Vic Case Swap Equipment....ongoing..

[malt junkie]

Nope, 'doesn't need to be completely enclosed, just enough to stop draughts blowing the flames out/sideways from the burners.

Idzy has some heavy-duty aluminium(?) foil surrounding the base of his burner stand & seems to work a treat.

Dunno about MJ's blower idea, 'though. As long as air can get in/under/through the stand (read: a few perfectly acceptable leaky-bits), there shouldn't be any need for supplementary airflow.

Agree, if you fully enclosed without an dedicated air intake for the burner it would starve of oxygen. The blower idea I stole from elsewhere and may or may not be something you could exbeeriment with, if later down the track you decide to permanently mount the burners. With the blower in place you could near fully enclose the burner, you would still need say an inch of space around the bottom to allow convection flow. We can discuss at the swap, and it's something I'll be playing with next year myself.

 

[husky]

Has 100mm shielding will see how it goes. If it all works ok then I will look at permanently mounting the burners and can then add further shielding.

I haven't looked at the grant idea for a while but simplistically could we just gravity out of mash tuns into a stainless tank with a burner under it and pump back to the mash with a burner under the tank. Would be very agricultural, not super accurate and need full time attendance but might be a back up option if temps are taking ages to ramp. Basically an inline decoction to ramp temps.

 

[MartinOC]

I may be able to help us out here...

Clever Brewing has a number of "Corporate" items (ie. stuff that got damaged in delivery to us that we can't sell, but perfectly serviceable) including a heavy-duty pot with two ports. We could set that up as the grant/HEX on a burner.

I can cannibalise my home system HEX to monitor exit temps with an STC & just adjust the flow/burner to get where we want to be. Agricultural, but effective.

Thoughts anyone?

 

[husky]

I may be able to help us out here...

Clever Brewing has a number of "Corporate" items (ie. stuff that got damaged in delivery to us that we can't sell, but perfectly serviceable) including a heavy-duty pot with two ports. We could set that up as the grant/HEX on a burner.

I can cannibalise my home system HEX to monitor exit temps with an STC & just adjust the flow/burner to get where we want to be. Agricultural, but effective.

Thoughts anyone?

At the very least I rekon bring it as a back up, but should try use it and see how it goes so for these larger scale brews we not relying on electricity which we know struggles. With a bit of work could be a good basis for a large volume temp ramp system, We can see how it works and design a more permanent solution at the swap.

 

[malt junkie]

Martin,
I have a thermowell and tee not being used (in the it will happen one day spare parts bin) and with a few other bits and bobs we should get there without having to tare down a system. Also I'll be finally getting the brewmaniacex controller put together over the next few days and testing next week, all going well I can bring it.

I'm not a big fan of direct fire mash, but until we come up with gear to do gas fired herms that can scale, it's a simple system but will need a constant eye.

 

[DJ_L3ThAL]

Compressed air gauge may have oil in it, small risk using with fuel gases. Brass or SS fittings should be OK. In high end industrial fuel gas applications SS is more common but look at BBQ fittings etc, they're all brass so don't stress just use what you have and make sure it's kept clean of course.

Try Gameco for LPG gauges/fittings etc, there's a gauge here (https://www.gameco.com.au/product/pressure-guage-100kpa-50mm-14/) and if the regulator you got has questionable output they have very high output regs (1500MJ/hr - 2500MJ/hr) as well. The guys are pretty helpful. Let me know if I can be more help, I'm far from an expert in fuel gases but can try find out any other info needed [emoji106][emoji3]

 

[husky]

Finally got time to sort out the BFK.
Acid cleaned and removed all the PVC.
Sourced some brass fittings and pressure gauge.
Test fired the kettle yesterday. Semi successful. Only ran 1 burner as I only had 1 full gas bottle, got approx. 300L to the boil with relative ease until the gas bottle froze up! Was running 40psi but I'm guessing at that rate as the LPG vaporises quickly its absorbing heat and freezing the outside of the bottle. This is ok except for the fact I think the cooler bottle temp also drops bottle pressure to around 20psi which drops burner output. I don't use gas is this a common problem? Once the bottle settled for an hr or so then I could get 40psi again.
Perhaps we try 2 burners and 30psi to slow the bottle freezing(or warm the bottle?)
What time do you guys want me to drop this off tomorrow?

 

[technobabble66]

Rockin'!!
Looks fantastic, husky!
Yes, the frozen bottle has been a problem since we started using Idzy's big kettle (well, at least in winter, i think the last one in summer was ok). We found that if we sat the bottle in a big tub of water, it would freeze and could maintain outlet pressure.
Hopefully someone will have a suitable water tub.

 

[JB]

Husky, the BFK is a thing of beauty. Looking forward to seeing it in action. Legendary status for life!

 

[Nullnvoid]

Isn't Martin bringing Curly's big bottle?

 

[DJ_L3ThAL]

Yep the big LPG bottle will be there, more surface area on the bottle should allow more heat absorption to allow more vapourisation. We can also just hug it all day to warm it up[emoji13]

MAD job husky! You just won the Interwebs!

 

[mofox1]

That is some serious sexy brew porn.

 

[Mardoo]

Can we hear it for the stand? Nice one.

 

[Shortybronx]

holy crap that is awesome

 

[Curly79]

That's friggen magic Husky! Big bottle didn't freeze last winter swap.

 

[Curly79]

How you gunna cube out of that big fucker?

 

[mofox1]

How you gunna cube out of that big fucker?

Good point.... is that tri clover? hoping there is a fitting + tube for it for cubing??

On a related note.. We usually have heaps of long silicone tubes, don't know who the rock star that normally does that is, but are they coming to this weekend's swap? I've only got the one tube that is of reasonable size.

 

[DJ_L3ThAL]

From memory that triclover even has a adaptor fitting with 2x hose barbs coming off it?

 

[micbrew]

good point Curly !!
does look a little low .. although it has 2 ports

 

[MartinOC]

Simple solution to the bottle freezing is to wrap a couple of heat belts around the bottom (I've got one I can bring along, but another would be good).

I'm bringing Curly's 45Kg bottle & one of my own, so we should be right for gas.

The dogs got at my STC HERMS controller (GRRR!). I got replacement probes, but they'll need to be calibrated. Anyone else got something they can bring that's a plug & play solution?

I've got some gash Silicone hose that someone left-behind at Cocko's place (& obviously don't miss it), so I'll bring that along.