Finally organized the brewing space

I was so proud of myself today that I had to take a few pictures.  The last few months have been complete chaos downstairs in our basement.  We got the tires removed from the van and Handsome brought them downstairs in the basement.  With all the other stuff down there.  Of course most people would find a home for them in the corner or somewhere we wouldn’t trip over them.  No, not at our house.  The tires are placed right in the line of fire. Right in the path from the basement to the washing machine.  I will stop before I spiral into a rant….

My point is that we finally got down to moving stuff around and getting things sorted.  Hansome bought some brackets and installed a shelf along the stair wall so I placed all the grain buckets and kegs along the wall and on the new shelf.  It looks fantastic.  I cleaned up the area, We poured some of the bags of grain into some new buckets and sealed them up with some gamma lids.

I wish I had taken a before photo of how insane it looked down there in order to show how amazing it looks now.

Brewing beer in the basement – now on the back porch.

Well, we have been pretty excited for weeks now.  Things are finally coming together and we are looking forward to being able to brew our own batch of All Grain beer soon.

We have acquired most of the smaller supplies needed already.  Glass Carboys, bungs, canes, hydrometer and hoses.  Compiled with some odds and ends that came along with our Kijiji purchases (wine corks, old wine bottles and labels) we are quite pleased with our progress so far.

We originally did not want to brew on the back porch because we thought after sampling our wares we may get a little noisy, and that meant that we would have to bring everything indoor and use electric.  We would not be able to use propane as a heating source for obvious reasons.  We would probably also have to install some sort of ventilation system and we had to figure out how to convert Stainless Steel pots into kettles.   (check this out… *droool* )

We joined an email group that brews locally using all grain.  We have been researching our idea more and more, we have been talking with other brewers, and getting great insight to what works we have probably changed our minds about everything twice over.

We realized one very important thing.  The last times we have brewed was at 6 at night until very late in the morning.  Washing bottles, making labels and cleaning up at 2am is just not practical.  Why? Why did we do it so late?  Because that is when everyone planned on doing it.  Friday night, after work.  We don’t need to do it so late.  WE can just do it at Noon,  hellz we can do it when we want and take our time and have it done early and not feel exhausted the next day.

So this brings us to being able to do it outside.  We don’t need to spend so much money on all the extra required stuff and we can do it the way we used to back in Vancouver.

With this major decision made we went ahead and got our heating source.  We bought a 60,000 BTU Burner for under $60

We ordered a Barley crusher for $125 through one of the members on the email list.   Our Gamma Lids should be arriving soon so we can store all our grain in airtight pails.  Oh and the Grain! yes, that will be arriving (fingers crossed) this coming weekend! I will be at home with the kids and Handsome can go meet the guys to split the giant sacks of grain that were ordered.  So glad I am not going to be there, it sounds like it might be a gong show!

We are almost ready to go now we need is an 80 Quart Stainless Steel pot!