Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?
Sorry, you won’t find any more mention of alternative rock albums from the 90’s here. What I am talking about is the craft beer industry. It seems that every other day there is a new brewer, craft beer bar or beer blog (one might include this blog) turning up.
Keeping up with the Joneses and what they are drinking has never been harder with the range of beer from different breweries available in good beer outlets now.
Everybody is brewing beer.
So with our big egos and beer bellies, a few of us boys got together and decided “yeah, I reckon we can turn out a decent drop”. We had tried our hand at homebrewing with extract malt back when we had less discerning tastes, so this time we felt we needed to go one better. We needed to throw ourselves into all grain brewing. On top of this, like any ingenuitive kiwi would know, we needed to build our own kit from scratch.
Knowing that the idea was a little more complicated than just throwing water, hops, malts and yeast together we went about a series of planning sessions which usually coincided with drinking sessions at Galbraiths or O’Carrolls. Clearly we were going to be good at this. Before too long we had a clear idea of our direction, complete with diagrams and notebooks, and we set to work.
After months of planning and sourcing parts from around the globe, we were ready to start our build. But I’ll let the video tell this part of the story.
The video portrays a culmination of a day and a half worth of brew kit build, however the majority of that time was spent drilling only six holes. Evidently, the stainless steel was a bit harder than you might have thought.
With more brew kit parts to come, this tale is yet untold, so stay tuned to see what unfolds next on our journey toward beer.
For a full list of our brew kit parts and where we sourced them from check out BMoore’s post about sourcing parts.
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6 comments to “Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?”
Kelly Ryan - 03 Nov, 2011
Awesome video!!! Looks like a sweet kit.
billofbeer - 04 Nov, 2011
Cheers Kelly, one of our team is an editor so he’s pretty handy with a camera and editing suite.
The brew kit should see us through some good beers, looking forward to finalising it and putting down a batch
Pants - 11 Nov, 2011
Lads,
Top work by all concerned. Looks the business. I wish you all the best whilst practising in brewing some quality drops. Hopefully my next visit to NZ is better tasting on the beer front courtesy of the lads!
billofbeer - 14 Nov, 2011
Cheers Pants, we’re quietly confident of putting together some good brews, not far off now.
Tre. - 24 Sep, 2012
Hey guys – looking awesome!
Just wondering about your heat exchange system there..
Is it as simple as the PID send’s a message to the solenoid which opens to allow the wort to run through a copper pipe that runs through the flame and back through to kettle? (with the help of a pump?)
Pretty awesome 🙂 Good results?
Keep it coming! Cant wait to get a drop down in Wellers 😉
All the best!
Bmoore - 25 Sep, 2012
Hi Tre
Thanks for the comments, yes it’s a great kit. It is simple but the solenoid controls temperature not wort flow.
The pump runs continuous with flow controlled by the output tap on the pump, this drives the wort through the coil which is immersed in the HLT.
The temperature of the wort is controlled by the sensor inserted in line after the coil as close as possible to the hot wort going back into the mash tun. This sensor controls the solenoid which turns the gas on and off heating the HLT to keep a consistent mash temp where required.
We have recently found that insulation on the mash tun means that the temp doesn’t drop enough to worry about heating during the mash cycle but it’s comforting to know we can heat if necessary.
Results are good when we don’t make the mistakes 🙂 We have turned out a few tasty drops so far and look forward to perfecting the art!