Category: Beer

Simple add-on grain hopper for malt mill

Post author By Sam
Post date 2015-12-24
No Comments on Simple add-on grain hopper for malt mill

I saw a preview of this bucket-based grain mill hopper in Zymurgy’s gadget edition, but when I read the details it wasn’t simple enough for me. So I made a simpler version of a plastic bucket extension for my hopper:

This hopper extends the low-volume hopper that came with my Schmidling Maltmill, allowing me to mill my entire grain bill in one go.

Time: ~1 hour

Materials needed:

Malt mill with hopper that you want to extend
Plastic bucket. I got a used 3 gallon food-grade bucket from a local ice cream parlor (Kilwin’s).
Scrap plywood

Smoked Porter 2015

Over the 4th of July, I smoked about 3 lbs of Pils malt on an old potbelly stove. It smoked with mesquite chips for a few hours in two batches, then was left to condition for ~7 weeks in an open paper grocery bag.

I first brewed a smoked porter with home-smoked malt in 2011. I used alder chips then, in an homage to Alaskan Brewing Co.’s Smoked Porter. It turned out well and the bottle I opened yesterday as I brewed the 2015 version has aged nicely. The biggest flaw is that the smoke flavor is too phenolic. I tried to avoid chlorinated water throughout the process but may not have succeeded.

I brewed this year’s smoked porter on the same potbelly stove I used to smoke the malt. I’ve already written about the process of brewing on the potbelly stove, so I’ll stick to the recipe and batch notes here.

Beer Brewing process Homebrew

Homebrewing on a Potbelly Stove

Post author By Sam
Post date 2015-08-30
1 Comment on Homebrewing on a Potbelly Stove

My in-laws have an old potbelly stove sitting around. Some research indicates it was made around 1900. I smoked about 3 lbs of Pils malt on this stove on the 4th of July, and decided I’d see if it could crank out enough heat to brew a 5 gallon batch of beer.

The answer: almost.

It heated about 4.5 gallons of mash water fairly well, heating it 86.7 degrees in an hour. The slope leveled off a little as it reached strike temperature:

This performance of 390 degree-gallons per hour (when heating water starting at room temperature) is not too much worse than this same pot when I’m heating with a 1500W, 120V electric element – that setup yields about 480 degree-gallons per hour.