Brewnut Brewing - Electric Brewery Upgrade

[kcurnow]

Well that title is a mouthfull!! but hey its time for a brewery upgrade
Finally the time has come for a brewery upgrade and to consign the Brewnut Brewery to the scrapheap, or at least to where ghetto homebrew systems go to die. My trusty plastic bucket HLT, coleman cooler mashtun and generic stainless steel boil kettle who have served me well through many a brew will be put into the back corner of my shed as they are destined to be replaced by a younger, faster and better looking system.
The dilemma has been do i want simple turn key bling such as a single vessel Speidel Braumeister, or three vessel SABCO Brew Magic system or do i want a more customised solution where i get to design the brewery exactly how i want it. There were also the questions around do i want gas, electric or a hybrid gas/electric fired system and a RIMS or HERMS mashing setup . It has taken a while for me to work out the answer to all of this but i have finally settled on what i want my new system to look like. I will be putting together a semi-customised three vessel all electric HERMS system. I say semi-customised as i will be using the control panel from The Electric Brewery but will be hooking it up to some different vessels than the ones used by Kal and The Electric Brewery.
July – the control panel from The Electric Brewery has now turned up with all it’s wires, buttons and switches just waiting for me to convert it into a functioning panel.



More to come once i upload the photos...

 

[Edak]

Water jet cutting = win! Nice and clean.

What's the budget for this project?

 

[kcurnow]

Well after an almost 12 month hiatus on the brewery upgrade I have finally found the time to post a bit more about whats been going on.
After the Electric Brewery kit turned up in July 2012 I ended up working in South America on a project for a month and then came back from that to FIFO work in SA till Christmas so this combined with seemingly never ending house renovations has slowed down the work on the brewery upgrade. On top of this all my wife and I had our first child in Feb of this year so my spare time for brewery related projects has been very limited. However despite all these interesting challenges and additions to the house and family I have still managed some progress on the upgrade.
Towards the end of last year I got started on the actual control panel work and reading through the Electric Brewery forums found some guys that had ended up cutting all the holes in the panel using water jet cutters. This seemed like the ideal solution to cutting all the holes as I certainly didn’t have a drill press or all the required sized hole saws. The guys on the forum even had a CAD drawing of the control panel with all the holes that required cutting. So grabbing this I sent it off to some water jet cutters in Bayswater and this is what I got back from them.

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The control panel back from the water jet cutters.

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Control Panel showing the bottom cutout for power, pumps, heating elements and temp probes.

SWEET!!! all holes nicely cut ready to insert all the fittings. Test fit time.

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Hmmm, somethings not quite right with this…

Hmmm somethings not quite right here. All of the switches, lights and PIDs fit, the Volt and AMP meters almost fit and most of the receptacles on the base just dont even come close.

Lets just say I wasn’t very pleased with the water jet cutters as it was an effort to convince them to do a one off in the first place. Grrrrr. So I decided to measure the holes and compare them to the CAD drawing I sent them to see how much they had screwed them up by. Well surprise surprise all the holes were exactly the same size as the ones in the CAD files. Turns out the water jet cutters got it right. Their cutting exactly matches the drawing measurements I gave them on the CAD file. It turns out the power cable fittings I have are slightly larger than the ones used for the dimensions in the cutting plan (which thinking about it afterwards makes sense as I have a 240 volt kit compared to what the guys in the states have which is a 120 volt kit and uses different power connectors). Sort of reminds me of an old saying measure twice, cut once. Well now i’m cutting twice. Here I have marked out the extra material that needs to be removed from the control panel so all the power connectors fit.

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Holes marked up ready to die grind.

And afterwards the newly enlarged receptacles. While not as pretty or neat as the water jet holes they will be hidden in the end. As one of my friends pointed out, at least they needed to be made larger as its much more difficult to make a hole smaller once it cut out.

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The receptacle holes that have been enlarged with a die grinder.

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Receptacles that now fit – Yay

 

[kcurnow]

After the issue with plugs that dont fit in holes it was a bit easier after that.
I cut a hole in the top of the control panel for the heat sink.

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Marking out for the heatsink hole

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cutting out the heatsink holes with a jigsaw

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Heatsink cutout


Fitted the bash handles to the control panel.

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Bash handles top and front

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Bash handles on the front and bottom of the control panel.


And then fitted the heatsink to the top of the control panel.

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Heatsink fitted to the top of the control panel.

 

[kcurnow]

Water jet cutting = win! Nice and clean.

What's the budget for this project?

Waterjet is great - if you give them the right measurements in the first place.

I dont want to think about the budget or i might scare myself. I thought homebrewing was supposed to save you money :lol:

 

[kcurnow]

Well the current part of the brewery upgrade and control panel build is almost over. I have got it to the point of wiring up. Here are some of the progress photos so far.

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Test fit of the safe start interlock

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Spray painting the back of the enclosure

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Spray painting the bottom of the enclosure

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Spray painted enclosure

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Sealing around volt and amp metres

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Main components fitted

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Main components and safe start interlock

 

[kcurnow]

And more

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Control panel almost finished

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Bottom panel showing labels

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Front and top of the control panel including labels

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Inside – relays, transformers and busbars

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Inside – everything except for the wiring

 

[Florian]

**** me that is one sexy looking thing!

Keep'em coming!

 

[Grainer]

sweeeeet

 

[kcurnow]

**** me that is one sexy looking thing!

Keep'em coming!

Will do, between raising a mini me, house renos and the brew shed build the next few might be a bit slower.

 

[Yob]

Shizzle B to the Nut... thats gonna be blingin...

Question... why 4 PID's?

 

[Cocko]

Shizzle B to the Nut... thats gonna be blingin...

Question... why 4 PID's?

3 PID's and a timer, I presume..



Dear God Brew Nut, that is amazing, PLEASE keep the pix coming and try and trump Jonathon by actually brewing on it!!

Subscribed.

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

3 PID's and a timer, I presume..



Dear God Brew Nut, that is amazing, PLEASE keep the pix coming and try and trump Jonathon by actually brewing on it!!

Subscribed.

You cant brew on it its a control panel.

 

[Cocko]

You cant brew on it its a control panel.

Can so....



Shut up. -_-

 

[breakbeer]

:icon_drool2:
total brew porn!

 

[kcurnow]

3 PID's and a timer, I presume..



Dear God Brew Nut, that is amazing, PLEASE keep the pix coming and try and trump Jonathon by actually brewing on it!!

Subscribed.

Yep last one is a timer, in reality you dont even need three PIDs as boiling is boiling no need to really fiddle with setting temps for that.

 

[Cocko]

Yep last one is a timer, in reality you dont even need three PIDs as boiling is boiling no need to really fiddle with setting temps for that.

Reality is for the weak. Do it just because you can, I say!

:super:

 

[WarmBeer]

Yep last one is a timer, in reality you dont even need three PIDs as boiling is boiling no need to really fiddle with setting temps for that.

Cap and pressurise that sucker! Then boiling ain't just boiling.

 

[kcurnow]

Well we have power. Now all i need are some tanks to hook it up to and a brewery to put it into.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151741673502905

 

[Yob]

You can drop it off with another couple of growlers mate..

Ed: I guess I could manage to swing past to pick it up if I had to..