Start small think tall

[Tim Stewart]

15 years ago age I came back from my Brittish OE with a dream to start my own Whiskey distillery...............after working in north eastern Scotland planting and harvesting malting grain and living in whiskey country I had come home with it in my veins if the Scots sarted doing it hundreds of years ago how hard could it be.

Well when I got home I seeked advice on getting going, I met a old bugger who told me to brew beer "its easy to make and cheap to start out" so I got some gear and winged it...............first brew was a partial mash that ended exploading all through my cupboards ,second brew I malted my own barley and did a full mash the only problem was the barley was for stock feed and the beer ended up cloudy with lots of strange flavours and I nearly buggered the oven roasting the grain and then I discovered extract and started enjoying my beer ,but soon my future wife came along and found my time was taken up by starting a family and before I knew it I had 4 kids and had not brewed in 5 years.

So again im doing my 15ltr full mash brews and loving it ,I still want to take it up a notch so I am getting some gear together to build a single teir brew rig with 72ltr pots for 50ltr brews and maybe one day start a boutique brewerey brewing beer with my own barley............this time a malting barley lol

Heres my plans for my rig ,I have the pots(pujadas),burners ,pumps and atm sorting out the plumbing/taps/joiners, frame, wort chiller which im thinking a plate chiller and a fly sparge .All the plumbing is 1/2 inch S/S 316 tube

[Tim Stewart]

 

some parts so far

[Tim Stewart]

Now to build my platform

[Tim Stewart]

Well I finally brewed my first batch through my new rig and everything worked well.....one of the parts I was most impressed with was the chillout plate chiller I brought from mashmaster ,it cooled the wort to 17deg form the boil on the outlet.

Also I have setup the brewery in my cowshed in the old vat room ,now that the vat is outside I had a big empty space in the shed and with the great water supply from 120 feet underground, two 300L hot water tanks, the acid and other cleaning chemicals and the concrete washdown area with a pressure hose it seemed like the perfect place to setup.

I did find it a bit tricky getting my fermenter into the fridge so I might invest in another pump and use the pump to pump into the fridge and back out again once the beer has fermented out ,but otherwise I ready for the next batch yet another (7th) Pilsener which im trying to master and getting closer

[David Upex]

That is some real bling. Awsome!