Heavy Lifting

[Crusader-Rob]

Hi, interesting Question:

In particular this is for BIAB and AG Brewers, as theres are a larger kg of ingredients.

I have a bung shoulder, and theres a hefty amount of pain when I'm lifting my grains out, or moving my fermenter for bottling purposes etc.

 

As theres a large recovery time in my shoulder injury, namely up to 6 months. What processes do people use, when lifting their grains etc.? and moving stuff around, as Ideally I'd like to keep brewing but I can't see way around not doing it for awhile... which would suck an I'd probably run out of beer pretty quickly as the only training I could do wopuld be at the bar. (Not that I'm complaining too much).

6 Months from February, is August realistically, which is getting pretty damn close to NHC time.

Pictures and suggestions would be appreciated where possible.
theother thing I want to ask is, what about burners and stuff, currently using the Bunnings/mitre10 4 ring burner, and its sitting ontop of my BBq, which is quite high, so if anyone has any ideas how to lower the brewing/boil would be good, preferably local suppliers in NZ. mounting brackets etc. without charring my patio and burning grass etc.

Cheers guys.

[Peter Smith]

Block and tacke for lifting out of mash tun,  pumps for liquid transfer, dont move anything when its full, move grains around by th kg...     get help on brew day

[Grant R Baker]

Wet grains I just shovel out a bit at a time.

 

30L or boiled wort get transfer at about 10-15 litres at a time into the fermenter inside (all sterilized of course). I could run a 25 meter pump hose but the wifes dog would attack it.

 

The 20l white food grade buckets (with lids) get used for everything in my brewing. Grain, milled grain, 1st mash run, sparge then fermenter... just hosed out then spray the StarSans before the finished product goes in.

[Dene McDonald]

I was looking at this today for BIAB and he uses what he calls a sky hook:

http://www.homebrewdownunder.com/index.php?topic=1722.0

[John H]

I use a 4 ring burner which is placed onto a large concrete paving slab on bricks. This is supported by a trestle and scaffold planks. Moving the paving slab may be tricky for the shoulder though.

My skyhook for my BIAB is an eye-hook.

Another alternative while your shoulder gets better is to look at partial mashes and extract :O

[Crusader-Rob]

I like the paving slab idea, would need to make it in my garage with the doors open to make sure i dont gas myself out, and that way i can use one of those skyhook thingee's.

 

I like the look of the electric Urn too!!! Mioght have to look into those, looks like southern hospitality has them.

I've been doing Partial Mash recently to save my shoulder a bit, It's a pain though cos I've got some good recipes to try on AG!

[Pilgrim]

This was my brew tower when set-up for BIAB. If you are going to use a sky hook then a single pulley is no good to you as there is no mechanical advantage i.e. instead of lifting 8Kg of grain you are pulling down 8Kg of grain. You need at least a double sheaf pulley top and bottom to reduce the load. Note the outriggers to allow the bag to be swung out to the side and into a large bucket. The need for these became aparent when I nearly tipped the whole rig on it's side the first time I used it ;-)

Set-up was designed for progression to traditional brewing as shown in the second photo, although this has since been upgraded to a 90Ltr HLT.

[Hamish Jones]

Heres another thought, what about an engine hoist, that way its on wheels already so you can use it to lug everything around, one armed operation as well, I saw a couple of them on trademe pretty cheaply locally

[Crusader-Rob]

this is on 1-Day today, something similar to the Aussie Fella's "Sky hook"
 http://www.1-day.co.nz/products/AA7BT3C1D/p/3#