Show us your brewrig

[cspencer]

Tried out my brew rig for the first time on the weekend. Some successes some failures and some re-thought required.

The custom built stand (thanks to the brother-in-law) with MT (left) Heat Exchanger with Copper coil (center) and Kettle (right)
Arduino controlled display/pump/heater


The 4 ring burner bringing strike water up to temp


The start of the Mash Re-circ


after 5-10mins of re-circ


the 90min boil (31lt into the boiler) took about 10mins to bring to a good rolling boil


and the final step into the fermentor (only got 16L as my whirlpool was crap and with out a hop sock too much hop rubbish at the bottom)


Issues I found:
1. The Heat Exchanger has only a $8 Kmart kettle element in a 19L pot, it too way too long to heat the wort via the copper coil, I plan on having a plastic/SS centre pipe to reduce that amount of water.
2. With out any insulation on silicon hose I found that the difference in temp from the mash to the in-let into the pump and outlet of the HX was ~5 degrees. I was trying to get the temp up after mash-in as the to temp probes where ready less than 60 by the time I got these up to 65 I check ed the mash temp and it was at 70 (target was 68)
3. plus a few little leaks here and there, most of which I was able to sort out on the day

I didn't expect a complete success so I was happy with getting some wort in the fermenter, now hope in a few more days I have some beer that is drinkable.

the batch I did was a favorite from my old BIAB Stopetop days, Dr Smurto Golden Ale

steps:
-5.7kg grain all in with 34lt of strike water @ 75 (cold day only 11, beersmith suggest 73.4)
-Re-circ Mash for 60 min (turned out to be more like 90)
-As HX could not increase temp, and I didn't want to add more water I took about 10lt from the re-circ into kettle
-heated this 10lt up to 90+ and then put it back into the re-circ mash which brought temp up to near 78
-mash completed and transfered all wort to kettle and boiled for 90min with hops added
-cleaned grains out of mash tun and 1/2 filled with tap water at 12 degrees
-10mins from end of boil put copper cooling coil in boil
-end of boil, cover kettle with towel sprayed with no-rinse steriliser
-then re-circ cold water through cooling coil, needed to change this water 2-3 times and added big ice blocks to bring down to 22, this took almost 40mins (is that too long)
-into fermenter with yeast
- clean up

from beersmith my efficiency into boiler was 74%, 50% into fermentor due to huge trub volume

i'm pretty happy with my no-sparge, mash re-circ hx system so far

 

[_HOME_BREW_WALLACE_]

from beersmith my efficiency into boiler was 74%, 50% into fermentor due to huge trub volume

Have you considered using a false bottom in your kettle?? Also, did you use whirlfloc??? If you didn't, that would explain the huge losses to trub.

 

[dmac80]

Have you considered using a false bottom in your kettle?? Also, did you use whirlfloc??? If you didn't, that would explain the huge losses to trub.

i'll second using a false bottom in the kettle, i use stainless mesh splatter guard mesh under the false bottom to stop fine stuff getting through. Reduces trub losses to almost zero when done right..

 

[cspencer]

Have you considered using a false bottom in your kettle?? Also, did you use whirlfloc??? If you didn't, that would explain the huge losses to trub.

I did use Irish Moss in the last 10mins of the boil. I stopped the filling into fermentor very early as there was no cone to speak of from my whirlpool, it was almost at flat as port philip bay on tuesday (taken while out fishing)


the drain through the ball valve also lost suction, i think a small length of silicon hose to make to outlet below the keg will fix that


The false bottom in my Mash tun has too large a hole to stop the trub, I have lots of swiss voile left over from BIAB so I was just going to make up a large hop sock for the next batch. but the idea of a splatter guard is good

 

[QldKev]

Did you buy 15mm Kev??

Screwy

Yep sure was

QldKev

 

[NDH]

Well she's not quite finished but this is my pride and joy so far,

Brewtroller controlled 4V herms, electric with gas kettle. Most of the s/s fab is finished, just need to powder coat the frame put it back together and see how little I know about brewtroller.

View attachment DSC05265.jpg

Mill is home made, knurled the rollers out of some s/s steam pipe. We wanted to make it as stand alone as possible so its mounted to the top and will be run via 240v Drill.

View attachment DSC05271.jpg

 

[BPH87]

That is bloody awesome NDH!

How big are those kegs?

Cheers

 

[NDH]

The top 3 are 50's and the bottom one is a 20 with a 10lt pot sleeved inside and expanding foam injected in between to insulate it. Has a 1600W element and 1400W element inside. The 1600W will be used or all brews while the 1400W will be switched in for step mashes and the like.

Mash tun will be clad in timber and wrapped with 'band-it' stainless bands.

 

[BPH87]

NDH have you got any pictures of the inside of the herms?

 

[NDH]

about 8-9m of s/s coil, wrapped it around an argon bottle to ge the diameter. Would have preffered more length but that's what you get for free

View attachment DSC05267.jpg

 

[BPH87]

Looks great mate, you have obviously got some pretty awesome fabrication skills

 

[NDH]

absolute 'pot' luck that the K Mark pot happened to fit inside the keg with about 5mm gap underneath for the foam to penetrate. Also meant I can use the glass lid for it along with the HLT/MLT/Kettle.

 

[BPH87]

Is there an element in your HLT? Where did you source your elements?

 

[NDH]

I've got a 2400W sickle element in the HLT that is an urn element. The other 2 are kettle elements I got from an electrical wholesaler (I'm a sparkie by trade). Will run a dedicated circuit to run the thing. Its gonna suck some juice if all 3 elements are firing at once.

 

[NDH]

View attachment DSC05272.jpg

 

[nathan_madness]

Finally getting around to posting some pics of my BIAB 1V rig.

Building the rig with a 70L pot from Craftbrewer.

Complete base with aluminium heat shield.

MK I Hoist just was too hard to lift the bag still and was not quite high enough for the bag when fully loaded.

After the issues with the MKI hoist I was not going to have any issues with MKII. That winch was on special at Super Cheap for $35 can't go wrong I thought. Never know when your brew might call for 500Kg of grain!

Brewing with MKII hoist and MK I hoist use as hopsock hoist.

Testing the recirculating system. Craftbrewer "Brown Pump" a couple of fittings a S/S racking cane from CB as well and a bit of silicone hose at the top to insert a thermometer in line.

Recirculating system. After some testing I found that it needed to have a speed controller on it so that it would not just fill the bag and not leave any water in the bottom of the pot. I also ordered today a couple of thermometers one that will fit in the Jiffy box and run inside the lagging up to the silicone hose so that I can get rid of that probe thermometer at the top.

 

[BPH87]

Finally getting around to posting some pics of my BIAB 1V rig.

Looks awesome mate!

 

[Dan Pratt]

That looks great. Thanks for posting those on the thread.

 

[bum]

Looks nice and all that but I gotta say it always scares the shit out of me when I see people build rigs where the bottle sits really close to the burner. Please tell me that ali shield has a bottom plate on it at least.

 

[nathan_madness]

Looks nice and all that but I gotta say it always scares the shit out of me when I see people build rigs where the bottle sits really close to the burner. Please tell me that ali shield has a bottom plate on it at least.

Yeah the aluminium shield is above the bottle. After a full 90min boil I can hold my hand on the bottle so there is not much heat there as heat rises.