First Partial Mash and New Kettle

So... it has been some time since the last post. We have been busy brewing some great beers and discovering some good things along the way.

 The most notable thing we have done lately has been brewing a couple of partial mash recipes.  Brian and I brewed our first partial mash recipe on Feb. 16.  We brewed the John Palmer's Elevenses ale kit from Northern Brewer.

Mash going strong

It was a great learning experience to actually do a mini-mash and realizing that stove tops aren't the most ideal place to do a mash.  For one, the lowest temperature setting on the range is just over 154ºF, close enough for our purposes. The other problem we ran into was having limited space for sparging the grains.  In an optimal setting one does not have a microwave inches above the grains you are trying to sparge (we did).  We can't wait for the weather to warm up so we can get outside and brew!

Brian sparging the grain after the mash

The spent grain after the mash

Mashing phase complete, now boiling the wort 

Speaking of brewing outside, we just recently made a key investment.  We purchased a large 15 gal. kettle from Midwest Supplies.  This kettle will easily allow us to now do 10 gal. batches and prove to be an optimal boil kettle, especially when we get into all-grain brewing.  Apparently 15 gal. is also equivalent to about 1 Trost...

Ryan proving to us that he can fit in our new 15 gal. boil kettle

As you can see, we took advantage of Midwest Supplies' hole drilling service and had them drill a 7/8" hole so that we can attach a weldless ball valve setup.  We purchased all of our components for the weldless ball valve setup from bargainfittings.com.  We will post more once we receive the hardware and assemble it. Definitely getting excited to brew with the new setup!