Today was the second brew day of the season and I decided to try to clone Fat Tire from New Belgium.
The recipe I used was from the book North American Clonebrews, which is a book full of tried and true recipes for your favorite commercial beers. I definitly recommend it.
I missed my target SG by a little bit because I forgot to account for the extra wort size. I like to have 11 gallons of wort so I can put a little extra in each fermenter. I only used enough grain for 10 gallons so I missed my SG by a few points. Should still be the same beer, with maybe a little less alcohol.
I’m particularly proud of the PVC sparge arm I am using in this picture. I built that from 1/2″ PVC in about 20 minutes with about $5 in parts from Ace Hardware. It worked great! This fits the top of a 10 gallon Rubbermaid cooler. If you want it to fit something else just measure the diameter of where it should sit, subtract two and divide by two. Use that number in place of the 7″ cuts I have below. Here’s how I made it:
Buy:
4′ of 1/2″ Schedule 40 PVC
(3) 1/2″ PVC slip on end caps
(1) 1/2″ 4 way PVC cross
(1) 1/2″ slip on PVC to 1/2″ FPT (female pipe thread) adapter
(1) 3/8″ to 1/2″ brass hose barb to MPT (male pipe thread)
Do:
Cut four 7″ lengths of the PVC. Put a cap on the end of three of them and the adapter on the end of the fourth. Stick the other end of each into the 4 way cross. Put some teflon tape on the threads of the hose barb adapter and screw it in to the PVC adapter.
Using a teensy drill (mine was 1/8″ I think, but smaller would be even better) drill a few holes in the bottom of each of the four pieces. Leave about an inch or two near the ends so water doesn’t sprinkle outside your cooler.
You could PVC cement to make everything permanent, but it all fit together nice and snug and I didn’t have any leaks so I didn’t bother.
Throw it on top your sparge vessel and you are ready to go. It doesn’t rotate, but if you drilled small enough holes it doesn’t matter. The drops coming out won’t bore holes in your grain bed.