Medal Winners - Post your system!

[ferg]

I think it would be interesting to see pics of the systems that brewers have won their medals with.

Does homebrew transmute large amounts of stainless steel into gold?

[Bubbles]

One of the most important lessons anyone will learn about home brewing is that fancy/expensive/shiny/homemade/bought equipment doesn't mean jack when it comes to the quality of your beer.

I've got a pretty basic system - picnic cooler mash tun, plastic bucket boiler etc., but I was still producing good beer back in the days when I mashed in a stockpot and strained the hops out using a sieve.

Recipe means little. Equipment mean even less. The most important things are good aeration, fermentation temperature control, sanitation and choice of yeast. Get those right and you'll be laughing.

[molc]

Recipe means little. Equipment mean even less. The most important things are good aeration, fermentation temperature control, sanitation and choice of yeast.

Exactly this. Remember you don't make beer, yeast does. Treat those little babies right and they'll reward you in the nectar of the gods.

One question, how do you aerate? I just pick up the carboy and shake like a mother for a minute or two (or until my heart tells me I have to stop!) but I always worry I'm not giving them enough to thrive in the first few hours.

[Bubbles]

One question, how do you aerate?

Open tap. Wait.

Let gravity and splashing do the work.

[molc]

I may need to purchase a tap I siphon out as when I had one it would always block when transferring.

[ferg]

One of the most important lessons anyone will learn about home brewing is that fancy/expensive/shiny/homemade/bought equipment doesn't mean jack when it comes to the quality of your beer.

I've got a pretty basic system - picnic cooler mash tun, plastic bucket boiler etc., but I was still producing good beer back in the days when I mashed in a stockpot and strained the hops out using a sieve.

Recipe means little. Equipment mean even less. The most important things are good aeration, fermentation temperature control, sanitation and choice of yeast. Get those right and you'll be laughing.

Yep, I understand this! I was hoping this thread would illustrate the point

[brian_c]

<plug>You can check out my system here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikuurvFRMF0 </plug>

This wasn't the brewday that I won the medal, but I followed the same process.

[Qs]

I may need to purchase a tap I siphon out as when I had one it would always block when transferring.

I've seen people use a little plastic yoke that goes on the end of the syphon tube to spray the wort around and get air into it too. Maybe handier than drilling a tap into your kettle.

I do what bubbles does plus I stop half way and give it a bloody good shake while theres room and plenty of air still in the carboy. I do worry its not enough though. Eventually I'll just buy a tank and add the oxygen directly.

[johnrm]

Stir like fück until your hand is tired. Aerated.

[revel_and_chaff]

Maybe a slight thread creep here, but on the subject of aeration, I've found that a large plastic spoon fitted into the end of a drill  gets the wort very bubbly in a short space of time!

[John_C]

<plug>You can check out my system here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikuurvFRMF0 </plug>

This wasn't the brewday that I won the medal, but I followed the same process.

You'll see mine there too.

[Will_D]

OR:

Jump into your old DeLorean,

Set the time clock back two years and sign onto the "Wort Oxygenation" System (bottle, reg, 0.5 micron SS diffuser) Group Buy!

Whats that you say; "Me flux capacitor is fek'd"!!Ok - just find someone who has an O2 system to borrow a sniff of the pure.

PS: Reality Check: Do you REALLY need to oxygenate a low grav. wort? Prolly not!

[Paul B]

I think most Irish brewers setups will look very similar. It's still fun to see though.  Here's the gold medal setup 

Mashing in peco boiler with bag:


Cheap Amazon thermometer (calibrated and it's actually fairly accurate)

[Bogwoppit]

Bear with me here for a minute, I've been brewing a few years but still consider myself very much a novice. I have a fair bit of experience of dissolving gases in water from my normal life and I'm going to take an educated guess that the same principals apply to wort as to water.

Oxygen will naturally dissolve into water under atmospheric pressure but there is a limit on the amount, we'll call this 100% saturation.
The amount of oxygen it takes to get to 100% saturation depends on a few factors; temperature, pressure and whatever else is already dissolved in there.

Cold water can hold more oxygen than hot water, fresh water more than salt water, water at sea level more than at the top of a mountain. There are big tables to show you what amount of oxygen water can hold for these given parameters.

We can push the oxygen content over 100% and 'supersaturate' the water, we still measure it as a % of what it will hold under normal conditions.
e.g. the same principal applies with carbon dioxide when we condition our beers, we have 100% saturation of CO2 due to the high pressure inside the vessel keeping it in solution, when we release that pressure the saturation potential of the beer drops sharply and the beer becomes supersaturated and comes out of solution and we have fizz. Simple (I hope).

When it comes to fermenting wort we will not be fermenting it under pressure (or most of us won't anyway) and the temperature will remain constant. By using pure oxygen in the wort it is possible to get the saturation level above 100% and if we don't disturb it it may stay like that for up to 24 hours, but it will come down to 100% on it's own without any other factors in that time period (assuming it behaves the same way as water). This isn't really long enough to have any effect on the yeast I don't think.

The next thing to consider is what happens when the yeast gets active, it produces CO2 which will start to form bubbles once it gets over 100% saturation. This bubbling of the CO2 will strip out any excess oxygen extremely quickly leaving it back at 100% saturation (until the yeast starts to use it up), for practical purposes for homebrewers I'd nearly call it instantaneous.

Aeration (splashing, vigorous stirring, whisking, bubbling air) is actually pretty good at getting water up to 100% saturation but the one the you have to be aware of is the temperature. If you go through your aeration procedure before the wort has fully cooled then you may leave your yeast short of oxygen. You could get your wort to 100% saturation at 30 degrees but then as it cools down to say 21 degrees it may only be 80% saturated making it much harder for the yeast.

What do I do? I get my beer down to 21 degrees and let it slowly cascade into my fermenter, the drop is about 20cm from the tap to the very top of the fermenter so it gets a good drop. I sometimes also give it a very vigorous stir with a whisk just to make sure. I got a loan of an oxygen meter from a friend and measured it in the past and it was 100%, happy days.

With regards to putting air/oxygen through a stone in the wort, to get the best efficiencies they need water pressure above them to force the oxygen into the solution. In practice you need to make sure they are at least 30cm below the surface or most of it will just vent off.

The one advantage using pure oxygen over air will be speed, using pure oxygen will get you to 100% saturation quicker than air but that's personal choice.


Now waiting for Will to shoot me to ribbons and show me up as an idiot! 

[helmet]

This is mine for what it's worth. Picked up gold in Cat 35.
http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.com/forum/index.php?topic=8981.0

I've since swapped the peco out for a ss boiler, other than that it's the same.