Or at least a good paddle. For the beer that is! See, whether you’re stirring 10 pounds of 156° grain or 7 gallons of boiling wort, you need a good, long something to stir it with that keep your oh-so-delicate phalanges out of the painfully hot liquid. I got a nice, long plastic paddle when I started this, and it does ok for stirring the wort, but is too flimsy for stirring thick grainbeds, and is too short for full boils (I can’t scrape the bottom to prevent scorching).

So, I decided I needed a brewing paddle. And, being the homebrewer that I am, I said ‘screw buying one! I’m gonna make one myself’, and that I did. Here are the basic steps I went through to create a wooden brewing paddle.

First, the choice of wood. I needed a good hard wood that wouldn’t impart any flavors to the beer. Pine was too soft, cedar smells nice for closets but would tast terrible in beer. Birch and Red Oak seemed to be the best choices, so I went with the logical pick – the one Home Depot had in stock. Red Oak.

I started off with a 4” long plank. I made a 2” wide center, a 2” wide T handle on one side, and a basic paddle shape towards the bottom (click on any of the pictures to enlarge). The circles marked where I needed to drill holes to allow the jigsaw some room to maneuver. The white shading shows the end design I was going for (the actual paddle, as you will see, is skinnier and longer than illustrated). I decided to go with a solid paddle end since I will both be stirring liquid and solids (I could cut out some slats to help break up doughballs, but that’s another project).

Now that I had the lines marked, I drilled the holes for the jigsaw. Without those holes, I wouldn’t be able to easily make a right angle at the junctions.

I clamped down some peices of flat aluminum I had from a recently failed attempt at building a casing for my new oven which is a few inches too small for the enclosure it resides in to give me a straight edge to run the jigsaw down. I cut off the two sides of the ‘handle’. This is what the result looked like.

To create the paddle edge, I just kind of eyeballed a 45° angle and cut off two triangles at the part where the paddle jutted out. You can see how poor of a job my eyes did in that regard in the detail shot a little further down on the page.

After the paddle was in the shape I wanted it, I used a 3/8” bevel routing bit to smooth out the edges. I figured, if I’m going to be holding this thing for any long period of time, I don’t want sharp edges cutting into me. I happen to be lucky and have a router, but if you’re not so lucky, you can sand down the edges until they’re somewhat smoother and won’t cut into your palms. I also drilled a hole in the top to give me something to put a hook through, if I ever desire. I might tie a length of rough leather stripping to use too. Just for looks.

Here’s the finished product. I sanded the whole thing down with some fine grit paper (220, I think). I need to sand a little more to remove a few burrs off of the handle, but it’s something I can do over time.

A close of of the T portion of the handle. Notice how the base isn’t straight. This is because when I cut out the holes for the jigsaw, I didn’t clean them up. It turns out, they fit my fingers perfectly so I just rounded them off to make them comfortable.

Here’s a closeup of the eyeballed angle job. In my little world, this is called “personality”.

And here you can see how nicely the handle fits into my hand. The 3/8” roundoff is perfect!

Also, notice I still have all the fingers on my left hand. Granted, if you look reeeeealy hard, you’ll notice my ring finger knuckle has a bandaid. In my little world, this is called “luck”.

The only thing to do now is sand a little more. I don’t plan on finishing it because anything I put on the handle will end up in my beer. Shellac IPA just doesn’t sound like a treat to me. Because it’s a hardwood, it isn’t very porous so a good rinse after I’m done and all that will be left are stains. In my little word, this is called “character”.

Well, that’s it for my paddle building extravaganza. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to ask. I’ll let you know how it works when I make my next batch, a wheat beer, next week!