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In February 1995 microbiologist Terese Barta taught a Science of Brewing Malt Beverages course in the Wausau, Wisconsin area. After the course completed, Ms. Barta along with about 15 people formed a club so that her students could continue the craft of homebrewing. That club was the genesis of the current Bull Falls Brewers Homebrew Club.

A local farmer donated an old corn hopper that Jeff thought might work as a mashtun. Bill, and fellow member Bob Beck, acquired 165 gallon (625 L) and 75 gallon (283 L) stainless kettles and had legs welded on. Jeff picked through a local scrap yard and found some stainless screen for the mashtun. With a little elbow grease and some help from a local welder the system was starting to come together.

Mashtun
In August of 2006 opportunity knocked: Jeff found a 294 gallon (1,113 L/1.113 KL) stainless steel vessel, out of some factory from the Oshkosh area, for just $100! From left to right: • 165 gallon (625 L) boil vessel • 152 gallon (575 L) HLT/boil vessel • 294 gallon (1,113 L) mashtun • 45 gallon (170 L) kettle with 50 foot copper coil (super HERMS unit) • a couple march pumps move the water/wort through PEX tubing

294 gal Mashtun
During our first big brew, the grain was slowly added to the mashtun while other club members stirred it in with boat oars! Our super HERMS system was fired up to get the grain to mashout. This worked surprisingly well, increasing that giant mash by about 1 degree every five minutes. From there we started sparging into boil kettle one. Fortunately, when kettle one is full the HLT/boil kettle 2 is empty and we start filling it while we recirculate wort between the two. The 45 gallons (170 L) of HERMS water is used to help finish our sparge.

Adding Grain
Near the end of sparging, two jet burners are fired up under both kettles and we get one rockin’ boil! 90 minutes later we’re pumping wort through counter flow chillers into carboys. Yeast is supplied by a local brewpub and one of our members gives everyone a healthy dose of oxygen from his large oxygen tank. We made 225 gallons (852 L) of beer on our first brew. We basically have a 7-barrel brewing system. The entire brew day is very long, but a heck of a lot of fun!

Sparging
Our brewhouse efficiency (if I calculated it right) came in around 80%. We learned a lot from our first run with this system and have plans for improvements next time. We tend to start by seeing what we can get for free and then build around that. We’ve already got three different yeast strains offered which gives us great flexibility. We’ve also talked about doing a parti-gyle-style brew like Fullers does. Our separate boil vessels seem like an obvious fit to try it.

Efficency
Club members bless the 400 pounds (181 kg) of malt for their brew. Pop over to our website (http://www.bullfalls-homebrewers.org/Big%20Brew%20Details.html) for more photos and information. Feel free to drop an email to tappr@yahoo.com if you have any questions.

Blessing Malt


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