the Big Three Five



Cold beers on tap

 I've wanted to build my own kegerator for roughly the last five years.  With my 35th birthday quickly approaching I've decided that now is the time to make it happen.  Happy Birthday to me indeed!  

I originally wanted to set up my kegerator to hold a half-barrel keg (15-1/2 gallons) because that is how most of the breweries keg their beer.  Now that I've been bitten by the homebrew bug I plan on setting this keg up for two Cornelius kegs (5 gallons).  The benefit of the Cornelius kegs is that a single batch of homebrew will fill it completely and I could probably fit four or five of them in my fridge if needed.  Another added benefit is that bottled beer takes three weeks to condition while kegged beer only takes three days. 

Gus and I decided a while ago that we would be bottling our Beach Dog Brown and Lake Sacajawea Pale Ale.  Since I've decided to build my kegerator we agreed that we should keg our CCWA NWPA and the soon to be brewed Stormtrooper IIPA.  So instead of just having the brown and pale ale ready to go we will also have the kegged beers to enjoy.  As of right now March 3rd is going to be the glorious day that we finally get to enjoy our beers.



Mmmm, beers

 Another thing I would really like for my birthday would be more carboys.  LTB currently has two carboys and one bottling bucket that we also use for our primary fermenter.  More carboys = more beers that we can brew!  I already plan on buying another bottling bucket and would like to see us have five or six carboys total.  That way we would be able to always have a batch of our favorite beers brewing plus have the space to do some experimenting. 

These last few days I have tried my hand at constructing some recipes.  Our first two batches were recipes that we got from Erik's cousin Gunnar and Jim at Your Homebrew.  Batch three was found on the internet with some minor modifications made to it and batch four will be more of the same.  But in the next month I plan on brewing two of my original recipes, the Apocalypso and Gnate's Gnarleywine.  The Apocalypso should be ready to taste in a month to a month and a half.  Gnate's Gnarleywine won't be ready to drink til early 2013 although I'm sure Erik and I will crack one before that to taste so we could compare it to the final product.



McGuyver would be proud

 With all of these carboys that we plan on obtaining we will definitely need a way to clean them.  After some searching online I've found a pretty easy cleaner that I will be able to build with parts from work.I also found another carboy cleaner DIY project that involved a five gallon bucket, a carboy dryer, a 1/5 hp pump and some PVC piping that I may attempt down the road.  For now this easy setup should do just fine cleaning our carboys. 

With about four feet of 1/2"PVC piping, four 1/2" 90* elbows, four 1/2" tees, one 1/2" cap, one 1/2" MNPT adapter and another adapter to go from the MNPT to 3/4" garden hose thread I will be able to build the cleaner.  I'll glue it together like the picture to the right and drill 1/8" holes all the way up the stand pipe.  We should be able to hook it up at my place or in Gus's utility sink and hold our carboys upside down over it and clean away.  I've heard some horror stories about using carboy brushes and I hope that this will make the job easier. 



the Ultimate Fermenter

 I'd say the final item on my ultimate wish list would be this Oak barrel that was used to age bourbon.  Woodinville Whiskey, here in Washington state, sells these 5 gallon buckets after they use them to age bourbon.  I've seen some of the breweries sell their oak barrel aged beers in the $10-$15 range for a 22 ounce.  If we could somehow replicate that with one of these barrels that would justify it's $120 price tag, right?  If any homebrewers out there have experience with using a barrel please leave us a comment to let us know how it worked out for you.

Have a great weekend everybody!