Been a member for a while but have not posted in forever

[byrond]

So i figured i would post some pictures of the new brewing setup my buddy and I have put together.

https://picasaweb.google.com/byrond/New ... directlink

It is a 25-gallon electric setup and we are currently brewing a “base beer” to fill the 60-gallon French oak wine barrel. After this has sat 12-18 months and developed the correct flavors and sourness we will use this as a base to blend into other batches to allow us to make several different Belgian sour styles. I am thinking first are a Flemish red and a batch of Lambic. It’s still not 100% setup the way we want it but it is getting there. We also have a second of the 25-gallon Megapots that is not seen in the picture.

let me know what you guys think.

[sarge]

Nice looking setup you guys have.
:cheers:

[goldenchild]

Looks pretty fancy

[tom_sawyer]

Is that a RIMS setup or HERMS? What pump are you using? Looks nice. How much ice does it take to cool a 25gal batch? Must be a lot.

Sounds like a decent plan although I don’t know that you’d need 60gal to make blends. I have an 11gal barrel and that is a lot of sour beer.

[byrond]

Hey thanks everyone, to answer your questions it is a HERMS setup in the one pot is a 50 ft copper 1/2 line between the two valves on the side. We usually fill the bucket with ice and the chiller in it and then pump water through it and the coil in the pot. We also have a modified whirlpool setup that pumps from the bottom of the kettle to the top. With this setup we can usually chill the batch in about 20-30 minutes. The drop to below 100 usually happens in around 15-20 minutes. We received the 60 gallon barrel from a contact for basically nothing, we had to pick it up, and since the beer takes so long to age we figured what the hell might as well go big.

[tom_sawyer]

Sweet, I hadn’t thought of using a HERMS coil as a chiller. Automatically cleans the coil too.

[byrond]

Yea probably not the traditional method but so far with a few brews done it works great.