Brewing Russian Imperial Stout with Anise & bottling Hair of the Dog IPA

Well Hello again! It hasn't been but a few days since the last update, but we up here in Calgary couldn't help but bust out the new mash tun yesterday! First we had to fix the tun, so it wouldn't leak anymore.  It cost a simple O-ring from Home Depot which I shoved into the area between the two walls of the cooler in the hole that was pre-drilled. Then I attached the hosing and the braided steel and voila! We were ready to rumble. You can see the new attachments I added on the pictures on either side of this paragraph.  I thought we would have a nice, easy brew day with the only problem being the fresh snow and the -8°C weather. It actually turned out to be a good thing, considering we needed the snow for chilling!

The recipe for the Russian Imperial Stout was slightly modified from my old Imperial Overlord Stout from last year; we used Millennium hops instead of Warrior, and added 1oz of anise seed (from our trip to Germany) in the last hop addition. Unfortunately, this post isn't as simple as hoped, because we had a few problems.  First, we had to bottle the last brew they had made before I arrived in Canada: Hair of the Dog IPA. Aptly named, considering it was the first brew made with their new dog, Emmy, around.  Apparently there are some dog hairs included in that recipe.  Not to mention, the name is appropriate for any alcoholic beverage!  That went without problem (barring the handful of spills which are imperative to any bottling operation), and we went directly on to mashing the grains for RISw/Anise.

Now, here is where the real hairy part was (harharhar). The braided steel got kinked right at the barb going into the ball valve! In a valiant attempt to amend the situation, we accidentally popped off the end cap of the other side.  Needless to say, we ended up with a stuck mash. Luckily, we had an extra boil kettle, dumped all the grains and mash into it, attempted to fix the braided steel (to almost no avail), and ended up just sparging in any way that we could.  Fortunately I was not new to this method since I have done many brews with the BIAB method (feel free to search it or see previous posts). In the end, the mash tun worked mostly, but a new attempt at the filtering braided steel tubing will have to be made.  I guess we will try to use a larger diameter tube with the ½" silicone tubing inside, which will be directly connected to both the barb and the end cap. Also, it will probably be shorter to fit better inside the tun.

After all that hoopla, the rest was easy.  Mark downloaded a new app on his phone - BrewR - to simplify the hop additions and timing for the boil. The piles of fresh snow that were shoveled off of the deck allowed for a perfect cooling system, and the OG was a perfect 1.100.  After the big mess of the mash, we at least ended up with tasty beer.  Hannah even tasted it and said it will be amazing. And I definitely trust her on that one!

In a few weeks I will update on the fermenting transferring process of the RIS.  In the meantime, I will try to fix the mash tun. Until then,
                HAPPY BREWING!

Making a mash tun in Canada!

Well hellooooooo! It has been AGES since my last post, and for that I apologize. Not to all of you, of course, but to my sad, sorry self for being so lazy! I have been busy brewing and making new equipment, but not here.  That is all about to change!

I have been through a lot in the last several months, including the end of my job, a pan-continental drive/move, and several new beers.  Now I am in Calgary for an indefinite time to start a bit of a new life.  And what better to do in that new life than make a new mash tun for a new all-grain setup!!! Here is how I did it.

I began with some wild internet searches, which led me to start with the information from HomeBrewTalk.com and some amazing posts from FlyGuy. His DIY is here.  I discovered a few things I would like to change from his setup, but I still don't knock his.  It is great.

For starters, I had to go to the Home Depot (or sometimes L'Entrepôt de la Rénovation  :P ) here in Calgary with my bro +Mark Girard  and his fiancée +Hannah Gordon and try to get all these parts.  The cooler selection at Home Depot was... minimal. They only had a 5gal cooler so we had to deal, even though I strongly recommend a 10gal one. Damn metric system.  We then took all the parts from FlyGuy and tried to put them together in the store (Canadians are so nice! They even helped me to open all the packaging and test it out) before realizing that the removable plastic spigot on the cooler is larger than the suggested parts from FlyGuy. We were never going to get it together without leaking! I ended up refitting everything a size up.  These are the parts we ended up with:

LIST:

• 5 gallon beverage cooler (I still suggest 10 gallon)
• ½" MIP to ½" barb
• ½" ball valve, both ends FIP
• ½" x 3" nipple, MIP
• ½" O-ring 
• ½" female coupling
• ½" MIP to ½" barb 
• (The previous two parts are simply because I could not find a ½" FIP to ½" barb. Arses.)
• 12" braided steel flexible plumbing hose
• ½" brass plug 
• 2-3 steel ¾" washers
• Teflon pipe tape
• 3 steel clamps
• Some ½" high temperature silicone tubing
• about 1' of brew tubing

PS: Yes, that is snow. And yes, that is a Beatles glass. The bags near the tubing are empty; they are simply to show the part numbers that we acquired.

Here is a close up of what I did to the braided steel. I wouldn't say it is complicated, but it's not intuitive.  I used a hacksaw in the store to liberate the hose from it's valve attachments. They are leftover on the bottom right, and will be trashed. I then used a stick to push (DO NOT PULL) the plastic hosing from inside the braided steel. It is like a stabbing Chinese finger trap. Be very careful removing the hosing, and then throw it away with the valve couplings.

Inside of the braided steel, you will need to put 12" of the vinyl hosing after hacking large chunks out of it with a box cutter or similar utensil.  The vinyl is for support to keep the wet grains from crushing the braided steel, and the holes are to allow the wort to still flow. See to the right for that photo.

Finally, it was all put together, and ended up using the rubber seal from the original spigot in the cooler. It was going swimmingly, except a challenge to get the wrench on the inside to tighten everything up. We thought we were there, but discovered a slight leak. I will have to go get more O-rings tomorrow. I believe that is the major problem here. There are a few more pictures (here's one), but we will have to put it together again tomorrow and I will give a final set of photos then.

As soon as it is ready, we will make the first all-grain batch for the "Hannah & Mark Brewing Co." tomorrow. Anise Russian Imperial Stout! Slightly a take on the Stone Brewing batch of the same style. Can wait to make it work tomorrow! Only one more trip to L'Entrepôt de la Rénovation... I hope.