So over in my introduction thread, there was some interest expressed in finding out about my homebrewing endeavors. I just dumped my phone's camera to disk and uploaded all the beer-related images to imgur, so here are about a hundred-plus pictures to dig through. I have not cut this down much at all, so it's likely pretty repetitive. Feel free to ask questions if you see anything you want more info on. I may pick out some individual pictures later on and post them directly for you all to see.
http://imgur.com/a/NmcBg#0Hey, you said you do 10 gal all-grain batches. What do conduct the mashes/lauter in? And boil? How do you cool the wort? Ive always done all my mashes in 5gal cornelius kegs with stainless false bottoms. I actually have a couple old 10gal cornelius kegs(ball lock) but didnt want to cut them up for mashing. My wish is for a RIMS system but the cost is a bit much. Actually what I truly want is a true 1bb brew system with a couple conical glycol jacketed fermenters. THAT would make me very happy yet make the wife very angry.
My brew rig (see the album above) is based on three half-barrel beer kegs with the tops cut out and some fittings welded in. I don't use a full false bottom in my mashtun anymore; I use a tube of stainless screening. It works great for my batch sparge process and I don't get grain under the false bottom any more. I built a brew stand out of angle iron and terrible, terrible welding. The stand has three propane burners on it fed by 20PSI regulators; I don't know for sure how much heat they put out, but I am guessing it's something like 170,000 BTU each at full throttle.
I chill by recirculating iced water through a plate chiller. In theory, I should be able to get 10 gallons of boiling wort down to about 68 degrees in a reasonable time, but really, I am still working on that part of it. If you look through the images carefully, you will no doubt see several variations of the basic rig; all I can say is that it's still growing and changing as time goes by.
RIMS or HERMS I am still thinking about. With ten-gallon batches, I lose little enough heat that it's not really an issue, but if I were doing stepped mashes or smaller batches, it would be more important.
