Apartment Brewing from Garage Brewing

Just make sure you have a good stove and then can brew 5-gal batches on the stove. My kettle covers two burners and I am able to get a good boil even with 9-gallons pre-boil. I do all my brewing in my kitchen and love it, would personally hate to have to do it outside. Unless you do 10-gal batches or have an electric stove that may be a problem.

Good luck!

 

That's a pretty nice setup your leaving behind!

I brew in the kitchen as well so I can only help on a few things. My fermentation chamber is downstairs so you'll definitely want some brew haulers if you are moving full carboys up and down stairs. If you have no hose outside you'll likely have to do some of the cleaning in the kitchen or run a hose from inside. If use an immersion chiller you'd likely need to run the hose from inside anyway.

 

Sorry to hear about life complications. I am an apartment dweller so maybe I might be able to help.

Because my water sucks, I use RO water and add salts to adjust for style. So water analysis is no concern for me.

I use a propane burner to do my boils, out on the balcony. I keep the burner inside in a closet shelf when not in use, and I created some wooden stools (crates really) that go over my 2 propane tanks to camouflage them. I also only do my brewing on the weekend when no apartment management is there. This is all because it is against fire code to have a grill or propane tanks on an apartment balcony. Sorry, not sorry.

I have a garden hose adapter that goes on my kitchen faucet, I use that to chill my wort. I do my boil outside, I have some pallet wood that goes on my linoleum floor floor in front of my kitchen sink, I carefully move the boiling hot pot of wort and set it on the pallet wood (cedar fence planks will work fine as well), I connect a hose from my faucet to my copper IC, and connect a hose to the drain. Before you carry the 200+F pot of wort, please make sure you have a clear path, all pets are placed in a separate room with the door shut, and that you have not been drinking any beer yet. Going to the gym, doing some dead lift, rowing, working on back, triceps, and deltoids would be a good idea. An 8 gallon pot with a copper IC and 5-6 gallons of wort is not light, but not impossible. I have a pond pump that pulls double duty I'll describe later, but one of it's functions is to chill the wort down to pitching temps. Sometimes I do that, sometimes I place the wort in the mini-fridge and take it to pitching temp that way.

I do almost all my cleaning in my bath tub. I have a shower head on a flexible hose, and the shower head has an on/off switch on it. This makes life easy for spraying out things and scrubbing them down. Getting rid of the spent grain is a little bit of a hassle. I don't like the idea of hoisting my cooler mash tun over my dumpster, so I shovel my spent grain into a couple of dollar store buckets I wouldn't cry over if I lost my grip and they fell in the dumpster. To clean my carboys and kegs I use the pond pump in a bucket of PBW with some PVC to act as a fountain. It can clean a disgusting crusty carboy in about 30 minutes. That thing is awesome.

I have a 730 square foot apartment (but I'm about to move / upgrade soon thank god), and I only have room for a mini fridge to use for fermenting or serving. This creates problems for logistics since I can only brew, or serve, but not both. If I got rid of my dining room table, I could have a keezer as well, but you have to choose whats important. If you have a larger apartment, you might be able to have both.

I'm not sure how to store your brew stand. Perhaps make it a part of the decor. Maybe make or print or buy a poster of the brewing process and have that near your brewing stand. And have some nice labels / signs / placards of "Mash tun", "Boil Kettle", "Liquor Tank" so it looks like your stand is more of a display, or exhibit instead of something placed in the living room because it couldn't go anywhere else.

 

I remember someone else talking about cleaning their kettle in the shower, and I started doing this until I moved my setup to the garage. Worked really well, actually.

 

This is the one I use. It's been great to have for the last few years.

 

You're going to be taking showers with your brewing equipment from now on. ALDI has a sale on shower wands next week for like $8. Just throwing that out there.

 

A drop in heating element changed everything for me also having an electric stove. With the burner and element I get to a good boil with 8.5 gallons in about 30 minutes or less.

 

Kitchen brewer too! No balcony due to being in a garden level apartment and I don't know if I want to be in my courtyard for 3-4 hours. I just started All Grain just because of my set-up I didn't think I had room so it's always been partial mash. Split boils seem to be doing the trick. Sad to see the garage setup go...i think that's what us Apartment dwellers aspire to have.