My Ghetto Stirplate

Alright, so when you make a yeast starter you can do what I've done in the past and just let it sit in a dark place with tin foil on the top...
OR
You can put your starter on a stirplate to give the yeast plenty of oxygen and really, really take off doing what they do best.

Stirplates cost a lot of money and I'm a pretty thrifty guy, and I like to build stuff so I decided to make my own. Thanks so much to Push Eject for putting these plans on his website. I did improvise a little, but not much.

I basically took an old hard drive enclosure and gutted it, raided the rare earth magnets from the hard drive, took an old PC fan and an old cell phone charger and put it all together. Here's some of the process.

The parts:
An old hard drive enclosure.
A PC Fan.
A rare earth magnet.
A Rheostat from Radio Shack.
An old cell phone charger.


The guts:
I took out the hard drive, circuit board and all the wires from inside the enclosure.
I harvested the wires from inside the enclosure to make the connections from the power supply to the rheostat to the fan.
At first I tried mounting the HDD to a couple of pieces of wood, but the magnet was too far away from the magnetic stirbar to take hold so I went to Lowes and got a couple of bolts and nuts to mount it to the top.

The finished product:
Even with the fan mounted to the top of the enclosure I still wasn't getting a strong hold from the magnet to the stirbar because the plastic was so thick. A cutting tip on a Dremell rotary tool made quick work of the plastic.



Bingo! This baby will keep the yeast in suspension and growing nicely!


What's next? The Kegorator will get started next month along with The Son of a Mother of a 38DD Fermentation Chiller.

General Brew Related

OK, so I brewed again. This time it was an English Bitter that tasted so good before I put it in the fermenter that I almost didn't wait for the yeast to do it's job before I had a pint!

In other news, I've got a new brew spot! It was REALLY windy this weekend so I decided to brew in the garage. I think I've found the perfect spot. Very little wind, nice ventilation, and the TV is mounted up in the corner. Just works out great!

The English Bitter Recipe. Yum!









(EDIT) - Whirfloc should not be added to the mash, but rather to the boil with 15 minutes left. This helps the hotbreak clump up and settle to the bottom so you don't get so much in your carboy. Thanks Mark for pointing out this error on the recipe sheet!

Lots o' room for the brew gear box










The mashtun on top of the dog crate. BTW, I think I can get one more good brew session out of this cooler. It's starting to buckle on the inside and I've got a few cracks developing along the top walls of the cooler. Not bad for a 19 year old cooler we got as a wedding present! Here is what will replace it.










Got the laptop setup on the quad to keep track of recipes, run the Brewday Timer, and hit up the forums whilst I brew!










Oh, yeah, the Pale Ale is doing fine. I had a friend over this Saturday after our son's baseball games and we had a few pints. I think it needs a couple of weeks to blend/mellow before I'll pass any more out or bottle any for the homebrew club and friends. I've still yet to get a couple of beers to Mr. Kirby and the Burdicks and I'm starting to feel bad about that since they helped me out by giving me some of my original equipment. Don't want to give them beer with that sharp flavor though! Honestly guys, it's coming soon!

Ready to brew!

Man, oh man, oh man. Somethings just come together.

I needed three last pieces of equipment and was going to make them all. I ended up making two and purchasing the third. Here's the latest gear that I have that now makes me ready to brew!

Mash tun

I had an old cooler that I wanted to convert and with the help of Robert from the Merced Lowe's and about $12 worth of stuff we got it setup in no time!

Notice the spigot on the right side instead of the drain plug that used to be there.

This is the inside of the cooler with a bulkhead replacing the drain plug and a 24" braided stainless steel water supply line with the plastic insides removed to act as a strainer when we seperate the liquid from the grain.

The hinges on the cooler were old and broken. Not to worry, a couple of new stainless steel hinges did the trick. But, now the cooler occasionally flips over backwards because of the heavy hinges.

My Brewpot

Ric Kirby had an old keg he didn't mind contributing to this project. His wife just wanted the darn thing out of their garage! ;-)

*** UPDATE *** Ric let me know today that the garage is his domain and that he is master of that domain. Dana has no say as to what goes on in the garage except to banish Ric there when he oversteps his bounds. I bet Ric gets to sleep in his domain the next few nights!

Ric was also nice enough to cut the hole in the top with his plasma cutter and let me borrow his grinder to finish the job nicely. Jody Burdick and her husband John were nice enough to lend me their step drill bit and tapping oil so that I could get the spigot hole drilled in the side. Morebeer.com was happy to sell me the weldless spigot. ;-)

Here's the results:

Holy half barrel keg Batman! So that's what the inside of one of those things looks like!

30 minutes of drilling and I was finally able to install the new spigot. It's drilled in just above where the floor of the keg attaches to the side. The middle of the floor slopes down just enough to catch the "trub" or junk left over after brewing. Sweet!

Wort Chiller

I had to finally tell myself that I was going to have to buy my wort chiller instead of building it. Bummer. When I checked the prices of copper tubing I found that it was just as expensive to buy the copper and make it myself as it was to buy a premade one. Then, at the last minute, I checked Craig's List and TADAH! Someone had an OLD wort chiller for sale in Merced. I talked the owner down to $25 for a chiller he had built himself about 15 years ago. All I have to do now is dip it in a little muriatic acid and get all of the gunk off.

Cold water goes in. Hot water comes out. Wort gets chilled in the process.

So, I'm now ready to brew. Now all I need to do is buy the ingredients. I'm thinking of a nice English Bitter or a Pale Ale for my first venture into all-grain brewing. Got to get paid first. I'll probably be brewing in the first week of December!

Eating your desert first

OK, so I'm kind of doing things a little backwards, but - hey - that's just the way I roll.

Today I got one heck of a bargain off of Craig's List . It's a Tap-A-Draft system that is basically a small kegging system that allows you to "keg" your beer in 1.5 gallon batches so you can easily store it in your refridgerator and take it with you to a party, picnic, fottball game, etc.

I got two extra bottles and an extra tap for a pretty good deal. Yup, I'm a thrifty guy and anything I can do to save money and still make great beer you can bet I'll do it.

I've also purchased a basic deluxe (oxymoron?) starter system to get me almost everything I need to brew for $99.

I still have a keg that I will convert into a boil kettle and an old ice chest that I'm going to convert into a mash tun. Hopefully I'll get both done this weekend and post the results and pics.