Show us your brewrig

[LesSin]

Hi Les ;
Great set up nice and neat . I also have the same mash tun as you and I have found that it looses a lot of heat through the lid . I started to try and retain the heat by wrapping a few towels around it and then I made an insulated lid with some styrofoam which I wrapped in tape something like duct tape and it just sat on top of the mash . It kept the heat in and I only lost between a 1/2 - 1*C over the mash period . The other way would to be fill the lid with that expanda foam stuff . That is if you haven't done it already

May your beers be great beers .


Cheers
Mike

Hi Mike


Sorry for late reply, chrissie and all. I have a 2200 watt element in each of the mash tun and HLT, Pre heat the mash water and toss in the grain, turn on element if temp starts to drop, it doesn't scorch the grain for the brief amount of time I turn it back on for. I heat the sparge water while waiting for the mash to complete. I have a 3 ring burner for the kettle.



Cheers

Les

 

[balconybrewer]

hey juddy,

im looking to change from my current esky mashtun to a keggle, just a quick question re: the false bottom in your mash tun. how do you find the silicone hose connecting the flase bottom the the socket? does the FB list on you during the mash and if you had the choice would you stick with the silicone or get a stainless tube fabed.

cheers

Howdy

Today I finally got my new brew rig up and running. For the last ten years I have been brewing in the garage on a rig made up of an assortment of bits and pieces I have gathered over the journey. It worked well and I have made some great beers with the basic gravity fed 3 tier system. But there is only so long that you can sit bye and pretend that all the brew porn on this site and others doesn't make you just a little envious! So I started to research systems and line up few mates to help with some of harder or technical bits.
View attachment 39228
Old Faithful

The basic design was a single tier, 3 vessel HERMS system using a march pump to move the liquids around. The HLT & Heat Exchanger will be powered by 2 x 2.2kw elements and a gas fired kettle.

The first step was the brew frame. I chose 50mm x 50mm galvanised steel. A mate helped me weld it up and the a quick prime and a paint with blue enamel. I filled in some of the open gaps in the top of the frame with aluminium checker plate, and filled the lower level in with merbau decking! The results looked great. A set of sturdy casters ensure that the rig is mobile. Next came the purchase of 3 x 60lt aluminium stockpots, and orders were placed with Beerbelly and Craftbrewer for all the plumbing bits and pieces. A trip to Auscrown placed a Rambo gas burner in my hands and the elements were bought of ebay. The pump was bought through Grain and Grape. A quick visit to the Mashmaster web site saw 3 Mashmaster HLT temperature controllers coming my way! All of a sudden I had all the pieces of the jig saw. Apart from one! I had initially thought of simply wiring the temperature controller into individual boxes and having a really simple system. However, when I told an electrician mate of this he thought I was mad and suggested that he take over the design of a single control box for all of the electrical components. The result is what I think is the sexiest part of the new brewery and works awesome! It consists of a powdered coated box containing a mains power switch, on/off controls for the pump, 3 temperature controllers each with individual on/off, red and green, illuminated buttons, and interlocks that prevent more than one element being used at a time! I really am indebted to Ang for all his hard work. The resulting box looks great, and is safe and easy to use!
View attachment 39219
Nice.
View attachment 39222
Ang's work on the control box was awesome!
Once all the plumbing bits and pieces arrived I set to work finishing off the remainder of the rig.
View attachment 39227
The Mash Tun.
View attachment 39224
The Kettle.

And finally today all the bits came together!
View attachment 39221
The nearly completed rig!
View attachment 39223
The Brewing team seem quite happy with the new rig!

I still have a lot to do before she is ready for her maiden run. Water tests, pump cover and heat exchanger insulation are at the top of the list. It has been a six month process and has cost a small fortune. But at this early stage I am very happy with the results. A big thank you to all the contributors on this site that have given me the inspiration to build the rig. Nothing here is new (well maybe the control box) and most components are directly inspired by the posts of other members! Now I look forward to brewing some beer, and maybe having a slightly easier brew day!

Cheers

Juddy

 

[Barley Belly]

Just upgraded my old 3V system to a single vessel BIAB 40ltr Urn and are yet to crack my cherry.

In keeping with the tradition naming brew setups I have christened mine Grunt Brewko the Mighty BIAB Urn or just Brewko for short. B)

Got a Gryphon grain bag ready to go and are just waiting on Craftbrewer to send me my hop bag and some new silicone hose and I'll be ready to kick her in the guts. I also lashed out on a staino mash paddle and a staino sifter to use as a false bottom so I can mashout and or step mash as required without melting my bag.

Future planned upgrades are a stainless weldless bulkhead, a 3 piece ball valve plus barb and possibly my Beerbelly hop screen. But I wanna get a few BIAB's under my belt in the current configuration first.

 

[jyo]

Finally a set up that I am happy with. I can stop collecting things now...can't I? -shakes head thinks about march pump, false bottom etc...-

 

[Smashin]

Well after much procrastination and staring at the steel bought around a year ago I finally made the time and got around to building the 'Woolven Street Brewery' brew rig. With no real design in mind it was a design as I went event. I originally had settled on a brew tree but as the build went on it evolved slightly. I'm stoked with how it ended up, which isn't that hard after considering the old table, chair, bricks and misc CRAP i've put up with for the last umpteen years (so looking forward to tomorrows tip run).


Bare bones and in high temp gun metal...mmmm...


Burners fitted and on board gas bottle









Counter flow chiller to sit under the Kettle.

Things left to be sorted (before the virgin mash) include:
-replacing my copper sparge manifold with a s/s false bottom that hinges in half. I want to keep my mash tun gas heated so a manifold that hinges in half is the only other solution I can come up with. If you look at my gallery you can see my mash agitator, which is lid mounted (no sore arms here).
-March 815 to be fitted in front of the gas tank I plan to whirl pool through the CF chiller hence the 815. Water filter to be fitted on board somewhere also.
-S/S camloc fittings for all hose connection
-Temp dials to both the HLT and Kettle
-mount CF chiller
-mount water filter
-a few valves and fitting to sort

I've put this off for too long so its no brewing until its in final trim......Off to PNG for 3 weeks on Monday so upon return I have 1 1/2 days to get it sorted as I need to brew before I fly back out again.

Anyway hope you guys enjoy the eye candy.

Cheers
Smashin :icon_cheers:

 

[Supra-Jim]

That's some nice work there smashin

I've getting some TIG lessons from one of the techs at work over the last few weeks. Spent the last few mornings cutting some SS tube, and finally laid my first weld on the brew rig tonight!!!

Photos will follow soon

Cheers SJ

 

[_HOME_BREW_WALLACE_]

nice work on the double kettle smashin. it's amazing what can happen when we all pull our fingers out and do something. What size batches do you plan to do?

 

[Smashin]

Cheers Wallace,

I do 40L batches, 2 cornies with some loss allowance to trub..

Smashin

nice work on the double kettle smashin. it's amazing what can happen when we all pull our fingers out and do something. What size batches do you plan to do?

 

[DoctorBob]

Its taken a while but I finally got there.

The HLT is 33L, so is the mash tun, and the kettle is 59L. (which I used for a year as a BIAB vessel). I am targetting 40L batches.

The pots were cheap from an auction, and I had a local weld flanges on for the temp guage & outlet valves.

Each pot has a turkey burner under it, and I run them off a med pressure adjustable reg. Very powerful !

The flame shrouds are sections of a large gas bottle sliced up with a grinder, and the stand is 75mm square, 5mm galv box. (Heavy - yes, flexes? - no). I welded it up with a stick welder.

Done two batches so far. I fill to cube, to either no chill, or chill on the step in the swimming pool.

An 8kg grain bill is ok, stepped mashing easy as the mash is nice & fluid.

A 12kg bill (Belgian double) was a bit stiff for step mashing.

I was going to make a system with 3 vessels on one level, and pumps etc , but gravity is free and doesn't break or get infected / need cleaning. KISS.

Cost about $1100 to make.

 

[spog]

smashin/dr bob, nice setups fella,s,very nice.......cheers........spog.......... :icon_chickcheers:

 

[DoctorBob]

smashin/dr bob, nice setups fella,s,very nice.......cheers........spog.......... :icon_chickcheers:

Cheers!

 

[adniels3n]

Finished making my 1st brew stand this week. Got sick of burning myself pretty quickly using the "balancing on Boxes" technique.
Did an Operation Mongoose for our 1st brew, Dr Smurto's Golden Ale 2nd. Now we're trying to get friends driving out from Brisbane to bring us some bulk base malts.

 

[adniels3n]

From BCF. Dual POL outlet. It's a weird setup, but I already had one burner like this and knew it worked. Thought about an Italian spiral with the adjustable reg yadda yadda, but I'd prob blow myself up. The burners said hp reg on the box, but they're just 2kg/hr ones.

edit: Actually, with 2 higher pressure regs, maybe you'd need to start looking at a water bath for the gas bottle.

 

[Charst]

A lot of Blokes have some stunning looking Rigs but and mines nowhere near that but i still wanted to get it up there because It's up and running and im pretty stoked about it. Still needs some more wind guards wielded on and a nice coat of paint but I brewed my second batch last weekend, a Smoked Robust porter with 7.4kg of grain in the tun and was expecting a OG of 1065 and hit 1062, not bad with that amount of grain in a BIAB i think. 2 weeks in the fermentor and tasting great. Cheers!

 

[adniels3n]

See, now that's a real homebrew. Maybe I'll make a BIAB rig too. Engine cranes are on sale atm.....
edit: I like that homebrewing has the "Stuff ya, I'll do it myself!" mentality behind it. Bit of bed frame, weld up a bit of box section, "find" a keg or two.....

 

[stew.w]

just started upgrading my rig, havnt really changed anything on it except the kettle in the last year and a half but now im going to get a RIMS and electric HLT going.
made my RIMS tube this arvo:






made it out of an offcut of 65mm copper tube, 65 x 80 reducer and the top of a tank out of a zip boiling water unit.

started putting it together tonight, heres a couple of pics:







and heres the control box ive started making, still got a bit of work to do on it, going to mount if off to the side of the esky.





some of the photos are a bit ****** because they're from my phone.

ive made a thermowell on the outlet of the rims tube, not sure if this is the best location or not, where does everyone else put their probes on HERMS/RIMS systems?

Cheers,

Stewart

 

[Newbee(r)]

Finally got around to downloading some photos off the phone.

Attached is my (pretty standard) biab 40L urn and overhead pulley system. Next few will be the chiller chilling out with the water tank - I pump the water out and back in - works especially well in winter. The hops are EK goldings on the arch and a chinook and pride of ringwood growing up the pegola.

Cheers

J

 

[Newbee(r)]

the chiller rig

 

[Newbee(r)]

EK goldings - ended up with 2 1/2 pounds of this one.

 

[Newbee(r)]

The chinook on the left and the POR on the right. I think I need to move them though as they put on loads of vegetative growth but slow down before the cones start really going. A bit more sun and they will go gangbusters.