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Kyle Brown

Owner of Clawhammer Supply

We took our $1000 homebrew system to an actual $1,000,000 and made the same beer on each system. Can we brew a beer that matches the quality of a professional brewery?

That's what we aim to answer with this experiment. The kind folks down at the DSSOLVR brewery in Asheville, North Carolina were kind enough to let us crash a brew day and make a mess of their brew house with our shenanigans. We each brewed the same beer on our respective systems then regrouped 7 weeks later for a taste test.

Here's the recipe. We've scaled this down for a 5 gallon batch and we brewed it on Clawhammer's 10 gallon electric brewing system.

Beer Ingredients

• 7.45 gallons of water
• 9 lbs. 8 ounces RiverBend Chesapeake Pilsner Malt (US)
• 5  ounces Sterling Hops
• Yeast 1 package of German lager yeast - WLP830

Brewing Steps

1. Add water to kettle and heast
2. Mill grain
3. Mash at 148 (60 minutes)
4. Adjust to 5.20 pH after 10 minutes
5. Pull grain after 60 minutes
6. Adjust to 4.9 pH.
7. Heat to a boil and boil for 75 minutes
8. Add 0.31 oz Sterling at start of boil
9. Add 0.31 oz Sterling with 40 minutes left
10. Add 0.28 oz Sterling with 20 minutes left
11. Add 1.09 oz Sterling with 5 minutes left
12. Cut heat and chill to 165
13. Add 3.00 oz Sterling and steep for 30 minutes
14. Chill to 70F and transfer to pressure fermenter
15. Add 1 package of White Labs WLP830 Yeast
16. Ferment for 2 weeks at 15psi
17. Rack to a fresh keg, chill, and serve

All in all both beers turned out great. Though, honestly, DSSOLVR's was better. We had a little mishap with our fermenter and ended up fermenting our yeast at room temperature with zero pressure. Whoopsie. The beers were very similar but ours was a bit more fruity.