Ravenwood Homebrews
Chad’s brews can be found on the brew blog section of this site. Click here to see what’s brewing in Ravenwood.

This is my mash / sparging setup that I use for my all-grain brewing. I purchase a couple of these at a local home improvement big box store. I used the valve kits from Northern Brewer for hardware,and it was really easy to convert the coolers.
They hold the temp pretty well, and are able to withstand the temps needed for mashing and sparging. I cover the coolers with a heavy jacket or blanket on colder brew days to help insulate them. A photo of my set-up appeared in the March 2011issue of Zymurgy (they grabbed it off our old website).

My brew kettle is an old 15 gallon stainless steel keg. A friend cut the top out of it for me and I installed a weld-less bulkhead valve. Since I often brew ten gallon batches, I love the size of this kettle. It’s a bit unwieldy, but works soooooo well. I’m in the market for a better burner, as it takes a bit of heat to get a full batch boiling.