the investment of time and money it needs to produce lots and lots of beer over many years, or the price per pint will be ridiculous. Although secretly I did really enjoy building it too

Are we all still kidding ourselves we do this to save money, or is it just something to tell the wife so she thinks she understands?

[Kev888]

Ha Ha! Its kind of ironic, but many many years ago I did actually first begin brewing to save money on beer - little did I know! These days my aim is rather to make better (i.e. to my personal taste) and different beer to the local supermarket's offerings, but I still consider it satisfying to do so whilst also costing less per pint than the bought stuff. Its true within a brew of course, but after this upgrade its going to take quite some time before that will include the setup costs too!

I do have an ulterior motive in this that is fiscally related though. The small group I work for will almost certainly cease to exist soon when its main man retires - that will probably mean starting at the bottom again for me, in some kind of yet-to-be-discovered career change. So I'm very much hoping that by then I'll be able to reap the rewards of having invested in a decent quality setup beforehand, and just have the cost of the ingredients per pint to contend with.

Just the FV/storage and probably more cornies side of things to sort out before then really - fingers crossed.

Cheers
Kev

[Spud395]

You're right Kev, a wise old man once told me "when you have money spend it on gear"

Thinking back on it he wasnt that old, or wise for that matter, but I think he was still close to the mark!

[Naich]

To paraphrase some other wise men - brewing will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no brewing

[WishboneBrewery]

Hopefully! My excuse is that to justify the investment of time and money it needs to produce lots and lots of beer over many years, or the price per pint will be ridiculous. Although secretly I did really enjoy building it too

Are we all still kidding ourselves we do this to save money, or is it just something to tell the wife so she thinks she understands?

M I D - L I F E - C R I S I S !