Cheap, efficient rocket brew stand

[Lady's Knight]

If you are into all-grain beer brewing (squeezing beer from malted barley), you are familiar with the propane turkey fryer. It's the standard tool for the job.

I am a cheap (poor) bastard and abhor waste.

Enter the brick rocket.
Instead of relying on a finite resource that always needs a refill, I slapped together this monster from spare bricks. Using free fuel that falls from the sky and littering the ground, it can boil 12 gallons of wort in half the time of propane, and for free.
This cuts the price of each 10gal batch by half and takes hours off the brew day.

-The build

It's important to begin on a flat and level surface. I used a large 2'x2' concrete stepping stone on a bed of gravel.

Stack dry bricks so that the feed tunnel is shorter than the main stack of the burn chamber. This keeps the draw in the right direction.

Make sure the top of the main burn chamber is the right size to accommodate your intended boil kettle. I made mine the right size to use an old cast iron gas burner grate as the surface for the pot.

Once happy with the design, I made a clay plaster mix from 3 parts sand to 1 part clay (from the yard) and enough water to make it a workable peanut butter consistency. Dampen the bricks with a hose. Then by hand, gently coat the inside and outside with about ¼-½" of the plaster mix. This plugs all the little gaps and crevices between the stacked bricks and also protects the bricks from the intense heat that will otherwise turn them to powder.

Once fired, this plaster coating turns into a brick-like material, very hard and resistant to damage that may occur when loading fuel.

However, this plaster is not immune to water and must be protected, else it return to mud. I keep mine tucked in under a chunk of black plastic.

-The burn

Feed whole, straight, long branches horizontally into the feed chamber at ground level, several at a time depending on desired output. To damper the fire, remove remaining large feed sticks, place block in front of feed chamber.

I also have a goofy idea to build another with a 50' 3/4" copper spiral coil inside to heat water for a DIY hot tub.
One day.