Mill-Iron Brewhouse Updates

Ashley and I are married!  It has been a whirlwind last month and a half for me and my love.  Things are finally now starting to wind down.  We are excited to blog about our honeymoon etc., but just haven't had time yet to round up the pics we wanted to share...stay tuned for that.  I have a little free time tonight so I figured I'd better update my brewing brothers and sisters (and my non-brewing brothers and sisters) on my brewhouse.

Overall my hops have been doing really well.  Somehow, my 2nd year cascades have really been struggling and I'm not sure exactly why.  I am thinking they may have gotten a little too much water since they were accidentally too close to the roof drain-off side of the house.  The last two weeks or so they've been doing better.  But the 2 organic rooted cuttings I got from my Aunt Pat have been doing awesome (EKG and Willamette).  The Willamettes have been setting the pace but the EKGs are holding their own.  Definitely a quality product from this company.  I will be using them for any of my future hop needs.

Willamettes up front, EKGs in the middle, Cascades at back.

I also recently brewed a Belgian Witbier for my good friend Dustin and his wife, Ryan.  They had a spring party out at their farm and he likes a good belgian/french ale.  So I thought I would brew him up a batch at the last minute.  Brewed it three weeks ago today, kegged it this past Tuesday, and force carbonated it so it would be ready to drink last night.  We floated the keg.  And I didn't write down the recipe.  But here is a pic I took on Friday while I was sampling it:

For being such a young beer, it really was very good and refreshing.  I'm making it again soon!

I had a pretty exciting day today from an equipment standpoint.  I added two new pieces to the brewhouse stable by day's end.  The first is a massive stainless pot.  I don't have an official volume capacity on it just yet but I am calculating off it's dimensions that it is between 25 and 30 gallons.  It's made of a very thick (11 gage or so) stainless steel and has two 'frankenstein' type stud attachments at the side.  This will be my future mash-tun in my next brewery (to be built this summer hopefully) and probably won't get much use before then.  For $100 I couldn't pass it up.

Original picture from Craigslist posting.

To the right is my Volrath 10 gallon pot.  That used to be the biggest pot in the brewhouse, until the behemoth to the left came along.

My other purchase today was also a unique find.  An electric canner.  Made in Holland, there are very few websites where you can buy one of these.  All stainless pot (~8gallon capacity) with heating element at the bottom and a spigot for draining off liquids.  The really cool thing about this is you can set any temperature between 85F and 212F and the canner will maintain the desired temperature.  I tested it out and it seems very accurate.  This little beauty I bought for $175 and it's barely been used.  I will be using immediately for mashing operations and once I go to my new brewery set-up I will use it for different functions like HLT and probably more frequently as a decoction chamber.  Plus, Ash and I will probably also use it for canning operations!  Homemade pickles anyone?

Not the best picture but it seems to be a very well made unit. 

I'm looking forward to incorporating these new babies into my brewery.  Stay tuned for more updates from the brewhouse and also (hopefully soon) for a honeymoon recap!