Process

I am set up to make 2.5-3 gallon batches.  I work in my kitchen.  My stove top has a 17,000 btu/hr and a 15,000 btu/hr burner, which work pretty well for the volumes I work with.  I cover the stovetop with foil to facilitate clean-up.

I usually prepare a yeast starter the night before brewing.  I keep about 3/4 qt starter wort in the freezer from the previous week.  I thaw this out on Thursday, then boil it on Friday, cool it in the sink, pour the liquid off the reclaimed yeast, then add the cooled wort to the yeast jar.  I seal this up tight, shake it to aerate and break up the yeast cake, then leave the jar with a loose lid in the cupboard overnight, sitting in a bowl in case of a foamover.

Water comes from Lake Michigan, via Chicago's Jardine filtration plant, delivered to Oak Park.  I have a 2 stage filter under the sink, cloth followed by carbon.  For sanitation, I use household bleach, and prepare rinse water by boiling straight tap water in a teakettle, typically the night before.

Weighed grain going into the Kitchenaid grain mill on largest grind setting.

Grind the grain straight into the mash tun.  I also add initial salts into the mash tun with the grain.  The most typical salt addition is 1/2 tsp CaCl, to bring up the Cl in the local water and reduce the bitterness from the low Cl/SO4 balance in Chicago water.  Gypsum for hoppy beers, baking soda for roasty beers.  I have some chalk available, but rarely use that.

Infusion mash, adding filtered tap water from brew kettle heating on the stove.  I use a qt. pyrex pitcher to transfer the water.  

I check the pH with paper, and occasionally add brewing salts if needed to get the pH correct.  I stir the mash about every 15 mins (and add boiling water if needed to hold temp), and let rest lidded to convert.

 

Here's my homemade lauter manifold, I just stir the mash, drop this into the bottom, and siphon out wort over the side into the boil kettle.  Always vorlauf using the quart pitcher, maybe one or two quarts.

Sparge and lauter are similar to infusion mash, I sprinkle hot (150-170 df) water (from another stock pot) over the grain bed with the pyrex pitcher, and use a c clamp to pinch the hose to control lauter rate.  With no adjuncts, my efficiency is usually in the mid-80s.  I use Brewersfriend for all recipe calcs, although I am currently beta-testing WORT, a new android app by +Joe P.
 

I weigh hops using my dial-a-gram from my ceramic studio.

My boil kettle is only 4 gallons, so I typically boil about a gallon of final runnings in a saucepan along side the kettle, especially for a 90 minute boil.  I throw this into the kettle near the end of the boil, when there's room.  I almost always add 1/2 tsp irish moss near the end of the boil, at 15 mins.  I let the irish moss soak in 1/4 cup water for an hour or so before adding it to the boil.

My wort chiller is a single pass double coil, made from 50 feet of 1/4 inch copper tubing, and fittings for the kitchen faucet.

Chilling varies depending on the time of year and temperature of tap water.  It can be as quick as 15 minutes, or as much as 30 minutes.  I keep the spoon in there to stir periodically to keep the chill moving along.

Once chilled, I transfer wort into a milk jug in 3/4 gallon portions, give it a good shake to get aeration, then pitch into the fermenter through the straining funnel.  I use a 6 gallon glass carboy for primary, which winds up being a little over half full.  The last 3/4 quart dripping from the funnel goes into a mason jar then into the freezer, to be used as next week's starter wort.

Primary fermentation gets done on the basement floor or other locations in the house depending on temperature needs.  I use a pan of water and towels for swamp cooling, or cover the carboy with a beach towel (or next to a radiator) to generate heat.  I use ale yeast.  Primary fermentation generally takes 1 week.  I use 3 gallon glass carboys (I have two in rotation) for secondary fermentation, which generally takes 2 weeks.  This schedule allows for a new batch every week, and pretty much no concerns about incomplete fermentations.

I reclaim yeast from primary fermentation.  I wash the yeast using rinse water, transferring, settling, and pouring off between quart mason jars about 3 or 4 times, before refrigerating the final product.  This jar is ready to pour the nice milky yeast solution off of the settled trub.

I keep yeast dedicated for each of my 4 core beers (wit, vienna, porter, and stout), plus I keep a house US-05 and S-04 available.  I currently have a second wit yeast and a belgian trapist.  I may dump the wyeast 3944 in favor of the 3942, depending on how the current batch with 3942 comes out.  The 3944 is a little funky for me, hard to get the correct balance between phenols, diacetyl and esters.

Here's a bottling picture.  I use my mash tun as a bottling bucket.  Rack from secondary onto priming solution, then use racking cane with bottling wand.  I use 1/3 cup +/- table sugar boiled in a couple cups of filtered water per batch, more for more carbonation, less for less, but always between 1/4 and 1/2 cup. 

These are ready for the capper, I use a black hand held capper, which occasionally breaks bottles.  The yield for a typical batch is between 25 and 30 bottles, 12 oz each.  I have some 22 oz bottles in rotation, and a few 550s as well.

Usually on brew day, I start some sourdough bread by throwing a couple cups of spent grain and a cup of final runnings into the blender, then liquifying it.  To this I add flour, salt and sourdough starter to make bread.