Braumeister NEXTGEN Build

[lukec]

Awesome Edak and Luke. Something slightly robotic about Luke's. Awesome work guys.

Looks like more people are getting these brau-clones operational. Mine is making some slight progress. I have a 6 week old male time sink so it is a matter of sneaking in 1 hour of work between naps, nappies, and feeding. Oh and going to work as well. He he.

Edak: that is a thing of beauty.

The upside down stainless mixing bowl is my tightass version of the original braumeister copper one. It makes a huge difference in the boil though.
Not bad for $13 compared to $350.

 

[domfergo]

Lukec and deal they are both very impressive!

Hope the test run goes well desk, pictures and troubleshooting are always anticipated

 

[Edak]

Lukec and deal they are both very impressive!

Hope the test run goes well desk, pictures and troubleshooting are always anticipated

I love your autocorrect error there
Cheers again all, I ran it this afternoon and the heat and pump worked excellently. Might consider adding a jacket as the ramp time is quite long.. It could also be a programmatic error. I really need to get the wireless programming working.

 

[domfergo]

Great!

I hope your desk is good and level to edak B)

 

[Edak]

Great!

I hope your desk is good and level to edak B)

I think that went over my head.?

 

[blotto]

Great!

I hope your desk is good and level to edak B)

If your desk is not level you won't get a nice even flow over the lip of your malt pipe. I've used bits of carpet or wood under the feet of my brothers Braumiester to level it out. But as yours only has two contact points with your bench it might be easier to level your bench. I'm thinking of adding adjustable feet to my Braumiser design. I think this is what Massatomic is talking about.

 

[Brisfox]

I to have been building a similar contraption.
Could you tell me what type of controller you are using.

Cheers.

 

[gava]

Having the temp probe so close to the element throw off your readings??

more pics...

 

[lukec]

I got 89% efficiency out of the brew, grain bill was
5.4 pale310 crystal
23 l of water to start and sparges 9.8 l
Ended up with 21 into fermenter.

 

[MastersBrewery]

I to have been building a similar contraption.
Could you tell me what type of controller you are using.

Cheers.

Matho who built the original clone and showed us all in depth how it was done made a controler avaliable he has only a limited number of kits not sure what avaliability is though Matho would be more able to give you your options if that was the path you wanted to go down. Linky controler thread

 

[angus_grant]

Nice numbers Luke.

I just received my 2400W element from Thermal Products to start building up my sparge water boiler. It's a straight incoloy element. This will also let me do some full water size tests of the temp ramping system.

I will also use it to do some extract brews until the Brau-clone is up and running. This will let me develop the boil management side of the software, including importing beer.xml files from BeerMate straight into the control application. This will have a count-down timer for hops and adjunct additions, boil times, etc. It will also let me brew outside and not "gross" my wife out with brewing inside the unit... I reckon brewing inside would help our little baby sleep better. ha ha..

I can then start looking at purchasing the full size element for my main vessel and cracking on with that side of the build.

 

[bonj]

Matho who built the original clone and showed us all in depth how it was done made a controler avaliable he has only a limited number of kits not sure what avaliability is though Matho would be more able to give you your options if that was the path you wanted to go down. Linky controler thread

Yep, contact matho and see what the status is on any remaining brauduino shield PCBs. You will need matho's shield, and a standard form factor arduino to plug into it. Speaking of plugs I've just started ordering parts for another batch of bonjuinos (arduino clone). When the parts come in, I can offer a bonjuino kit with the brauduino code pre-loaded on the microcontroller chip. More info on the bonjuino available in the link in my sig below.

If matho has no PCBs left, give me a yell as I might end up doing a small run of them (with matho's permission).

 

[Edak]

Having the temp probe so close to the element throw off your readings??

Hi Gava, that was my first thought as the probe sits only about 10-12mm away from the element. Basically I had no other good option as you are quite limited with space in these vessels. One thing that makes me confident is the fact that I put the probe right next to the pump inlet, which will create a good flow past the probe so there's no stagnant fluid between the probe and the element so it should be a good representation of the temperature of the wort.

Massatomic, WRT the table levelling, the base is perfectly level and when I bench tested it in the garage it overflowed almost perfectly over all edges so I am not worried about the levelling at this stage and I wouldn't think that it would be a big issue anyway. If I were to do the math, even if the angle were off by a few degrees such that the overflow only went over one portion of the MP it would have virtually no effect on the outcome.

If you are off level by 2 degrees (which is a fair bit) with a 30cm MP then you are looking at a water/wort level difference across the surface of only about 1mm (Pythagoras), which is only 1/300 of the height of the MP (300mm). The pump is always pushing wort through the grain so it's not a problem there. The return/recirc aspect is more of a factor and we have no control over that as far as I can see.

That's my 38%6c

EDIT: Oh, I am using a custom controller because I started writing mine when matho was working on his. I also have a larger LCD and different menu structure so our code doesn't really overlap at all except for the PID library, in which case I can use the modified version from matho.

BONJ: Thank you for finally updating your sig so you don't have a negative number

 

[Florian]

Hey Edak,

i assume you Know this already but i thought i mention it just in case.
the braumeister has the temp Probe towards the middle of the vessel, so it is right under the malt pipe.
it makes Sense to measure the temp there as it is as close to the mash as you can get. with your Design you might have some minimal heat loss on the way through the pump and hoses, in which case you might be actually mashing slightly lower.
obviously this also gets you around the issue of being to close to the coil.

 

[Edak]

Hey Edak,

i assume you Know this already but i thought i mention it just in case.
the braumeister has the temp Probe towards the middle of the vessel, so it is right under the malt pipe.
it makes Sense to measure the temp there as it is as close to the mash as you can get. with your Design you might have some minimal heat loss on the way through the pump and hoses, in which case you might be actually mashing slightly lower.
obviously this also gets you around the issue of being to close to the coil.


View attachment 55843

Yes I am aware of this, but I could not for the life of me find a suitable thermowell to suit.
Using a 19L bigW pot, one would need a very low-profile thermowell to ensure that we don't lose too much volume in the malt pipe, putting the sensor on the outside maximises the available volume in the malt pipe. on the same note, a short thermowell would be so close to the pot wall that you would introduce other inaccuracies. It's a trade-off really.

 

[angus_grant]

When the system first starts to heat the water, if it was to recirculate the water would it flow through the malt pipe or does that require the grain to be present to make it overflow? I am guessing it requires the grain to overflow. It would be nice to put the temp probe at the top of the malt pipe so you know the temp at the end of the water cycle.

Or would that mean that the temp of the water would be too high at the start to be at the correct temp at the end of malt pipe travel?

 

[domfergo]

I think that went over my head.?

sorry edak, i went to bed after my reply, i was just having a dig at myself for the autocorrection of your handle..... :icon_cheers:

did raise a good point though about having a level surface or building into the stand bolts that could be adjust for the surface for this purpose

order some parts today...

jaycar stuff for mathos controller, skin fittings for plumbing and getting a quote on getting custom made sized malt pipes and filter plates (will let you know what comes of it), pump in the works...

will be a bit of a time before its up and running but already enjoying the build. The metal work shop definatley enjoyed enquiring about the malt pipes....

what size center rod is everyone using, i dont think it needs to be all that large may be even only 10mm?

Mass

 

[domfergo]

When the system first starts to heat the water, if it was to recirculate the water would it flow through the malt pipe or does that require the grain to be present to make it overflow? I am guessing it requires the grain to overflow. It would be nice to put the temp probe at the top of the malt pipe so you know the temp at the end of the water cycle.

Or would that mean that the temp of the water would be too high at the start to be at the correct temp at the end of malt pipe travel?

with the sensor at the bottom of the pipe it is ensuring accurate temp as the water enters the grain.

The water would flow threw the malt pipe as the heating cycles happens.

This would also heat the grain bill and have even temps through out the system, i dont think you would need the sensor at the top of the malt pipe as with a evenly heated pipe the losses to heat with the volume of water being pumped threw it would be very minimal if any.

 

[matho]

Just a quick note, my sensor is on the outside near the inlet of the pump, I have measured the wort coming out of the malt pipe with my trusty lab thermometer and it was reading the same as the ds18b20 was.

cheers steve

 

[Malted]

I was thinking of using a t-piece so the temp probe is run inline and measures the temp of the wort flowing through on it's way up to the grain bed.