Quote:
Originally Posted by Piwoslaw
And illegally making vodka is a Polish pasttime  |
. The good news is there's nothing illegal about making beer or wine, at least in the US. You are allowed to make up to 100 gallons per year (and your wife can make 100 gal, and your buddy who came over to help you brew...), but you're not allowed to sell it. Trading it for grilled food works well, though.
S-F, I hear you about the cost of an all-grain system. Though the following can be put together for $100, and it pays for itself vs malt extract after about 40 gallons of beer:
$50: hand-crank grist mill
$0: electric drill to run the above
$40: homemade lauter tun.
The lauter tun consists of three food-grade plastic pails. Drill hundreds of 1/8" holes in the bottom of one, turning it into a sieve. Nest the sieve in one of the other pails. Install spigots in the other two pails.
Place your sieve on a stool, with your brew pot below the spigot. Fill the sieve with mash. Place the last bucket on the table, and fill it with sparging water. Now you just need a means to slowly distribute the sparging water evenly across the mash. I used clear vinyl tubing that's hard at room temperature but flexible at 100°C. I worked it in boiling water into a spiral shape, and drilled about 20 holes in it.
Wort chiller? I don't use one. Wort goes into the basement for a day before the yeast can be pitched. You have to be careful to keep the wort sterile during this extra step, but we haven't had any issues with our ale yet.
You could spend hundreds on a nice stainless setup, but that's not as much fun.