About

My name is Scott Ickes.  I live in Vancouver, WA and have been homebrewing off and on since 1991.  I had stopped brewing in 2002.  In 2012 I began brewing again.  After 4 extract brews, I made the jump to all grain and I haven’t looked back.  I’m now brewing about 100 to 150 gallons a year in my garage.  My wife has been very understanding of my brewing addiction.  I work full time, so most of my brewing is on weekends.

For equipment, I have the following:

Mash tun – Two 48-Quart coolers that are piggy backed inline with a hose from the drain on the higher one to the lower one.  I use this for large batch brewing.  When brewing 5 or 10 gallon batches, I only use one cooler.  I use a bazooka tube in my mash tun.  With this set up, I can mash anywhere from1 gallon to 20 gallon batches.

Boil pot – I have two boil pots.  An 8 gallon pot and a 12 gallon pot.  However, I only have one burner, so I can only heat one at a time.  In the future, my plans are to get an 18 gallon or larger pot and a second burner.

Fermenters – I have two 5-gallon plastic bucket fermenters, two 8-gallon plastic bucket fermenters, one 1-gallon glass fermenter, two 3-gallon better bottle carboy fermenters, two 5-gallon glass carboys, two 6.5-gallon glass carboys and 2 7.5-gallon glass carboys.  I primarily use the 5 gallon plastic bucket fermenters for star san solution and storage of other equipment (immersion chiller, etc.) only.

Stir Plate with 2 liter Erlenmeyer flask.

Immersion chiller.

Aquarium pump for aeration of wort.

Canning jars for harvesting yeast.

Grain Bins – One holds a 55 pound bag of base malt and has a rubber seal.  Other small plastic storage bins for specialty grains, oak chips, corn sugar and dme (approximately 20 of them).

Keezer that holds 5 kegs.  I currently have 2 ball lock kegs and 5 pin lock kegs.

Corona Mill for crushing grain.