While I like the name of the blog I started about brewing two days ago I believe this name is better. I was driving home from dinner last night listening to a song called "Here Comes the Neighborhood" by The Lawrence Arms. The song is about gentrification in Chicago, and really any other big city. However, one of the lines is "Its a playground fueled by beer" and I figured that would be more interesting than "four hour habit". So, I changed it up a little bit and got the name of this blog, A Playground Build by Beer. Link to the one and only entry from the other blog is here:
http://fourhourhabit.blogspot.com/
So, onto the events of the last two days.
These days I am pretty cheap. I try to not throw tons of money onto credit cards or take my checking down too low. So, rather than spend $250+ on a stainless steel kettle with a valve on it to use for boiling wort (see below of definition) I set out to find empty beer kegs to convert into a brew kettle. This is nothing new in the world of home brew. Many people have automated breweries at home that use empty beer kegs for various stages of the brewing process. In fact, Sam Calagione, the founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales http://www.dogfish.com/ started his brewery on a setup consisting of three converted beer kegs on a rack with various burners, hoses, valves, and pumps attached to them.
I ended up finding a guy in Virginia that had four kegs for sale at a decent price. My email conversation with the guy was a little strange and gave me a weird feeling about the whole thing. My phone conversation prior to meeting him made me wary of the entire deal. It turns out that he isn't just a terrible typer. It sounded like he either had a stroke, was on drugs, or just had a problem keeping his jaw, tongue, and voicebox coordinated. He said that he was an hour away from the address he gave me which was a little strange. I texted his address and name to my roommate just incase I got murdered. In person, the guy was really nice but definately had serious issues with the noises coming out of his mouth. Garbled, barely intelligible, random, etc etc. I still managed to talk him down $10 for two kegs though.
Enough with the talk, here are some pictures of what I did to one of the two kegs.
Starts like this:
Ends like this:
How did it get there?
Thats right. I attached an angle grinder to a PVC pipe. As you can see, the entire design hinges on the stick I jammed between the grinder and pipe so I could operate the on off switch.
As for it's operation:
http://fourhourhabit.blogspot.com/
So, onto the events of the last two days.
These days I am pretty cheap. I try to not throw tons of money onto credit cards or take my checking down too low. So, rather than spend $250+ on a stainless steel kettle with a valve on it to use for boiling wort (see below of definition) I set out to find empty beer kegs to convert into a brew kettle. This is nothing new in the world of home brew. Many people have automated breweries at home that use empty beer kegs for various stages of the brewing process. In fact, Sam Calagione, the founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales http://www.dogfish.com/ started his brewery on a setup consisting of three converted beer kegs on a rack with various burners, hoses, valves, and pumps attached to them.
I ended up finding a guy in Virginia that had four kegs for sale at a decent price. My email conversation with the guy was a little strange and gave me a weird feeling about the whole thing. My phone conversation prior to meeting him made me wary of the entire deal. It turns out that he isn't just a terrible typer. It sounded like he either had a stroke, was on drugs, or just had a problem keeping his jaw, tongue, and voicebox coordinated. He said that he was an hour away from the address he gave me which was a little strange. I texted his address and name to my roommate just incase I got murdered. In person, the guy was really nice but definately had serious issues with the noises coming out of his mouth. Garbled, barely intelligible, random, etc etc. I still managed to talk him down $10 for two kegs though.
Enough with the talk, here are some pictures of what I did to one of the two kegs.
Starts like this:
Ends like this:
How did it get there?
Thats right. I attached an angle grinder to a PVC pipe. As you can see, the entire design hinges on the stick I jammed between the grinder and pipe so I could operate the on off switch.
As for it's operation:
As you can see I am very safety concious so I wore safety glasses. However, that was offset by the fact that I wore flip flops and shorts while cutting. I managed to not lose any limbs while cutting but my feet and legs were covered with stainless steel dust. For the next keg I will be wearing pants and shoes.
All thats left to do is order a valve and mount it. After that I can get to brewing beer.
