ANOTHER Braumeister inspired system

[xredwood]

Well I've ordered and received most of my parts and am waiting on the rest to make my own Braumeister clone and thought I'd throw up some pics along the way.

It is based on a Birko urn with malt pipe. I am going to try to contain the pump and all electronics in the space underneath the base of the urn so from the outside it should look like a stock urn. Initially I will be using it as a manual system, but once it's working adequately as a manual system I'm going to set it up with a BCS460 for automation.

Eventually I'll also be adding a whirlpool attachment but that's still a fair way down the track!

Basically it's a 40L Birko urn with 20L mash pipe. The mash pipe will have a false bottom and underneath that a skin fitting. The skin fitting will be attached to a cam lock fitting with the arms removed (like the Braubushka) to attach it to the pump outlet/main vessel.

The top of the malt pipe has a stainless splatter guard as a filter, then a fish and veggie tray on top to provide support (also had perfect size holes for a 5/16" threaded rod and fits the malt pipe and urn perfectly without any modification) all of which is held down by a piece of stainless flat bar with a centre rod and wingnut. The loops on the flat bar will be for hoisting the malt pipe in and out.

The pump will initially be a LBP but if that doesn't prove powerful enough I will upgrade to a March/Chugger. Temp control initially will be done with an STC1000 with thermowell, then eventually will be controlled by the BCS460.

Here are some progress pics, more than happy to answer any questions along the way.


Malt pipe with handles cut off


Splatter guard with handle cut off and veggie tray (finally something that needed no modification!)


Threaded rod for malt pipe. It's only attached to the malt pipe, not the main vessel to avoid drilling extra holes and the urn has the element in the centre so can't be drilled through.


Might be compensating for something with the centre rod... Better cut it down


Malt pipe with hoist rings and wingnut attached. You can see there is virtually no clearance between the veggie tray and walls of the urn but given that my camlock fittings will need to be slightly to the side I think this should help to keep the malt pipe vertical and sealed. If it becomes an issue, I will cut it down to the side of the malt pipe but I'm trying to avoid buying an angle grinder if at all possible!

 

[Bribie G]

Looks impressive. When I did an experiment with my old Birko and a "malt pipe" made out of a Bunnings Handi Pail with a perforated bottom overlaid by a fabric filter it worked quite well but I found that there was an unacceptable amount of wort trapped in the soggy spent grain, as opposed to a normal BIAB bag. There was little or no way of getting at it other than a sparge with a jug - have you made arrangements for a sparge, as with a BM?

 

[xredwood]

Hmmm hadn't got quite that far. Will be an issue with this set up given that it has a very small area to drain out of. Off the top of my head I will have a stand that will hold the malt pipe above the urn to drain and I can rinse/sparge that way. Other option might be something that can be used to squeeze the grain (although I'm not sure what effect this will have on tannins?). If I can get my hoist working I may even be able to get away without the stand and just keep it suspended.

 

[NealK]

Great work mate, I have a Birko and have been thinking of doing a BM clone with it but haven't got past the dreaming stage. I look forward to seeing how yours comes along.

 

[xredwood]

I'm after some opinions. I'm concerned that the cam lock without arms system that has to be offset from the centre of the urn because of the element won't provide enough support for the malt pipe. Also I want to be able to attach a whirlpool fitting to the same fitting as the malt pipe to use the same pump outlet after the malt pipe has been removed. I wouldn't think the weight of a cam lock with a compression fitting and relatively short length of copper pipe would be sufficient to seal, even if the malt pipe is heavy enough.

If I use elbows to get the pump outlet in the centre of the malt pipe and use two rods to support and clamp down the filter plates (instead of a threaded centre rod like the Braumeister) and then simply screw the malt pipe in using the skin fitting to the pump outlet/main vessel while recirculating, I can then remove the malt pipe, and attach a whirlpool fitting by threading it in (this will be a pipe from the outlet then curved at the top towards the edge to set up a whirlpool). This would be done towards the end of the boil to sanitize then used during cooling with an immerison cooler to speed the cooling process then to whirlpool to allow trub to move to the centre before siphoning to the fermenter.

Can anyone see why this will or won't work? It is very hard to describe in words what I am thinking so I have attached a diagram of what I am now thinking of doing and would appreciate any feedback.

 

[xredwood]

Ok progress time! It's actually mainly done, I just did my first water test and it was leak free first time!

I have designed and redesigned and rethought everything countless times but I ended up going back to basically my original plan. It is a 20L malt pipe with a male camlock fitting mounted to a skin fitting on the bottom that mates with a female cam lock attached through the base of the Birko urn then into a LBP. The drain from the urn is another skin fitting. All fittings are stainless. Here are some pictures!

I just had to throw this one in. The tools available to me were pretty lacking. I used a hacksaw for every cut and without a vice it took forever! Getting through this skin fitting was probably 90 min+


Here is the inside view without the malt pipe so you can see the female cam lock. I have not decided if I'm going to bother taking the "arms" off it yet, I don't really see the need to and this way I can reuse it if I end up changing the design.


Here you can see the view underneath the urn. This is a close up of the pump inlet which is a skin fitting to elbow to barb fitting which then goes to the LBP with another barb fitting. I was going to hard plumb everything but with the small space under the urn it got too difficult. This makes it very easy to remove the pump as well. The pump outlet (to the malt pipe) is just threaded into a coupling which goes from pump to camlock fitting.


This is how the draining will work. It sits nicely on the edge and doesn't take too long to drain, should allow me to start heating for the boil while I drain or even sparge. I will use some kind of pulley system when I figure out how I want to do that.

 

[xredwood]

Here is a view from under the urn. The only thing I have done so far is add the pump and wire it up. I will drill a hole through the side of the base so it doesn't have wires hanging out the bottom but this worked well for testing purposes. I am also going to rewire the urn to bypass the thermostat when i get my BCS460 but for now it stays as is with an STC1000 used to control temperature.


I took a few videos of the water test which are linked below:

Water test without malt pipe


Water test with malt pipe no filter plates


Water test with filter plates

 

[Edak]

Looking good.

Edit: you have already considered my concerns. I removed what I posted.

 

[ridge runner]

Been looking @ doing SIM I to have urn and makes sense to use it with malt pipe. Keen for up dates.

 

[xredwood]

It's alive! First brew day today. Was also my first day all grain brewing and my first day no chilling. Surprisingly most things went quite well. My mash efficiency was actually slightly higher than expected and my total efficiency came out at 72.2% which I'm happy enough with.

I did have a couple issues along the way. The worst one was when I was removing the malt pipe, it lifted up the edge of the top plate and filter and a handful of grain escaped into the urn. Ruined my nice clear wort! I have a couple of ideas to fix this up for next time but thought I'd post what I have so far.

Next I will be adding Matho's controller/Brauduino to control it all. In the video if you see me reaching back behind the urn to plug something in, that's just the pump which worked like a champ. Not too shabby for a $30 LBP! You may also catch a glimpse of Rowdy the brew dog (thinking I'm going to have to name my machine the Browdy or Braudy).

Unfortunately the GoPro gave out towards the end of the mash but you get the important bits anyway.

http://youtu.be/s1E8XqTmApQ

 

[lael]

Nice work! Looks awesome!

 

[ridge runner]

Sorry did you cut the bottom of malt pipe, And add a false bottom? I have a crown 40lt with covered element so not sure how I could work a pump in without drilling hole in urn?

 

[xredwood]

No cutting for me. The base of the malt pipe has a male cam lock fitting and the base of the urn has a female cam lock fitting. The pump is in the space underneath the urn, there's not much in there so leaves plenty of room for a little brown pump or even a march pump.

The malt pipe has a false bottom just to keep the grain out of the pump and to act as a bit of a dispersion screen.

 

[NealK]

I have got most of the parts to start my build but the Big W pot does not have very much clearance around the outside. What dimensions are the pot you have used?, where did you get from? and roughly what price was it?
What was your mash efficiency? (after listening to the podcast I am now aware that total efficiency seems to be calculated in different ways by different people!)
Thanks for the inspiration mate,and thanks for sharing, your build has really simplified the process for me.
I will document my build and post it here too and hopefully I can do the same for somebody else.
Cheers
Neal

 

[xredwood]

Hey NealK,

My mash efficiency was 81% according to Beersmith.

I used this pot:
http://raysoutdoors.com.au/Product/Campfire-Stock-Pot-20L/291883

It's 30cm wide but I don't have a tape measure handy for the height unfortunately. You might be able to find it with a bit of googling. I went for the Birko rather than Crown urn for a bit of extra clearance (Birko is wider).

Keep us posted and feel free to ask as many questions as you want and I can also provide pictures/videos of anything.

Cheers

 

[NealK]

I have an old 3kw Birko. I can easily fit the camlock in the centre but that means I wont be using a rod to secure the top filters. I have just found the pot online and will have to go to rays and have a proper look. Do you think instead of cutting the handles off they could be bent to point upwards? I am thinking that if I could bend them to be parallel I could use them to attach some kind of crosspiece to hold the filters and also use them for hoisting.
Have you fitted your temp probe yet? I got a 100mm thermowell from KK but it is way too long for what I need. I am going to try to find a 40mm one from somewhere. I was thinking of placing it beside the pump inlet, any thoughts on that position?
Cheers
Neal

 

[xredwood]

Hi Neal,

It's funny reading these posts and going back to the exact same questions I had. As far as the bending the handles go, you could attempt it but it didn't work for me. I tried everything I could think of and resorted to a hammer, but with the walls of the pot being so thin compared to the giant handles, it ends up bending the pot and doing very little to the handles.

As far as the cam lock, if you look at mine it's actually off to the side which works perfectly well and also allows a centre rod so that's an option. Having it in the centre would undoubtedly make it easier to get the malt pipe fitting into the urn fitting which is a bit of a weakness of my design, but that can be fixed with a couple extra bolts at the bottom to stop it tilting.

If you want the cam lock in the centre, another idea I looked at was having two rods. Because these are attached to the malt pipe and not the urn, they won't get in the way of whirlpooling or anything for boiling. The issue with that is then you need to either plug up the centre hole of the false bottom and add some larger holes for the rods, or use something else. The two rods could then go up to a piece of stainless flat or round bar with eye nuts on top like in my design which function as lifting points for the malt pipe, that way you are lifting the pot from the base rather than from the top bar which may bend it and in my case it allowed a small amount of grain to escape out the side while hoisting out the malt pipe and ruined clear wort!

I have a thermowell in there at the moment, 70mm from Cheeky Peak because I initially used the STC 1000, but I will be installing a probe for Matho's Controller soon. Having it next to the pump would be fine, but maybe also consider mounting it horizontally through the side of the urn. If you mount it vertically through the base you could run into issues with keeping it covered with enough wort to get a good reading and you are also introducing another hole which has the potential to leak directly over all the electronics in the base of your urn. The advantage to using the malt pipe with cam lock fittings is it raises the malt pipe up off the base of the urn which will allow your longer probe to fit between the two and will work with the low volumes you may get in the urn when you're mashing.

Cheers,

Xander

 

[ridge runner]

Cheers boys for updates watching your every word. Will start on mine in the next month or two.

 

[changchuyo]

Looks awesone, congratulations!!! Cheers

 

[xredwood]

Another update. I now have added one of Matho's controllers (thanks Matho and Lael) and upgraded to ArdBir with a 20x4 lcd (thanks MaxN68).

If anyone is considering it, I highly recommend ArdBir and the 20x4 screen, makes it much easier to navigate the menus and looks great.