Ahh, beer. Four cases of beer. (I know you can see some empties there, but there are a few bombers and swing-tops out of sight that make up the difference.) That’s about 10 gallons of deliciousness. Two cases of a jalapeno cream ale and two of an experimental apple/caramel/cinnamon Belgian Dubbel. Holy night, indeed!

Since I started homebrewing (Feb 04) I’ve been nursing a dream of kegging the beer and having numerous brews on tap at any given moment. Today that dream took a huge step forward…

Karen’s parents were nice enough to drive out their old chest freezer after they ended up not needing it any more. It’s been sitting in the garage for almost 2 weeks and finally tonight we decided to get it in the basement – no easy task on its own, but especially difficult given our kitchen and stairs layout. The back door gives the only straight shot into the basement, and the back door won’t open all the way because the existing fridge blocks it. So in this case two things had to happen – get the door of its hinges (need those extra two inches) and get the fridge outside to make enough room for the freezer coming in. (on the left you can see the door off the hinges and the fridge in the way)

Also had to empty the fridge before moving it. And clean it while it was empty. You know.

The fridge halfway out the door. Ended up being easier to just muscle it out the door than wedge a dolly in there.

Eww. I don’t think anyone’s cleaned under the fridge in a long time…

Whew. Break time. Got the freezer up on the deck with the fridge. Now to get the freezer in the door (1/2" to spare) and down the stairs (same clearance). Let’s just say that Karen is very strong and we make an awesome (duo) team.

Ta da!! I plugged it into my temperature controller and it’s just pegged 45 degrees — time to fill it with beer! (bottles for now, kegs soon)

Ahh… beer. This is a shot of batch sparging during my Wednesday brew session – the grains are in the cooler on the table, and the sweet wort is being siphoned into my 9 gallon brew kettle for the boil. That white-handled thing poking out is what’s being called a heatstick, basically a hot water tank element attached at an angle to some plumbing so it can stay submerged. (And yes, for safety it’s grounded and plugged into a GFCI socket – unfortunately in the bathroom. Probably put one in the kitchen to make my life easier – in fact they’re required there in new building codes (pdf).)

Anyway, the good news is my efficiency was at about 75%! This is a great step up for me, in our old place I was hitting only about 65% even using 5.2 pH stabilizer in the mash. I noticed our water here feels just a bit harder, whatever’s in there must be playing nice with the amylase enzymes to convert more starch to sugar!

Unfortunately, while I’m in love with the gas stove the single big burner doesn’t put out enough heat for anything more than a very weak boil… Remember, we’re trying to boil 6.5 gallons down to about 5, that take a lot of heat! And for proper hop utilization it needs to bea pretty vigorous boil… So I ended up boiling with the big burner almost on full plus the heatstick – the heatstick generates a really localized crazy boil, seems to keep things moving in the pot enough to spread the heat and avoid carmelization of the wort. Maybe next time I’ll try spanning two burners, but I’m afraid they’re too far apart for that.

The brewing went off without a hitch, and I have 5 gallons to delicious beer bubbling away in the basement – I’m planning to rack it over 5 pounds of blueberries I’ve been keeping in the freezer, hoping to make a yummy blueberry beer. Mmmmm. Blueberry beer…