Schoville.com

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.