I originally created this web page in October of 1997 to describe the construction and use of my brewing system. Since then, the brewery has undergone a number of changes as I have tried to fine tune the system and my process. I have updated large portions of this site, adding pictures and text, as of March, 2001.

I started brewing in the summer of 1996 with a Mr. Beer kit I bought my father for Father's Day, quickly graduating to a system capable of brewing five gallon batches. After brewing about a dozen batches with extracts and steeped grains, I decided that I wanted to graduate to all grain brewing. At this time, I was doing partial boils, and I realized that to move to all grain I would need a lot of new equipment. I aggressively searched the web to see what other people were using. After looking into RIMS, 2 tiered systems, 3 tiered systems, and five gallon systems incorporating coolers and enamel pots, I decided upon a 3 tier system. The reasons for this decision were:

1. I enjoy building things and cutting apart stainless steel kegs sounded fun.
2. The expense of a RIMS system was more than I wanted to spend.
3. I wanted to be able to do ten gallon batches at a time

Since then, I have added a pump for recirculation, so my system is now a RIMS, but I primarily use the pump to recirculate during temperature boosts and during the mashout to clarify before batch sparging.