I want to make 2 gallon all grain batches. I am doing so at the moment on the hob, but I want something a bit more fun to do it with, so here's my idea...
1x 21L Food Grade Bucket £9.00 - ballihoo
1x Tesco Kettle Element £5.69 - tesco
2x Mashing bags (already have one) £6.50 - ballihoo
1x Digital Thermometer £2.99 - ebay
1x 2 gallon FV (already have.)
1x Copper hop filter and ball valve tap - free (or very cheap) from girlfriend's dad
Total cost - £24.18 for All Grain Brewing!
Build - Drill the kettle element into the bucket. Insulate this to act as both the mash tun and the boiler. Drill a tiny hole in the lid for digital thermometer cable.
Mash - Bring water to strike temp using element, dough in and seal. Thermometer will keep a constant eye on the temperature which I'm hoping won't drop. When mashing is complete, lift the bag and drain.
Boil - when bag has drained, take OG and bring to the boil. Peg second mash bag to the sides, then follow hop/ingredient schedule. After 60 mins, lift hop bag out and drain. No hop filter needed! This also means that if I want to really bung on the aroma hops, I can remove the bittering and flavour hops to make room for them, then go nuts on them
Cooling - transfer to FV and cool in ice bath. When temp is reached, pitch yeast.
The hop filter will act as a filter for break material, and also additives like cocoa. Hops will be boiled in a bag so that if I want to go overboard on aroma hops, I can remove the flavour and bittering hops, and boil for an extra 10 minutes with just the aroma hops taking up space. this will be a very cheap build that is capable of step mashing, 90 min boils, high gravity brewing, etc. I can also brew out of the kitchen which will cheer the missus up, and it'll mean I can put some of my large equipment into retirement for now.
