My chinese brew kettle rebuild.

[lael]

thats really sweet! nice work! I wonder if you will need to enlarge the holes in the plates? It looks like an awful lot of closed space.

 

[djar007]

Thanks Lael. It cleaned up and came together pretty well. I am very happy with it. I am going to run out of time this break to get a brew in it. But I will be back in a week and when I get back I will brew my first beer in it. I had wondered about the hole size in reference to closed spacing and I will have a look back through the various threads for the best results. I will try a brew with this plate and if I need to slot it or drill the holes out then I will. Shouldn't be a drama to modify, but thanks for pointing it out.The pump is coping well and I am going to add a few bits and pieces such as a blichmann inline thermometer for my outlet to the plate chiller. I also need to build a stand/table for it to sit on and am thinking of whether or not to build a fixed stand or a platform that I can raise or lower . I could use a bottle jack or a sprocket and chain setup that I could plug my drill into. But that stuff can wait. I want to make beer. And now. Off to resize my recipes in Beersmith and try and set a profile up for my rig. I assume it will be close in specs to the 50l braumeister. Just timing the boil times and boil off rates etc now. Regards Dave.

 

[mojonojo]

I am contemplating a similar project - and will be following this project with much interest.

http://beercooler.en.alibaba.com/product/522143079-213105112/_tantanbrew_homebrew_equipment.html

 

[mojonojo]

djar

hows the project going? anything new?

 

[djar007]

I have nearly finished all my mods for the rig. I have added a little brown pump to fill and drain the kettle and for circulating during cleaning. It is on a separate switch that is fed by the 12v power supply. I did a couple of brews on it and the controller performer perfectly. Very happy with it. Only problem I had was the plate buckled a little on top while I was doing a stout. I had about 13kg of grain in it and it worked well , but the design of that plate wasn't ideal. So I had a ring welded onto the outside and this locks the plate down in two places instead of just the centre.


I am doing a brew tomorrow so I will take a few photos of it in action.

 

[djar007]

Here is a few photos of my little baby so far.
First is me mashing in a Wit. 56 litres of water and 9.3 kilos of grain

Added a Braumeister 50l mesh screen to the kettle. Fits perfectly.Have not tried it out yet.

Decided to give her a bit of a polish because it was too cold to brew today.

Got the top plate strengthened. Makes the world of difference and I may even make a crossbar of the locking bar to keep it more even.

Just a shot of the hood.

And a shot of the display. A bit messy.


This is working well for me now. I want to improve a couple of things and am thinking of scaling back the elements as the draw a lot of of power. Looking at getting some prices on them now. I had no really good way of putting some sort of false bottom / bazooka into this so I will probably be adding a hop back before the plate chiller. I need to then weld up a table for it all to go on. Or keep an eye out online for something suitable. I also want to look at an arm to swing over the kettle so I can winch out the malt pipe. I have been keeping the kettle low to he ground because it is a big lift to pull the pipe out by myself with 13kg of grain and the extra weight and suction of the wort. So not sure how to go about that yet. But I am very happy with how this is turning out and can adjust any of it quite easily now as I know it inside out. I am going to put some numbers together and work how much it has cost and I will post it up for all to see. Regards Dave.

 

[lael]

looks beautiful! Love the hood and the polished copper bling!

 

[CONNOR BREWARE]

You'd think the Chinese would just rip off the Braumeister.
Seems to be ok for ASIO building plans and now JSF-35.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-29/reports-chinese-hackers-targeted-us/4719352
Seriously though, wars have started over smaller things.

They have, almost identical looking at the pics. They spammed me with it about 8 months ago. I mentioned that it seemed to be unnervingly close to a complete copy but I was apparently wrong. The Chinese version was more expensive.

Edit: Djar the rig is looking awesome!

 

[djar007]

cheers guys. who says you cant polish a turd? :icon_cheers: It was pretty rough and I had to do a lot to it, but I am happy with it. For now. The goal is great beer, so I hope I can achieve this.

 

[Edak]

Looks great. Hope it all goes well.

Turd analogy (zing!) is distasteful (double zing!) when talking about brewing beer with it.

 

[djar007]

Just adding a little sparkle to the rig. My next addition will be a Hop Rocket. Was hoping to grab one today from Core Brewing but they are out of stock. If I can't get one locally then I guess I will have to go through ibrew. Lving Gava's camlocks and ball valves. Very shiny.

 

[DU99]

Like the grey stand....