Did I say kegerator photos?

In an earlier post, I promised photos of my kegerator. Maybe seeing them will help some of you do-it-yourselfers out there with ideas for making your own.

So above is the inside of the kegerator. As you can see I put a collar on a small freezer chest so it can hold (barely) 4 five gallon corny kegs. Right now I have 3 five gallon and 1 2.5 gallon kegs in. The container of white powder at the upper left is DampRid, to keep the humidity down. There is a 3-way gas manifold on the right side, with a "T" on one of the lines so I can run 4 gas lines out of it. The gas lines are red and have been set up logically and orderly, unlike the clear beer lines, which are all loosey-goosey since I had a couple already hooked up when I put the 3rd and 4th keg in. Normally the beer lines run from each faucet to its closest keg. The wire at the upper right is the temperature sensor.

This is obviously the front of the kegerator. You can see the collar better, it's just 4 2X8's screwed together, with two additional boards screwed to it to hold it on the freezer chest. In hindsight I should have put longer 2X8s on the front and back, and shorter ones on the sides, so you wouldn't see the seams from the front. It needs to be stained or painted too. The faucets are all front-sealing Perlick faucets, except for the far right one, which replaced a Perlick that wouldn't fit on the shank properly. I spaced the faucets as they are so the shanks and nuts wouldn't get in the way of kegs inside. The big tap handles were given to me by my friend Roxanne, who owns a bar in California. I have two others not pictured. I usually will paste my own labels over the commercial beer label on the handle, but I didn't have the time for this party. Instead, I just used fridge magnets to hold paper describing the beers to the top of the kegerator, which you'll see better in the next photo.

Top view. You can see from the labels that we ran out of the Amber (Anglerman) ale and Beat the Heat Wheat.

Superbowl Sunday! Now in 3D!

So what's Superbowl Sunday without a Superbowl party? We hosted one here at Casa Brew, of course with homebrews on tap. So what was on tap?

• Superbowl Stout--brewed on New Year's Day specifically for the Superbowl. A sweet stout, full of creamy dark chocolately goodness. Overheard from one of the imbibers at the party, "it goes great with the football cookies".
• Beat the Heat Wheat--an American wheat ale, better suited for a hot August afternoon, yet still crisp and refreshing on a cold February eve.
• Anglerman Ale--American hops, English yeast, and German malt. An amber ale, made from the same ingredients as a bock, but with ale yeast. Malty, full-bodied, hearty ale which paired well with the chili and lasagna. You've heard of comfort food? Well this is comfort beer.
• Tottenham Mild--Named after the football team. Yes the soccer type of football. An English Brown ale, mildly hopped and traditionally a "session beer". Although this one came in a little stronger than intended. Call it an imperial mild.

The party was a rousing success, and the game was exciting to the very end. Final score: Superbowl Stout 5 gallons, Beat the Heat Wheat 2 gallons (all I had on tap), Anglerman Ale 3 gallons (also all I had on tap), and Tottenham Mild 4 gallons.

It's frickin' cold in my basement!

I just made a starter for the lager I plan to brew next weekend. I've decided to brew all my lagers in a row this year for a couple of reasons.

1. I can reuse the yeast saving some expense and time.
2. It's frickin' cold in my basement!

In the past, I had made lagers throughout the year. I would time them so I had free space in my freezer chest/converted kegerator to ferment cool and lager cold. It would also guarantee that I always had something on tap because I would alternate a lager which takes a lot longer with some ales that were done fairly quickly. It dawned on me that I was causing myself a lot of extra trouble shifting things in and out of the kegerator, and constantly adjusting the temperature if I was fermenting or lagering. I also realized that my basement in winter is a perfect temperature for fermenting lagers, and that I could keep the kegerator a little colder than normal when lagering, and still be able to use it to serve my other beers. As far as keeping something on tap, I decided to do split lager/ale batches, hence my Anglerman Ale made at the same time as the Johann Sebastian Bock. Next week I'm going to do a split Classic American Pilsner (CAP) and a Cream Ale.

So how frickin' cold is it in my basement? I take two readings, the first of which I call the WOF temperature. WOF stands for water-on-floor, which is exactly what it sounds like, it's the temperature of a 500ml glass bottle of water sitting on the concrete slab floor. WOF today was 46 degrees fahrenheit. I also take a WOT temperature reading. WOT is the temperature of a 500ml glass bottle of water sitting on an approximately 3 foot high wooden table in the basement. (Water-on-table, but you already guessed that, didn't you?) WOT was most recently observed at 50F. I measure water temperature instead of air temperature, because I'm sure the air temperature varies a lot more.

Now the yeast fermenting wort into beer create their own heat, so fermentation temperatures are going to be slightly higher, and I adjust accordingly. I'm going to put the starters and the pilsner on the table, even with the heat of fermentation, they should stay below 55F. I'll ferment the cream ale upstairs in my brew closet. For later lagers, I'll place them on the floor. I should be good until about April 1st, when last year the WOF was 54.

Anglerman Ale ABV

You may have read the last post and realized that I'm calling my bock ale Anglerman Ale instead of Angerman as previously posted. Also when I read back on that previous post, I saw that I hadn't listed the O.G. Good thing I wrote it on the painter's tape that I affixed to the carboy. So it started at 1.059 and ended (well it might drop in secondary) at 1.022, giving it an alcohol by volume reading of approximately 5.1%. I use the following formula if anybody is interested:

ABV=76*(A2-B2)/(1.775-A2)*(B2/0.794)

where A2 is the O.G. reading, and B2 is the F.G. reading.