How High-tech Is Your Brewery?

[SpillsMostOfIt]

I've been reading with great interest over the past few months about the sorts of things people are doing with their breweries. I made a conscious decision early on that my setup (prior to pitching my yeast at least) would be as 'hands-on' as possible and I have been fairly successful in that aim. Put simply:

I brew in a bag, with electric elements and no control systems outside of my own brain.
I've only just installed a tap in my aluminium boiler, which sits on a couple of milk crates when in use.
I filter my water into the mash using a bucket filter.
I have two thermometers - one alcohol and one cheap digital (from Craftbrewer).
I no-chill with a couple of Willow plastic jerry cans.
I use a cheap thermoelectric wine-cooler I bought off eBay to keep my Bunnings fermenters at temperature. I'm slowly 'improving' it.
I usually bottle-prime before storing my bottles in a cupboard I built under the stairs.
I have 90 Coopers PET, one hundred and something 1.25litre PET bottles, four dozen swing-tops and a growing collection of glass stubbies.

I've seen some amazingly automated systems which make mine look positively primitive. What do you do?

 

[bonj]

G'day Spills,

Well, mine hasn't been used yet. Virgin brew in 2 days. I have put a 3 vessel system together. The kettle will be boiled using a 3 ring burner, supported by 4 VW Beetle wheels. I have the same digital thermometer you use. I will be no-chilling in the 20L jerries also. I purchased my kettle and mashtun from another AHBer, and the HLT is a custom job with 2 electric elements totalling 2350W. It will be supported by an outside table.

I would like to have a brew-stand with all the whizzbang gadgets. After doing a couple of brews with Browndog, it does make the brewday quite easy. And they look pretty flash too.

 

[Pumpy]

SMOI,

Whilst my brewery has far too many ball valves it would be nice to use some type of actuator to electrically turn the valve ,but I have not found a source of reasonably priced actuators

Pumpy

 

[Tony]

I think i get the record for most ball valves

Even i get confused sometimes.

but i can pump from anywhere to anywhere

cheers

 

[Jazman]

brew stands can be cheap if you have access to cheap tubing my 3 brew stand cost me about 20 bucks thats 1 buck a meter for the 50 x 50 galv tubing

 

[Tony]

just counted them

15 ball valves and 2 electrical solenoids

3 PT100 temperature probes, 2 temperature controllers, 1 display unit, 3.6KW HWS element run by 45 amp omron solid state relay, not as flash as some ive seen but i like it.

cheers

 

[Tony]

brew stands can be cheap if you have access to cheap tubing my 3 brew stand cost me about 20 bucks thats 1 buck a meter for the 50 x 50 galv tubing

hehe pick the metal worker :super:

on ya jaz

cheere

 

[mika]

3 Stainless pots with ball valves on a camping table at the moment, brewframe coming. Immersion chiller, March pump, recent addition, NASA Burner. Stick thermometer for measuring mash temps as the Dial guage was positioned too far up the kettle...DOH !
Electric HLT controlled by a mashmaster mashmate thingo. Refractometer amd hydrometer for brew gravities.
Fermentation fridge controlled by a Fridgemate, mostly keg my beers, but have got several hundred 300-375mL bottles, with a computer power supply powered sanitising jet. MDF bottle drying/rinsing platform.

Think that's it :huh:

 

[Darren]

Mine is the way it was 10 years ago. Nothing much and all MANUAL

Magnetic pump will help in the brewery better than any of the other whizbang gadgets you can buy/make.

Only costs $200. One hernia or slipped disc in the back and your physio costs will easily be more.

Remember 20 litres of water weighs 20kg. 20 litres of wort weighs a bit more. Wort movement usually does not really comply with the "proper" way to lift.

Guest Lurker (as the safety officer here) should probably comment on this 8)

cheers

Darren

 

[Thommo]

I probably have one of the most hands on setups on this forum.

My mash tun sits on the balcony with the tap poking over the edge, then I have the boiler (keg) on the 5th step from the top to drain into, then once it's full I carry it down the stairs to the landing and put it on the NASA.

Once boiled I have to lift it off the NASA onto bricks so I can fill my No Chill Cubes (Sorry Darren). Once they have cooled enough I have to carry them under the balcony through the 5 foot doorway (I'm 6'3") to the "Brewery". I'm only 30 and still have a pretty decent back, but I know it's only a matter of time before something happens.

On the plus side I don't have a gym membership any more so carrying around 47L of unboiled wort + keg metal seems a pretty good workout to me. I've been a bit unfit in my football this season, maybe I need to brew more.

 

[enoch]

A March pump is the only real tech I introduced into my rejigged system and it was to avoid a dodgy back or major burns from moving 40 litres of 70+ hot water to the HLT.

I put a couple big dial thermometers in the system too which have certainly made hitting mash temp a lot less hassle.

Enoch

 

[domonsura]

Mine has a pump (just to save the lifting it was worth it) Has a water filter and one of my counterflows attached, bi-metal dial thermometers, only 2 vessels, and a few ball valves, Pretty simple really, sure it's all stainless, but it's all manual apart from the pump. I prefer for it to all be hands on, that's why there are no electronic gadgets, solenoids, or all that stuff. Also consequently, there's less to go wrong

 

[hughman666]

mine's pretty basic. converted 50L keg for a kettle, "keep cold" round esky for a mash tun (with a mashmaster thermometer) and 2 x 15L SS pots for heating my mash and sparge water on the gas stove.

i'm getting my 2nd converted keg finished this weekend to become the HLT. i've already got the heating element, just need the holes cut (if anyone in perth has a step drill or holesaw to lend, let me know - for a few pints of course )

final stage will be a thermostat for the hlt, march pump and eventually a frame.

 

[boingk]

Wrong forum I know [I do kits and bits]...but I've been gazing/reading in awe at all the all-grain specific equipment lists you guys seem to easily ramble off...damn!

At the moment I have a 25L fermenter sitting in a wardrobe, atop some drawers on one side. I put a wet shirt over it and blow my fan heater on 'fan only' setting over it for lagers - gets down to 16'C if I change the shirt 4 times a day. I bottle into brown PET bottles because they're cheap and available - or sometimes I utilise a 5L demijohn and only prime to an absolute max of 6g/L sucrose.

Some day...some day...

 

[newguy]

I christened my high tech system (HERMS) about 18 months ago. Prior to that, everything was manual. I simply always wanted to have a worry free 'set & forget' system....I have the electronics background and I had (note past tense) some spare time so I whipped up a HERMS controller from scratch. When I finish building my new house I want to further automate the system to eliminate the hernia inducing manual movement of 10+ gallons of wort.

I had an article on my system published in Circuit Cellar magazine. If anyone is interested, PM me with your regular email address and I can send you a .pdf of the article. That is, unless someone can tell me how to somehow make the article available on this board.

 

[redbeard]

I have a 2 level system. hlt & esky mashtun at waist high. pump from hlt into mash, then gravity into the boiler on the ground. pump from boiler into no-chill cubes. I have a analog dial on the hlt, but use the cheap craftbrewer digital for the mash. have a fridgemate for fermenting. just use boston re-inforced hose with (marine) plastic 1/2" screw connectors for plumbing. someday silicon & ss snaps. my brewstand is made out of big boys dexion meccano

 

[Kai]

Very low tech. My way of lifting heavy loads is inviting fellow brewers around.

 

[PistolPatch]

Too right Kai and good on ya Thommo!

I reckon the high-tech award has to go to WA. Man, I have only seen 3 breweries here but they all blow me away!

I'm pretty embarrassed about my set-up. I brew in my bathroom and the exhaust fan is the most recent high-tech apparatus. I still have to wipe the roof from the condensation though. Bear in mind that I used to batch-sparge in an apartment but now BIAB and so only have one vessel to worry about! What I'd give for a sky-hook!

I must say though that high-tech does not necessarily mean less work. Work-wise, I'm actually very happy with my set-up. Whilst not elegant, it is easy, fast and gives me a great brew. I'm in love!

Spot,
Pat

 

[Zwickel]

howdy folks,

I just finished my "brewery in a box" and finally got it automatised, that means controlled by a computer programm. Let me call it "CABS" Computer Aided Brewing System.

Let me show you some pics,

first the box:

inside the box:

up to now I was brewing with that setup:

because very often I got disturbed whilst brewing and somtimes I forgot the time, so every batch went different. So I decided to automatise the system, controlled by a computer programm.

The first challenge was to automate the gas burner, means I had to look for a automated ignition.
What I found was a simple controller from the company Satronic produced to control gas burner in heatings.
Now I had to install a ignition-electrode to start the burner and a ionisation-electrode to recognize the flame.

showed here:

the second burner is showed here:

together:

the magnetic gas valve and the ignition transformer behind:

the full setup you may see here:

on the left side there you can see a box that collectes all wirings, inside is the frequency controller for the stirrer, the relais-card to switch all functions and the two ignition controllers for the burners.

here the switch box:

the computer with the programm:

to measure the temperature I used a 1wire semiconductor, the Dallas sensor 18S20.
That sensor I have mounted into a SS chopstick showed here:

http://www.elcom-mayer.de/bier/temp2.jpg

I must apologize for the poor wirings, this was just a test setup to checkout everything is running. Cosmetics will be done later.

So my first test run turned out a treat, everything worked wonderful, now Im going to do all the cosmetics.

Cheers

 

[Kai]

Bloody hell, zwickel!