- In this video, I'm
gonna show you how to make
a sparge arm out of
simple restaurant supplies
that you can probably find
wherever you are or online
for under $10.
That's coming up next.
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My name's Brian.
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I'm in the process of building
a brew-in-a-bag system,
and one of the things that I'm gonna need
for that is a sparge arm.
I looked at several options out there.
There's a couple of small,
there's a plastic one
that you can get from More Beer.
There's some other ones that you can get
that are stainless,
and a lot of those hook
on the side of the kettle,
which really doesn't work too good for me
because of the fact that,
with doing a brew in a bag,
you're gonna be pulling a
basket out or the bag out,
and that's gonna interfere
with what's going on.
You have to take it all apart.
So, I thought that I would
go ahead and try my hand
at making one myself.
The design is similar to
another one I've seen out there
that someone makes, so it's not, you know,
I didn't come up with
it, but I just decided
that I would try to build it myself.
And without further ado,
let's get into the video.
All right, so the
components that we're using
are kind of interesting, really.
It is a lid for a canister,
like a stainless steel canister
that would go on the line in a kitchen,
something to cover up.
It doesn't have the notch
where a ladle would go.
So it is a solid disk, and
it does have a dome to it,
which is kind of nice.
The other thing that I'm using
is a stainless steel ladle.
And that ladle, I'm just using
it as brackets, basically.
But they're very cheap,
if you get 'em at the
restaurant supply store.
I looked at 'em on Amazon,
and they're pretty expensive.
But if you have a restaurant
supply store near you,
then you can leverage that and, you know,
I found these parts in a discount area,
and the ladle itself was $2.99,
and the cover was 99 cents.
The bolts for it were $1.89 each.
There's some screws
and some lock nuts that
I'm gonna use for it.
So, this thing us under $10,
really under about eight dollars,
if you look at everything totaled up.
So initially, I made a
design where the arms
were a little bit closer
to the center point,
and it didn't work as quite
as well as I had liked.
And whenever it was, when I tested it,
the spray was not quite as
big of a pattern as I'd like.
It had a big chunk missing
out of two sides, kind of,
and it was in a triangle pattern,
and I didn't really like it a lot.
So went back to the drawing board
and decided to come with version 2.0.
So the first thing that I
did for the second version
was I took a piece of cardboard
and just cut a strip out
so that I could mimic the stainless steel
that I was going to be
using from the ladle.
And what I did was I just
kind of bent that around
and, you know, formed it to see exactly
how long of a piece of
stainless steel I would need.
And once I was done with that,
I laid it over top of
the stainless steel ladle
and cut it off.
One interesting thing about
the ladle is that it has
a flat spot at the top and the
bottom in the metal itself,
and then in the middle, for rigidity,
it actually has a little bit of a concave,
which works perfectly for what I wanna do,
'cause I wanna make it so
that it grips the tube.
So after I cut the metal
to length that I wanted,
I marked on where I
wanted to bend the metal,
and then one of the
things that is important
when you're making ab racket
like this is making sure
that all the bends are square.
Otherwise, you could end up
with it kind of out of whack.
So I used a square at the top of the vice
so that I could make sure that
all of the bends were square.
Went about bending it, forming it,
you know, trial and error.
Shape it, test it, shape it,
test it, and then whenever
I finally got to a good
design that I wanted,
I lined it up with the lid
and marked it for a hole.
One thing of note on this,
I don't know what steel this
ladle handle was made out of,
but I could not get any of my
drill bits to go through it.
So the first handle that I
used for the version 1.0,
no problem, went right through it.
But I don't know if this was just thicker
or it was a different
stainless steel or what,
but I could not get
the bits to go through.
So what I wound up doing was
employing the Dremel tool.
Cut a notch in the bracket
where it attaches to the lid,
and then I was able to
slide the piece down,
put the nut on there,
tighten everything up.
So once I got the first part on there,
everything looked good.
So I went ahead and
duplicated the same process
for the other arm using the
first arm to match it up
and bend it accordingly
and put the notch in it.
I was a little bit longer
on the second bracket,
so once I got to the top part,
when I got it all formed,
I had to grind a little bit
off, but not a big deal on that.
So, everything came out pretty good.
Then it was time to test it.
So I brought it in, and I'm
gonna be using a really cheap
solar pump for the initial
brew-in-a-bag build.
I wanna try to keep the cost
down as low as possible.
I don't know how long it's gonna last,
but I wanted to try out this
sparge assembly with that.
So, what I did was basically
just hooked it up to my kettle.
The the way that the top of
the sparge arm is designed,
it actually comes up
and has a little bit
of a grip on the hose.
And I just got a small, two-inch piece
of stainless steel tubing
from Bobby and Brew Hardware,
stuck it up inside of the hose,
and then I can actually
attach the sparge arm to it
and then just let it hang down.
The nice thing about that is
it's not permanently affixed.
So whenever I'm done doing my mash,
I can just take the arm off,
take the hose out,
and then put the lid back on the kettle
and allow it to come
up to boil temperature.
As you can see from the video,
it has a really nice drip pattern.
I certainly don't think
there'll be any issues
with channeling grain on it at all.
It also doesn't have too wide of a spray,
so I'm not going to be
worrying about it going
and channeling down the
sides of the basket either.
So, pretty much exactly what
I wanted, and, you know,
I'm really happy with
the way that it came out.
I hope that this inspired
you to look at some things
a little bit differently.
I always, when I'm going around somewhere,
I look for things to build things out of.
So it's a lot of fun.
This hobby is great they way.
You can build your own
stuff if you want to,
and I really enjoy doing that.
So, question for you.
What have you taken that
is not purposed for brewing
and converted it to brewing,
and what did you do?
Leave a comment down below.
I'd love to hear what some
people's other stories are.
I know Norfolk Hillbilly on Facebook
said that he buys stainless
and then figures out
how to make it work for brewing.
So that's pretty good.
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This has been Brian for
Short Circuited Brewers.
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