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 An Evolution

I started brewing very simple, with an enameled steel 'tamale pot' from Wal-Mart and a kit from The Brew Stop.  I used this for my first two batches, but was 'asked' to kindly figure out a way to make that awful smell outside from now on.  The problem with this pot was its size.  It was only 3 gallon and could not hold the entire batch to boil.  I was forced to boil partial batches and add water in the fermenter to 'top up' the level to the batch size.  Without going into a lot of detail, this creates poor hop utilization rates and it's hard to get a clear beer using this 'partial boil' method.  Unless you use the "Texas Two Step" method described in BYO magazine (link at left), but I had never heard of this method in these days.

I was on the lookout for some time before I spotted a stainless steel crawfish boil pot with a burner and stand to go with it.  All the others I had seen before were aluminum pots and aluminum reacts with stuff, especially beer before its fermented (called wort, pronounced wert, although I've never heard anyone pronounce it that way). Anyway, it is a 7 gallon pot, just what I needed to get my beer making out of the house, as I had been asked to, and now I could do 'full wort boils' meaning I could boil the entire 5 gallon batch at one time.  I made just one batch with this setup before making some minor changes. 

It only took one time of having to lift that entire 5 gallon batch into a bucket of cold water to realize that I needed two things:  An immersion wort chiller and A way to transfer boiled wort to a carboy without having to lift the 5 gallon pot and pour it through a funnel.  Yes, 5 gallons of wort is heavy, but it's also very hot when it gets finished boiling.  That's what makes it difficult to cool 5 gallons of wort in an ice bath is the temperature not the weight.

I bought 14 feet of 1/4 inch soft copper tubing and made my own immersion chiller by wrapping the tubing around a pot that fit inside the 7 gallon SS pot.  As long as I put the immersion chiller in the boiling wort for the last 15 minutes of the boil everything would be sanitized enough to not worry about nasty bugs getting in my beer before I could get the yeast to it.  

I added a thermometer (actually a brewmometer, if you've never seen one look here) and a stainless steel ball valve so I could use tubing and gravity to empty the wort rather than the 'clean and jerk' method.

The next phase of the evolution started when I got myself a 5 gallon beverage cooler and made a mash tun out of it by adding a ball valve and SS false bottom to it.  I brewed for almost a full year just like this.  Without really thinking it through I decided that what I really needed was a 3-tier, gravity fed, all-grain system capable of brewing 10 gallons at a time.  In hindsight I guess it seemed like I was brewing a lot and never had any beer on hand.  There were several reasons for this, such as; lack of cold storage for finished beer, 3 batches in a row that went bad due to poor sanitation practices, and trying to invent my own recipes from scratch with less than 2 years of brewing experience.

I found 3 half barrel kegs on eBay and purchased a 10 gallon Mash Tun from More Beer.  I traded one of the kegs for some welding work on the other 2 kegs to create a hot liquor tank and a boil kettle.  That's what encouraged the purchase of the brew tree shown at left.  Since the immersion cooler I made earlier would get lost in the larger keg kettle and take forever to cool anything down, I went back to More Beer and purchased the Chillus Convolutus counter flow wort chiller and a food grade pump to get the hot wort out of the boil kettle and up through the counterflow wort chiller before dumping the cooled wort into a carboy.

I used this setup for over 2 years before I got tired of both standing in the sun to brew since the tree would not fit under the shaded carport and having to heft the keg (usually with some water in it and still quite warm) over my head.

So, what's the latest version of the 3 Dog Brewery?  Click the "Brewery" link at the top right. 

 News

New: 06-29-09
PAWS has delivered its second brew and I'm now starting to detail the construction.  Also, be sure to check the Brew Blog, I update this at least every couple of days. 

Almost New: 05-25-09
PAWS is up and running!  The system has been tested and the first batch brewed on 5-23-09.  You can read about it in the Brewing Blog Web Application (link above) and you can read about how PAWS came together on the PAWS Brewery link.  ALSO: I added a new page for the Incredible Yeasty Beasty Stir Plate for making yeast starters.

Sort of Old: 02-09-09
The new logo is here.  I have redone all of the web pages and revamped the CafePress store.  Now you can own 3 Dog Brewery stuff like this:

Old: 11-21-08
Item 1  -  The 3 Dog Brewery library has been posted.  See link in the menu above. 
Item 2  -  PAWS (formerly the 3 Dog Brewery Phase III) nears completion.  Pumps have been tested, burners have been fired and I've found many leaks.  I'm still working on the leaks part, but when that's done it'll be good to go.
Item 3  -  A new, updated logo is in the works.  This time I'm actually paying for it, and I've seen this artists other work.  It's going to be awesome!