New Brewery Build

[Moad]

And here it is painted...

 

[Camo6]

Looking good! What paint did you go with?

 

[Moad]

Just a matte black, not sure of what it is a mate is sorting it for me. He knows there will be some indirect heat (electric)

 

[Camo6]

Very nice mate. You certainly don't do things in halves!

 

[Moad]

Stand all but done, just putting on some door handles and its time to start bolting things on. This will be the challenging and fun part

 

[Dazzbrew]

Good stuff Nic!

 

[Mr B]

Mmmm very nice.

Where did you source the stainless top from? Is it wood wrapped?

 

[Moad]

Stainless was through a mate, he basically sorted the whole thing for me. In return I built him a keezer and will be filling it for a few months at least.

It's not wood wrapped but it is thick, there are supports where pots will be. I put my weight on an unsupported area and there is basically no flex in it. I am rethinking drilling through it, its pretty sexy!

 

[Moad]

Pots are looking like being completed in the next week or two. Electrical side is under way, the controller is all set up and ready to go. I have started putting together valves and pumps on the stand.

I just sold my old brewery including the chiller so am in the market for a replacement chiller. up to 140L batches and have a hop "basket" so I would say an immersion is out of the question... should I go a tube in tube style or plate chiller? Budget under $500 so glycol etc is out but a big plate chiller is a possibility.

Cheers

 

[MastersBrewery]

Pots are looking like being completed in the next week or two. Electrical side is under way, the controller is all set up and ready to go. I have started putting together valves and pumps on the stand.

I just sold my old brewery including the chiller so am in the market for a replacement chiller. up to 140L batches and have a hop "basket" so I would say an immersion is out of the question... should I go a tube in tube style or plate chiller? Budget under $500 so glycol etc is out but a big plate chiller is a possibility.

Cheers

Really depends on how your going to exclude trub and hop matter. I did see an XL version of blichmans original kettle filtered pickup ( another HBT thread) basically pickup into a T bazooka extending 10 inches each way, covered with SS plate to create a damn.
Apparently good for atleast 100L with hop spider you should be good to go with a plate chiller.

BTW where the hell are the pics!?!?!?

 

[Moad]

nice thanks MB.

Not much has really happened yet. Once pots are up it should all unfold pretty quickly hopefully!

 

[Moad]

The old brewery is gone, tidied up and shuffled things around in preparation.

Still finalising the design, electrical stuff is happening and will have updates shortly.

For chilling I settled on 2 x 30 plate chillers in series. One with tap water and one with iced water. Still not sure whether to run it out in a single pass or to recirc back to kettle to drop below 80 and lock the late hops in. Probably go recirc option then run out to fermenter and at that point kick the iced water in on the second chiller.

Next step is to test 2 x march 815-C in parallel with a coil I am planning on putting into the HLT, to check flow rate. If flow rates are good then I am good to go.

Hot water system will be mounted to make brew day shorter and reduce power consumption.this will only run to HLT. Strike water, sparge and cleaning will be lots easier and faster with this in place.

If flow rates work out i am abandoning a dedicated HEX in favour of a coil. If flow rate is not sufficient then I will try a shorter coil, failing that I may revisit the HEX and combine it with a HLT Herm's coil.

Stay tuned

 

[Moad]

Flow rates of about 8LPM through the coil with small bore ball valves and non clamped hoses. I think that I could get that up to 10LPM.

I might need to shorten the coil and get a larger ID to speed up flow rates. Interestingly even with 2 pumps running from 2 separate outlets I was only pumping about 15LPM on each pump (no coil). The 815-C is rated at 30LPM. Had very little head, I can only assume it is the fittings that slow the pump rates down.

Need to figure out what this means for the build...

 

[MastersBrewery]

Moad those flow rates, are they with 1/2" silicone, you will see significant increase going to 3/4 even if only on the input to the pump.

 

[Moad]

1/2" silicone yep, 1/2" fittings on the pot I was testing on. I am going to have 1" tri clover on the brewery so should be able to get some tri clover > 3/4" hose barb.

There is a lot more to HERMS than I realised going into this...

 

[Moad]

I've changed my mind and decided to mount everything on the outside aside from dump ports and outlets at the bottom of the pots which will be hidden inside the brew stand. These will return out through the back wall (where pumps and valves are mounted). I decided I could do with the storage underneath and if there are issues on brew day it will be much easier to have everything accessible. Also much easier to dismantle for any cleaning or maintenance particularly if I hard plumb eventually.

I've only mounted one pump so far to use with my 1v while everything else comes together. The design has been finalised now with parts to be ordered this weekend. I've gone with 2" tri clover in the centre of the MT and BK for a dump valve, the MT will have a reducer down to 1" which will then be split to two pumps in parallel for a higher flow rate.

The picture is mainly to help with mounting everything as I have changed my mind a few times and had to cover some holes that were drilled prematurely (under the chillers).

The plan is to recirculate through the chillers with no water counterflowing from about 15 before the end of the boil to sanitise the chillers. Then kill the boil and open the tap water ball valve while continuing the recirculation. This will drop the temp to 80 degrees at which point the tap can be turned off and the pump will continue to recirculate to achieve a whirlpool. Now from there I need to test the effectiveness of the chillers, If I can run straight out into the fermenter using iced water in the second chiller I will, otherwise I will recirculate back into BK until at desired temp and then into fermenter.

I've decided to go with M12 connectors for valves and thermomter probes which will run to a panel on the stand and also have sockets on the control panel. This means I can have long cables to connect between the control panel and the brew stand so that I can wheel it around the garage to wherever I want to brew. I can also completely disconnect the stand and wheel it outside for cleaning or just out of the way to hose down the floor.

Things are starting to come together

 

[MastersBrewery]

Are you going to reclaim water from chiller 1 for clean up?

 

[Moad]

Yeah mate, will run it out into a drum or run it back to the HLT to use for cleaning or the next brew

 

[Moad]

The HWS is supposed to be going in to the HLT too, not the BK.

 

[Moad]

Updated to place the HWS above the HLT.

I've taken out the ball valve after the chillers and added a 4th pump I have as a dedicated chilling circuit. I can't see me getting enough force through the chillers to get a good whirlpool.

Will add a quick disconnect at the return to the BK on the chilling circuit which can be removed to run out into fermenters. I was worried about crap building up in that last 3 way valve and when changing the direction it would run out into the fermenters.

I can theoretically automate everything up to that point (aside from adding malt and hops) if I do decide to automate it that much.