Advertise on Brewers Roundtable
Greetings and thanks for your interest in advertising on Brewers Roundtable. We have been running ads on this site since it was created and it was only recently that I realized what a large cut of the revenue the ad agency takes on each click. If we could eliminate the middle man, I would get more per click (or per impression) and you would pay much less.
Brewers Roundtable gets about 1500 page views and 500 unique visitors a day. The users are predominently beer brewers or winemakers which makes this an ideal place to advertise your homebrew supply store, website, or brewery. The rates for advertising on Brewers Roundtable are $2.00 per thousand ad impressions or $.90 (90 cents) per clickthrough.
Purchase ads per impression |
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Once you purchase your ads, I will contact you by email to get a 160 x 160 ad and work out any other details. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at brewersroundtable -at- yahoo -dot- com. Thanks.
Mr. Beer vs. Coopers Microbrewery vs. The Beer Machine
The following table is a comparison between the three major microbrewery kits available. This comparison is between the Coopers Microbrewery Kit, the Beer Machine 2000, and the Mr. Beer Brewmaster Kit. Each of these companies has other products which I will compare in other posts. When you’re getting started, you will want to decide whether to go with one of these kits or buy a standard starter kit like this one. In general, these kits are easier to use, produce great beer, but it is more difficult to customize your beer or adapt the recipes.
Beer brewing is a great hobby and I think that starter kits are a great gift for beer lovers who haven’t made the jump into brewing their own beer. I got into the hobby when friend bought me a starter kit and I’ve been grateful ever since. I hope you find this table informative in making your decision.
One more thing, these kits are often times cheaper at amazon.com. The links in the table will bring you to the sites of the companies, if you want to compare prices, use these links … Mr. Beer … Coopers … The Beer Machine.
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Size of Fermenter
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6 gallons (23 liters)
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2.6 gallons
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2 gallons
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Produces
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50-12 ounce bottles of beer
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28-12 ounce servings
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about 25-12 ounce bottles
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Ingredients Included?
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Yes - Ingredients for one Coopers Lager batch included
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Yes - Includes ingredients for one batch
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Yes - Ingredients for two batches included
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Time from start to finish
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Approximately 20 days. 4 to 7 days in the fermenter
and then 2 weeks carbonating in the bottles |
7 to 10 days
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You will be drinking homemade beer in 14 days. 7 for
fermentation and 7 for carbonation |
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Comes with bottles
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Yes - Comes with 30-740 ml PET bottles
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Not needed - You can serve directly from the tap.
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Yes - Comes with 8-1 liter bottles
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Accessories
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Hydrometer, Sediment Reducer, Plastic Spoon, Bottling
Valve, Airlock, Thermometer, Instruction Booklet and DVD |
CO2 Bulbs, Defoamer Disk
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Brewing Thermometer, Sugar Measure, Brewer’s Guide
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Additional Promotional Items
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1 Baseball Cap, 1 T-Shirt, 2 Pint Glasses,
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Price
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$99.99
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$114.95
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$99.95
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Additional Features
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Custom Pressure Guage, serve directly from the fermenter
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Cost for additional recipes
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$17 to $20 depending on the recipe
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$26 to $33 dollars per recipe
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approx $15.00 (varies slightly depending on the specific
recipe) |
Do It Yourself Immersion Wort Chiller Instructions
Another way to make an Immersion Wort Chiller
After reading about the benefits of wort chillers and seeing the prices I took it upon myself to build an immersion wort chiller. It takes about 30 minutes and a trip to the hardware store. No special tools are needed beyond a crescent wrench.
An immersion chiller works by taking advantage of the cool underground temperature of tap water. Running tap water through the coil allows a heat exchange to occur, removing heat from the wort rapidly.
The entire setup cost me $66.70. That was about half the retail price on an equivalent model. I won’t go back to ice baths ever again. It cools a 3.5 gallon batch in about 10 minutes! It is a big time saver when brewing.
50 feet of 3/8 ” soft copper tubing was desirable because that length is good enough for 10 gallon batches in the future.
I wrapped the coils around a bucket so they would fit nicely into my kettle:
Make sure the supply side starts at the top and the return side comes from the bottom. This will help with the hot water convection inside the kettle.
The store had 20 feet and 30 feet, but no single 50 feet length, so I combined the two tubes into one with compression fittings. It was nice that no soldering was needed because I was concerned about the health effects:
The supply side uses a standard female garden hose attachment with a compression fitting:
When I use this indoors, I attach a pvc tube to the outlet side and use a worm drive clamp to lock it down.
The final product, an immersion wort chiller:
NOTICE:
Make sure to test it out for leaks before using. You do not want boiling water and steam shooting everywhere when you are trying to make beer. Also be sure to clean it with a non abrasive cleaner to get all the grime from the factory off before dunking it into your wort. It will come out of the wort very clean because the heat scrubs off all the oils and tarnish. Cleaning took some trial and error. Vinegar did not work and left an ugly gray stain on the copper. What did work was lemon juice in hot water and some mild scrubbing with a dish rag.
To use, submerse in the boiling wort when the batch has 15 minutes left to sanitize the unit. Be careful, steam and hot water will shoot out of the in and out pipes. Hook up the hose and the pvc outlet tubing before submersing. When I brew outdoors, I don’t worry about the outlet tubing and point it away from my work area. For indoor brewing I put the pvc outlet tube down inside the sink so it doesn’t go anywhere. I have a converter for my utility sink which allows me to hook up the hose and run it into the kitchen. Your hardware store will have that too, I brought in the attachment for my faucet so I could get the correct size in one trip.
Should I buy a wort chiller or make my own?
How to make a homemade DIY Wort Chiller
In search of ever faster cold breaks, my wife and I thought a wort chiller would help. One trip to Home Depot and four hours later, here is the result.
What you are looking at is a chiller that is set up to use a water pump to circulate the coolant. Our idea is to circulate ice water through the chiller to increase its cooling capability.
The parts:
The water pump is in the middle, and is being re-used from a fish tank. This is of course a great opportunity for contamination.
$26.53 20′ 3/8″ OD .0038″ wall Copper tubing (Refrigerator grade)
$19.20 15′ 8 gauge copper wire (wrong item - use > 8 gauge)
$04.44 10′ Vinyl tubing 3/8″ OD 1/4″ ID
$04.40 3/8″x1/4″ Compression coupler for attaching female thread to copper tube
$04.24 3/8″ Male threaded 1/4″ tube barb
$02.74 1/2″ Male threaded 1/4″ tube barb for water pump
$04.37 Reduction coupler for water pump
Amortizable/Borrowable items
$08.49 Tube bending tool (set of bending springs)
So for about $70 exclusive the water pump I got to waste an afternoon when I could have easily purchased a chiller for about the same!
Never mind the instructions, if you are intrepid enough to try putting one together, you are going to be able to figure it out. But here are the lessons learned:
- Never build your own wort chiller. Or, only build one for fun. It seems that it is hard to justify the cost and time.
- 8 Gauge copper wire is too difficult to work by hand. Get thinner wire. I suspended the loops of copper tubing by weaving the copper wire between the tubes, with two wraps per tube. I wound up (no pun intended) finding thinner copper wire around the house. Note the use of a spacer.
- Identify an object to use as a mold for this chiller tubing. Here, a 5 gallon PVC bucket perfectly fits in a small boil pot.
- The finalized wort chiller.
Additional points:
- Clean the oil and dirt off the copper by using white vinegar.
- When the copper wire is purchased, do not allow the store to tape or label the wire - the adhesive backing is difficult to remove from the wire.
- Plan carefully the inlet and outlet - I sized the chiller against several different pots.
- Consider drip loops for the inlet and outlet - in the picture above, they appear at a ninety degree angle, but condensate and leaks are going to clearly slide down the neck into the wort. Consider pointing the inlet and outlet downwards.
Results from having used the chiller:
- First off, the boil is HOT. If you DIY a chiller, consider that heat conducts and the entire apparatus will come up to temperature. In our first usage, we threw the chiller in during the boil to sanitize it. The result is that the vinyl intake/outake tubes practically melted. Next time, we will first sanitize the chill with iodophor and remove the heat before immersion.
- When the chiller was placed into the boil, it immediately refluxed. This is an important point to your DIY design - the air and remainder water from testing remains inside the chiller. When immersed, the air rapidly expands and remaining water gurgles out the intake and outake. Of course if you are connecting it to mains, this is less a problem. We are using a water pump which had to fight head pressure from the expansion of air.
- Though the vinyl is tough, it will chemically alter from the heat and our chiller’s vinyl tubing near the copper now has a pretty good haze.
- The vinyl tubing is connected to barbs. When heated from immersion in the boil, the barbs were no longer effective in anchoring the vinyl tubing and minor leakage occured.
- Apparently compression fittings need LOTS of compression - ours leaked slightly risking wort contamination.
- Thought I planned carefully the inlet and outlet, you cannot leave too much - the heat conducts across copper like crazy. Leave at least a foot!
- The next time we use this chiller, it is going to work really well. Maybe the beer master will post the temperature curve for us…
- Detail on the vinyl tubing - note the steam refluxing into the lower tube. Keep the flow going on immersion! The vinyl became quite soft and there was concern it would fall off the barbs.
- the whole setup in action! The main lesson is to bring the temperature down with mains water from 120 to about 90 and then to throw ice in and bring it down from 90 to the objective temperature. We had lots of ice, and it melted quite quickly!
Homemade DIY Wort Chiller
How to make a homemade DIY Wort Chiller
In search of ever faster cold breaks, my wife and I thought a wort chiller would help. One trip to Home Depot and four hours later, here is the result.
What you are looking at is a chiller that is set up to use a water pump to circulate the coolant. Our idea is to circulate ice water through the chiller to increase its cooling capability.
The parts:
The water pump is in the middle, and is being re-used from a fish tank. This is of course a great opportunity for contamination.
$26.53 20′ 3/8″ OD .0038″ wall Copper tubing (Refrigerator grade)
$19.20 15′ 8 gauge copper wire (wrong item - use > 8 gauge)
$04.44 10′ Vinyl tubing 3/8″ OD 1/4″ ID
$04.40 3/8″x1/4″ Compression coupler for attaching female thread to copper tube
$04.24 3/8″ Male threaded 1/4″ tube barb
$02.74 1/2″ Male threaded 1/4″ tube barb for water pump
$04.37 Reduction coupler for water pump
Amortizable/Borrowable items
$08.49 Tube bending tool (set of bending springs)
So for about $70 exclusive the water pump I got to waste an afternoon when I could have easily purchased a chiller for about the same!
Never mind the instructions, if you are intrepid enough to try putting one together, you are going to be able to figure it out. But here are the lessons learned:
- Never build your own wort chiller. Or, only build one for fun. It seems that it is hard to justify the cost and time.
- 8 Gauge copper wire is too difficult to work by hand. Get thinner wire. I suspended the loops of copper tubing by weaving the copper wire between the tubes, with two wraps per tube. I wound up (no pun intended) finding thinner copper wire around the house. Note the use of a spacer.
- Identify an object to use as a mold for this chiller tubing. Here, a 5 gallon PVC bucket perfectly fits in a small boil pot.
- The finalized wort chiller.
Additional points:
- Clean the oil and dirt off the copper by using white vinegar.
- When the copper wire is purchased, do not allow the store to tape or label the wire - the adhesive backing is difficult to remove from the wire.
- Plan carefully the inlet and outlet - I sized the chiller against several different pots.
- Consider drip loops for the inlet and outlet - in the picture above, they appear at a ninety degree angle, but condensate and leaks are going to clearly slide down the neck into the wort. Consider pointing the inlet and outlet downwards.
Results from having used the chiller:
- First off, the boil is HOT. If you DIY a chiller, consider that heat conducts and the entire apparatus will come up to temperature. In our first usage, we threw the chiller in during the boil to sanitize it. The result is that the vinyl intake/outake tubes practically melted. Next time, we will first sanitize the chill with iodophor and remove the heat before immersion.
- When the chiller was placed into the boil, it immediately refluxed. This is an important point to your DIY design - the air and remainder water from testing remains inside the chiller. When immersed, the air rapidly expands and remaining water gurgles out the intake and outake. Of course if you are connecting it to mains, this is less a problem. We are using a water pump which had to fight head pressure from the expansion of air.
- Though the vinyl is tough, it will chemically alter from the heat and our chiller’s vinyl tubing near the copper now has a pretty good haze.
- The vinyl tubing is connected to barbs. When heated from immersion in the boil, the barbs were no longer effective in anchoring the vinyl tubing and minor leakage occured.
- Apparently compression fittings need LOTS of compression - ours leaked slightly risking wort contamination.
- Thought I planned carefully the inlet and outlet, you cannot leave too much - the heat conducts across copper like crazy. Leave at least a foot!
- The next time we use this chiller, it is going to work really well. Maybe the beer master will post the temperature curve for us…
- Detail on the vinyl tubing - note the steam refluxing into the lower tube. Keep the flow going on immersion! The vinyl became quite soft and there was concern it would fall off the barbs.
- the whole setup in action! The main lesson is to bring the temperature down with mains water from 120 to about 90 and then to throw ice in and bring it down from 90 to the objective temperature. We had lots of ice, and it melted quite quickly!
Review of Mr. Beer brewing kit
Beer Kit - A Great Gift!
America’s most popular brewing kit.
Complete, easy-to-use. Only $39.95
Okay, I realize thay this is a bit of heresy to beer aficionados, but I’ve been brewing with the cheezy “Mr. Beer” kit for a while, and the beers are pretty darned good.
Since they take care of pretty much all the heavy lifting and sell you the grain and malt extracts, your work is minimal. Really, all you have to do is mix and match ingredients to go for your own unique beer.
Each time I brew a batch, it takes about 30 minutes from breaking out the equipment and ingredients to having my brew keg sitting in the basement fermenting away. I can also have the kitchen cleaned in the same time. Two weeks later, I spend about another 30 minutes sanitizing bottles and then bottling. 1 Hour total for about 2 gallons of beer.
Okay, so major corners are cut, but it’s still a lot of fun, and it fits into a busy lifestyle. Does anybody else want to come forth and admit to such behavior? If so, I’d love to trade recipes for cool new beers.
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Complete Draught Guinness Kegerator
Click on image for more information
Is Guinness your favorite beer?! Then this Guinness Keg Fridge System is for you. Comes complete with everything you’ll need to dispense Draught Guinness except the air tank.
The first thing you need to do is to call your local gas dealers and find out about the availability of the mixed gas used to dispense Guinness. It’s a mixed gas all in one air tank (75% Nitrogen, 25% CO2). Gas dealers can be found in your local yellow pages under the heading “Gas”. Call several to find one that will work with you.
Here is what you to ask your local gas dealer :
- Do you carry the mixed gas to dispense Guinness? (75% Nitrogen, 25% CO2 mix)
- If they do, ask what type of air tank they will fill. (Nitrogen tank or CO2 tank)
- Then ask what size tank they will fill. You will need to know the Capacity (in cubic feet)” and also the “Service Rating”.
Some gas dealers will only fill a Nitrogen tank with the mixed gas, others will only fill a CO2 tank. The only difference between these two tanks is the valve head on top. Depending upon the dealer, some will fill your tank that you can buy from us and some will make you buy or rent the tank from them. This is why we do not include the air tank with our system. A tank that is no more than 19” tall will fit inside the unit behind the keg. If a taller tank is used, then you will have to drill a hole in the side of the unit to pass the air line through and leave the air tank outside. We have both Nitrogen and CO2 tanks available for sale on our web site. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR GAS DEALER FIRST BEFORE ORDERING THIS SYSTEM.
Click Here for the Beverage Air BM23 Keg Refrigerator Spec Sheet
This system can be easily converted to dispense any other brand of beer. Any beer can be dispensed with the mixed gas. The only difference will be that the head on your beer will have tighter bubbles. Depending upon the brand of beer, you will need to change the keg coupler (that’s the piece that actually attaches to the keg and taps it). You should also change the faucet head back to the standard chrome one (included).
Features
- Black Beverage Air BM-23 Keg Refrigerator which will hold a half keg of Guinness
- Chrome stout faucet (No Guinness logos on it)
- Regular chrome faucet head in case you want to dispense beers other than Guinness
- Guinness keg coupler
- Double gauge nitrogen regulator
- Air line jumper for the regulator
- Nitrogen regulator to CO2 air tank adapter
- Economy Beer Line Cleaning Kit
- Refrigerator Thermometer
- Instructions
Specs
- Dimensions: 24”W x 37 1/2”H x 28 1/2”D
- Net Capacity: 7.8 Cu Ft.
- Unit will hold and dispense one 1/2 keg, one 1/4 keg or one 5 gallon keg
- Guinness is ONLY available in 1/2 kegs in the United States
Shipping
- Freight truck lift gate service available for an extra fee.
- Ships by freight truck, express shipping unavailable
- Curbside delivery only: Someone must be present to receive and unload product
- Ships within 3 business days
Manufacturer’s Warranty
- Four year warranty on compressor
- One year on parts direct through Beverage Air (service line: 1-800-684-1199)
- Warranty valid only in the continental United States
76 Quart Signature Select Stainless Steel Stock Pot
This stockpot is the last one you’ll ever buy. Durable, well-constructed, solid, and so well crafted it will last for generations. Serious cook who are looking for kitchenware built to last a lifetime. These stock pots are ideal for preparing soups, pasta, or long-simmering stocks and sauces. Stainless steel is responsive to temperature changes, whether you’re slowly simmering or rapidly boiling
Features
- Signature Select Cookware is designed with the help of leading culinary experts
- Beautiful ultra-heavy 18-10 stainless steel cookware with permanently bonded aluminum core heats quickly and evenly Stainless clad base resists denting and scratching
- Three-ply clad base is over 1/3” thick for superior heat diffusion on either induction or conventional cook tops
- Signature Select Cookware feature hollow tubular stainless steel handles stay cool to the touch
- Unique design reduces direct heat transfer from pan to handle
- Strong reinforced rolled edge protects pans from denting or losing their shape
- Easy clean satin finish interior
- Perfect for preparing soups, pasta, or long-simmering stocks and sauces
- Can also be used with our stainless steel baskets for steaming, frying, for boiling/draining foods
Specs
- Dimensions: 17 3/4”Diameter
- Capacity: 76 qts
- Cover not included (Optional Cover Click Here)
Manufacturer’s Warranty
- Limited Lifetime Warranty
- Carlisle products guarantees the cookware to be free
Wheat Beer Recipe
Description:I’ve been playing with raspberry wheat beers for a few months now, and am drinking my third batch. You don’t need to go all-grain, but you do need to sanitize the fruit somehow. There are two main choices: Add the fruit to the hot wort after the boil, when the temp has cooled to perhaps 170F, and keep the fruit/wort at 160-190F for at least 15 minutes to sanitize the fruit. If you let the temp get too high, or boil the fruit, then you will set the pectin in the fruit and get very hazy beer. This method works well for frozen fruit, which has generally been turned to mush by ice crystal formation. Sanitize the whole fruit with a food-grade sanitizing solution (perhaps by soaking in Everclear or 100-proof cheap vodka?), then add the fruit to the secondary and strain out during the priming/bottling process. I use the first option, which has the advantage of being easy and pretty bullet-proof. The disadvantage is that you lose some of the aromatic qualities of the fruit by heating it. Here is my current wheat-raspberry recipe (many thanks to Kathy Henley of Austin, TX for getting me going in the right direction). Sorry, but I don’t take specific gravity measurements. |
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Ingredients:
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Procedure:Boil 2-1/2 gallons of water, add malt extract and boiling hops, and boil for 55-60 minutes. Turn off heat, add finishing hops, cool to 190 F and add the frozen fruit and vanilla. Let sit covered for 20 minutes, maintaining temperature at about 170 F and stirring occasionally. Cool to below 100F, add to carboy pre-filled with 2-1/2 gallons of water, straining out and pressing the fruit to extract most of the juice. Pitch the yeast, ferment at 70-72F, transfer to secondary after two days, then ferment completely out (about another 7 days). Prime with 3/4 cup corn sugar and bottle. 24 oz of raspberries gives a fairly subtle beer, with a mild tart raspberry underpinning that all of my friends loved. 36 oz of berries give a more assertive, but not overwhelming, raspberry flavor. Note that Belgian ale yeast will give stronger “clove” overtones when fermented at temperatures of 75-78F, and milder flavors at 70-72F. |