Home Depot + Building = New Brewing Equipment

I had a couple goals for the day with regards to preparing for my next batch.

1. Read up on all grain brewing and partial mashing from the following books.

The Brewmaster's Bible - Stephen Snyder

The Complete Joy of Homebrewing - Charlie Papazian
Homebrewing Guide - Dave Miller

2. Buy a 5 gallon water cooler to act as a mash/lauter tun and some copper tubing to construct a wort chiller.

Since I'm trying to accelerate paying off my students loans (curses), it seemed more cost effective to buy materials and then assemble everything myself. The spool of copper tubing was under $12 which is much cheaper than buying a pre-made wort chiller. The water cooler cost around $18, but considering it's multifunctional use I'll probably use it for something other than brewing at some point. Here are some pictures of what I put together.

Common Place II

A week ago I frequented the home brew shop in my area and picked up some materials for my next batch. One of the best ways to develop your brewing skill is by making the same beer repeatedly. Since my first batch, I have not brewed the same beer twice. There are so many variables to consider when making a beer that you really just need to experiment with different mixtures and find what works best and suits your palate. Realizing now is as good a time as ever, my Common Place is going to get remade.

My new recipe is as follow:
3.3 lbs Muntons light LME
3.3 lbs Muntons amber LME
1 lb Crystal malt (40 L)
1 lb Vienna malt (10L)
1.5 oz Northern Brewer hop pellets (bittering)
.5 oz Chinook leaf hops (finishing)
California Lager yeast (Wyeast 2112)

While I'm still using malt extract as a base (could have used dry spray malt) I'm adding a 1/2 lb more of each specialty malt and will be doing a partial mash. I'm sticking with the same grain bill in order to try and keep that aspect constant. I think Vienna is a good malt to use because it will add some body, a copper color, and a toasty quality I enjoy. The Crystal malt will serve to sweeten the beer hopefully giving it a caramel flavor.

I have decided to try a new liquid yeast by Wyeast. The results should be the same as the first batch where I used a White Labs product. Just going with a different company to see if there is a noticeable change.

The biggest change I'm making is replacing the Willamette finishing hops with Chinook. I've found Chinook to be a spicy, piney hop similar to Northern Brewer. It is also a little on the pungent side so my hope is that they will add more aroma while retaining the piney quality typical of this style. In addition, I'm going to be splitting the batch in half after it's done in the primary fermenter. I'll dry hop one carboy with 1/2 oz of Northern Brewer and the other with 1/2 oz of Chinook. Maybe it would be good to bottle a control before dry hopping. Essentially, I'll have three different finished products from the same beer to sample. This will help to refine my recipe all the more.

Looking at brewing this coming Saturday.
Cheers!