Outside brewing

[Snipersunset]

I think that I've decided that biab is going to be my next step in brewing. My stove top won't be able to boil a pot of the size I want, and apparently electric brewing costs a fortune, so I'm thinking about propane. I don't have a shed or garage to work in so I'll have to brew out on the patio. Does anyone else brew outside, and if so how do you deal with the wind, rain and winter? I thought maybe a gazebo type thing for the rain, but that seems like another expense and I haven't really got anywhere to anchor it on the patio. Any ideas or tips would be appreciated.

Cheers

[jaroporter]

i did the sums on electric brewing and i reckon i'd be hard pushed to do gas cheaper. came out something under £1,50 for around 30L with mash sparge an boil.. sums are easy enough to check.
outside brewing is lovely in summer! depending on your boiler you could make a vented lid to deal with rain. wind and temperature fluctuations (summer to winter) will affect boil strength and therefore boiloff rate (though maybe not as much to be a massive problem), making it harder to predict things like final gravity, but i usually boiloff more then liquorback at the end rather than risking an understrength brew. lagging the boiler will help conserve energy and maintain a stronger boil. with gas some kinda windbreak would be essential.

[Fil]

patio brewing generally means fair weather brewing.. the cost of electric brewing over gas can be a little more up front, but is an easier brew once set up/fitted..

if determined to use gas a good shroud/wind shield is worth having check posts by Aleman who iirc uses a paella burner under a big pot with a full circle full height metal windshield ..

a lot of US brewers prefer gas, but they dont have much of an electricity supply for elements at 110v, which makes gas more attractive.. but here in the UK a couple of £5 elements and hi amp rated extension leads to feed the patio brewstation isnt that hi cost an option, add £15-20 for a qmax cutter to punch out neat 38mm kettle element size holes, and another tenner or so on flex, grommets, and boxes to back the elements and the cost isnt too bad, you can always spend more on brewing elements.. but recycled budget kettle elements work well, you just need to scrub them back to shiny after each boil, which is a short job if attacked asap after the boil when the crud is soft still..

[Grumpydev]

I'm an electric brewer and I currently brew in the Brewzebo (TM) - I got my popup gazebo from Germany off Ebay:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/391036730205? ... EBIDX%3AIT

I can put it up and down on my own in a few minutes, in fact I even put it down one handed the other day because I was on the phone, and it still only took 5 minutes.

If you only have a patio area for it you don't need to peg it down, you can use leg weights which you can get off Ebay for about £20:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/sis.html?_kw= ... 0647577285

Biggest thing to watch for is to make sure you have the correctly rated extension leads - most leads you get from the supermarket etc. will melt if you try and push 10-13A through them - these are the ones I have, they're rated to 13A uncoiled (uncoiling them is important!) and have a built in RCD:

http://cpc.farnell.com/pro-elec/s2225-4 ... st=PL10043

HTH

[Snipersunset]

To be honest I think I may have over priced electric consumption, I would much rather use electric and brew in my kitchen to be honest. Maybe I need to look a bit deeper at the indoor options. I want to be brewing about 23 Lyra a brew so I have been looking at tea urns, especially the buffalo but some people seem to think the new ones don't go to 11 so wasn't sure I'd get a good boil. If I can find a good priced dedicated brew kettle that I can use indoors then that would be ideal
Cheers

[Fil]

brewing in the kitchen boilling off 5-7l perhaps in 90 mins or so will create a massive volume of steam/vapour which will condense somewhere, an average cooker hood may not be upto the job of extraction, my cooker hood when running on full pelt over a 5gallon target volume boil had so much condensation on its body and was dripping back into the boiler faster than i could wipe it with a dry cloth.

depends on who you live with and how they will react to a malty aroma permeating the home for the duration..
the patio is a lot quieter in many cases....

[Snipersunset]

I suppose I could get electric use it outside weather permitting and then bring it in over winter. Or would people suggest going outdoor gas full time

[Jocky]

I decided recently to move outside onto the patio for brewing, as even a 10 litre boil on the stove with the extractor hood running full pelt just made everything in the kitchen wet. My ongoing build thread is here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=68879

I've plumped for electricity over gas, as an element fully submerged in the wort isn't going to be affected by wind, and a 2.7kw element that keeps 25 litres at a decent boil will cost about £1 to run (at 12 pence per kWh), assuming it's turned on for a total of about 3 hours. With electric you do always have the option of moving indoors too when required.

If you want to heat a lot more than that (50 litres) then you need more elements, and will need to ensure that you have a household circuit that can take that load (or split it across two circuits), and that's where gas starts to become attractive.

I think that most of my brewing is going to be done when it's dry and not blowing a gale, but a bit of wind will be fine. I may invest in a pop up gazebo though for when it does rain lightly.

[Grumpydev]

Another option with electric is an induction hob - the reconned Buffalo ones on EBay are a good price - although the pots aren't cheap.

As for steam, when I've brewed in the kitchen I still do it on the fold up table and I have a fan on an upturned FV blowing across the pot and pushing the steam into the extractor fan on the oven - had no moisture/steam build up at all, but it is a "good" extractor fan.

[windrider]

I brew with gas and find it serves the purpose quite well.

Gas does work out slightly more expensive but at the end of the day it’s only minimal (costs me about £3 for a brew...90min mash / boil). I like that my setup is completely portable. Last winter when it was too windy / wet to brew outside, I could borrow my parents garage and take it all in the car, transfer it to a no chill cube and take it home again works well for me.

The one thing that would sway me towards the electric route would be having a controller hooked up to keep the mash temp constant.

[killer]

I brew in the kitchen or on the Balcony if I'm banished. I use a camping mat clad boiler which had absolutely no problems boiling at 11° outside a few weeks ago...
I use a copper coil for chilling and just ran a 5m length of hosing out the door - I collected this water to clean up with afterwards.

[WalesAles]

Snipersun,
Try one of these....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OaDRB7a87g

killer,
How do you get the little degree circle after 11deg?

WA

[sbond10]

I'm currently In the same boat as you. I've plumped for outside gas, currently bought the biggest cylinder I could lift (19kg) at 30 quid my regulator will allow max of 1.5kg p/h thru so I'm aiming for around 3kg of gas per brew- hoping I can turn down the stove once it's boiling.
There are a lot of questions I still have to ask and I also have a huge learning curve but if I want bigger batches I'm going to have to go outside. So far I've collected a list and so far to get me up and running it's going to cost around 300 quid, this will allow me a maximum brew length of around 40-45 litres total in fv but I will mainly doing around 23-25 litres into fv. Here's my current list yes if your more technical than me you could probs do it cheaper or went plastic (get er brewed do one for around 120). Brewing kit
Heating
☆ 7.5kw burner £28.00
http://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/index.ph ... ductId=422
☆ regulator £7.00
http://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/index.ph ... ductId=424
☆ gas hose £2.20 x 3 £6.60
Heater total = 41.60
Boiler
Pan with strainer/tap £95
http://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/index.ph ... ductId=390
Or
http://powellbrewing.co.uk/index.php?ro ... duct_id=98
124 quid will need hop screen tho
Stainless hose barb £3.50

Silicone tubing £5.00
Muslin £5.00
Boiler total 108.50
Cooling
Copper wort chiller £35
Ebay
Hose fittings £5
Cooling total £40
Insulation
Hot cylinder jacket £9.99
http://m.screwfix.com/p/hot-water-cylin ... x-48/43483
Camping mats
Luggage straps
Pound land £5.00
Misc bits (heater Stroud, breeze blocks ) £10
Insulation total £25.00

Grand total 215.10

One final thing I've decided is brew simple for first couple of brews. Get to know your kit it's boil of rate etc then start to tinker with water treatment and huge hoppy and grain heavy brews. I'd rather brew a single hop single malt and single specialist malt first time out just to see how my kit runs

Hope this helps

[Redimpz]

Fast solution to any wind is to get a cheap wind break. main advantage to brewing outdoors is that you don't need to worry too much about mess as you'll be able to hose it all down with the run off from the chiller.

[Snipersunset]

That set up looks pretty good sbond, and at a reasonable price. What does everyone else make of it?