Castle Campbell Pale Ale - 12/06/08

[Calum]

The day has finally arrived. I have been slowly gathering the bits and bobs to allow me to increase my brew length and move the process to the garage.

Here is the family photo of the new brewery. A big thankyou to Vossy and also to Skudler (a well known craft brewer up in this neck of the woods) for the fantastic guidance. The shelving was bought off eBay from "Shelfsafe" - it was fairly inexpensive and was very easy to put together and modify. It has been discussed on here before and really is worth looking into if you need something to raise your brewery.



I have brewed this one a few times now and as I am fledging this setup I thought I should stick to something quite familiar.



Some extra photos of the day. Here is the close ups of the mash tun. It is the 50l Nordic Optical bain marie off of eBay and has been coverted and fitted with a ball valve tap.



Here is the inside of the mash tun. I wanted to reuse the manifold that I have been using in my picnic box mash tun rather than build a new one.



Water being transferred to the mash tun.



All doughed in at 67C - am not sure how much heat I will lose so I am happy to leave it at that an see how it goes. I mashed in at a ratio of 3:1 which is a bit thinner than normal.



Here is a picture of my grain cupboard - looking quite healthy at the moment



Half an hour into the mash at the moment. I really should get the sparge water sorted out.

[Calum]

That shelving looks like a good alternative to custom building one Hope your brew goes to plan.

That was what I thought. I needed something that would be relatively cheap and easy to errect and dismantle. It has been just the job for me today - plenty of space to lay things out and get on with the brewing.

I used your batch sparge calculator for this - cheers.

[Calum]

Quite a learning experience doing a double brewlength. I can certainly see the benefit of getting pumps to take the majority of the lifting out of the equation.

This is the first runnings, after the recirculation of the first few litres, I was very happy with the clarity. However, as I am batch sparging this all went to pot after when I started to add the sparge water. You will note that there is a skateboard in the picture - this was when I thought I needed to raise the collection vessel. However I decided against it for two reasons, 1) I didn't need it and 2)Using something with wheels for collecting hot precious wort is just a stupid idea.



This is where I could have done with a couple of pumps as I was having to collect the wort is separate vessels and then bringing it all together. The top tip was only try and lift small amounts at a time. It seemed that there was accident waiting to happen.



One great big dirty rolling boil.



The smoking kettle.



This time next year I'll be growing my tatties using those grains.

[Vossy1]

Great post and pics C

You know you wanna pump

[roger the dog]

Great looking set-up Calum

[Calum]

Great post and pics C

You know you wanna pump

Vos, you are nothing but a pump pimp

I have obviously made some errors in the calculation as I ended up with 47l @ 1044 rather than 42l @ 1046. According to my spreadsheet that gives me an efficiency of 75.4%. With 47litres I will be able to slightly short measure two big cornies and get my 11l cornie filled up too.

[Calum]

Great looking set-up Calum

Thanks Roger.

[mixbrewery]

Have you seen that new program on Men & Motors?



Pimp My Pump!

[Calum]

Have you seen that new program on Men & Motors?



Pimp My Pump!

Vossy, are you doing a bit of moonlighting?

[Vossy1]

You guys
I think you should point your attentions at Brewzone...he has a double header