Brew stand questions

[Burchman82]

Hi Guys,

Im making a return to brewing some AG after a long hiatus. And what better way to make a comeback then building a nice shiny new brew stand for the gear? At the moment we have been sitting the gear on saw horses and put the kettle on pavers.... so not ideal, or fun to deal with.

Some questions before i draw some plans up.

We have the standard 3 vessel set up, and we have a march pump also. Do we require to go multi-level since we have the pump? Sometimes i see people multi-tier with pumps, curious as to why, I would prefer to keep it compact.

Im thinking of using 50mm angle iron to build the frame, due to the ability to make a nice little lip so the kegs dont fall off easily, not to mention its dirt cheap. However I havent seen anyone do this before, is there an advantage to using RHS? It seems everyone uses it. Im worried there is nothing stopping the gear slipping off the side.


How have people been mounting mongolian burners considering there are no hardware mounting points for them? metal straps or similar? same question for the march pump. (EDIT: Seen solutions for march pump now, disregard)



Apologies for the kinda vague post... Its been quite some time, and I had a clear plan many years ago of what I wanted, but have long since forgotten.

There are some pics of what we currently have in this thread, nothing has changed since then
http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/31271-first-ag-this-weekend/

Any/All design advice is well appreciated

 

[Cocko]

Hi Guys,

Im making a return to brewing some AG after a long hiatus. And what better way to make a comeback then building a nice shiny new brew stand for the gear? At the moment we have been sitting the gear on saw horses and put the kettle on pavers.... so not ideal, or fun to deal with.

Some questions before i draw some plans up.

We have the standard 3 vessel set up, and we have a march pump also. Do we require to go multi-level since we have the pump? Sometimes i see people multi-tier with pumps, curious as to why, I would prefer to keep it compact.

You could run a single tier with one pump but you would be limited to batch sparging eg: Drain MT to BK, then change connection to HLT and Re-fill MT and so on. Obviously if fly sparging on a single tier you would need 2 pumps as you are moving 2 separate lots of liquid at once.

Im thinking of using 50mm angle iron to build the frame, due to the ability to make a nice little lip so the kegs dont fall off easily, not to mention its dirt cheap. However I havent seen anyone do this before, is there an advantage to using RHS? It seems everyone uses it. Im worried there is nothing stopping the gear slipping off the side.

I cant see any reason why you couldn't use angle... Though, there is no real risk of vessels 'slipping' off if not, just build it so your pots/kegs have some overlay and the weight alone will keep them stable.

How have people been mounting mongolian burners considering there are no hardware mounting points for them? metal straps or similar? same question for the march pump.

From all the rigs I have seen with mounted mongolian burners, most people use large U-Bolts and clamp it around the main pipe part.

Apologies for the kinda vague post... Its been quite some time, and I had a clear plan many years ago of what I wanted, but have long since forgotten.

There are some pics of what we currently have in this thread, nothing has changed since then
http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/31271-first-ag-this-weekend/

Any/All design advice is well appreciated

Welcome back to the fold and keep us posted as it comes together!


:icon_cheers:

 

[Burchman82]

Cheers mate. good advice there. I think having the kettle close to ground level as possible and the other 2 up high (waist height) will be the design methinks. I dont want a uber-tall rig. I dont have much space.


I rekon ill do a quick easy ag sometime next week to get back into the technique and ill be able to fully appreciate what i need to do when i start moving connections around etc.

Any advice on a beginners ag recipe thats cheap and not too complicated? I want to spend more time on the actual method rather than worrying about the recipe. sucks the db is down....

 

[Cocko]

Cheers mate. good advice there. I think having the kettle close to ground level as possible and the other 2 up high (waist height) will be the design methinks. I dont want a uber-tall rig. I dont have much space.

This will give you the option to fly sparge as you will be able to pump from HLT to MT and gravity from MT to kettle. Only drama I see is, you would need to pump from your kettle to fermenter... If you are chilling, you will need to ensure your pump and hosing is very well cleaned and sanatised to be pumping chilled wort. I would, obviously just my opinion, make sure your can gravity feed to you fermenter, if you are chilling, as this just eliminates any risk of an infection from pump etc... again, IMO - I am sure others do it with complete success but it means cleaning your pump twice during the brew day and making more work than is really needed if your stand design had gravity feed at this stage.

I rekon ill do a quick easy ag sometime next week to get back into the technique and ill be able to fully appreciate what i need to do when i start moving connections around etc.

Any advice on a beginners ag recipe thats cheap and not too complicated? I want to spend more time on the actual method rather than worrying about the recipe. sucks the db is down....

You could brew a simple SMASH [Single Malt And Single Hop] brew to get back into the swing of things, maybe all JW ale and all cascade or amarillo or something simple like that.

2c.

 

[Burchman82]

hmmm, thanks for that.
I cant remember how we did it last time, maybe we lifted the kettle up onto the saw horses. I suspect we just used the pump though. doubt we cleaned it but.


how much grain and what hop schedule would that be?

 

[spog]

welcome back,regarding the rhs and pots slipping off find the right position for the pots and perhaps fix lugs/bolt stems at 4 points around the pots to stop them moving if bumped/sliding when you move the system in and out of storage. ...cheers...spog...

 

[Burchman82]

Good call spog. I like that.

Ill check out the steel suppliers when I get home for some prices and then ill post a drawing for further opinions.