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Justin

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Good morning guys.

Sorry this is a long post.

Well as promised several weeks back now, I would post the pictures of my new single tier brewery once it was made. It's taken a few weeks of messing around and tinkering with the smaller bits and pieces due to time restraints, but I finally got it to a stage that I could give it a test brew on the weekend. There are a few little bits and pieces that I have to finish off to complete the system and one or two little modifications that have arisen since actually using the system but for the most part I am pretty damn happy with how it's come out and how it functions. :super:

I was in two minds over weather to go for a two tier and gravity feed from the tun into the kettle, or go for a single tier and pump between all vessels. I was hoping to be able to gravity feed into my fermenter, so once assembled the two tier was still going to have a highish mash tun-high enough to make mashing in a PITA. I DID NOT want to stand on anything to mash in or be awkward while mashing in. After looking at AndrewQLD's single tier brewery and many on the net-his system already had many of the features I was hoping to have in my brewery and I like the clean lines of a one level brewery so I went with the single tier and am very happy I did so. Mashing in is so easy and you can easily monitor all vessels and it just makes it all work so well having them low down. No lifting vessels high at all, easy on, easy off. Scoop the mash out with a jug straight into a bucket for compost disposal. It's great.

I chose to brew a hefeweizen on the weekend, 1. because I was hoping to do one soon and 2. one of my mates gave me a yeast cake of 3638 Bavarian Wheat yeast. I wasn't sure about trialing the brew with a wheat beer, seeing as I was using a new manifold and also learning how to sparge and recirculate with my pump without causing a stuck sparge but I went forward anyway. I was also going to have my first proper go at batch sparging.

I had a late start to the day, later than I normally start because I figured it was going to be an all day affair anyway so I didn't have to start early. Plus I figured there would be a few hiccups so the entire Saturday was donated to brewing. Which was a nice change I can tell you.

Here's the full set up, I've just mashed in and the HLT is heating up again.


The frame was made of 50mm (3mm thick) angle iron from two bed base frames. Anyone wanting to build a frame and that can weld or bolt it together should consider getting these. They are a vey cheap source of steel and there are a heap of them around, everyone has some lying around and tip/recycle shops can't give em away. I was going to build my stand out of 20mm RHS but this worked out much cheaper and was better in the end anyway. The bed frame steel is light and strong. I can pick my frame up above my head on my own to lift onto roof rack when we go on the road and it will easily hold three full vessels and more without worry-it's strong stuff, no worries here.

Here's the bracket I made to mount my pump. I just made it out of a piece of tin plate, drilled the holes, painted it and mounted it. It works well and allows me to easily put the pump on and take it off for cleaning. I'm going to move the pump about half a foot to the right though to get it out of the drip path of the valves on the mash tun. I mounted my pump, but then ended up putting the valves on the mash tun off centre (that has to do with the sun dial Tel Tru :rolleyes: ) which wasn't in the initial plan, but it's no big issue to change it slightly.
March_close_up.JPG

What I haven't done at this stage is mounted my third tel tru in the kettle. Keen eyes can pick the spot marked out. I also haven't mounted my kettle return valve and whirlpool attachment yet (same set up as on the mash tun-the top valve). This is mainly because I wanted to test the idea before drilling the holes and mounting the fittings. The idea is to still use my immersion chiller, but instead of stirring it constantly while chilling I'll just put the pump into whirlpool mode and draw hot wort from the bottom and pump into a whirlpool at the top to keep the hot wort moving over the coils. It worked well even with the less than ideal return maniflod (I'll explain later) so I think I'll go ahead and make the attachment.

I also have a control box that I'm in the process of wiring up that is not on the system yet. It will go under the HLT, mounted to the frame. This will have switches for the HLT elements, the pump, and a switch and outlet for my hand held immersion element (what a great tool they are). I'm hoping to house a digital theremostat (most likely a PID) here too for HLT control.
 
Here is my new mash tun manifold. It is basically a bigger version of what I have previously used so I wasn't too worried about it not working well. It's made of stainless termite mesh and obviously a couple of T's. The compression fitting can be hand tightened and with the help of a wrap of teflon tap, seal the pick up tube well making remove easy. It drew wort from the tun very well and I was actually able to recirculate and pump to the kettle a quite a fast rate, faster than I though I would be able to.
pic removed

The outside of the mash tun, with the Tel tru and the recirculation return valve up the top. I wanted this valve up the top so I could see the flow rate of the pump and adjust the speed while watching-without the need to bend down to the pump-make a blind adjustment and then peer back into the tun to see how I went. This is a nice addition and give nice control.

pic removed

Mash_tun_inside.JPG


Mash_tun_outside.JPG
 
Justin.

Totally sweet you lucky so and so. :rolleyes: :beerbang: :beerbang:

Warren -
 
This is the HLT, with a nice sight gauge. I used a strip of aluminium to mark the scale on. It's nice, especially for calculating batch sparge additions. I will most likely add one to the mash tun as well. I've got one here ready to go. All vessels being the same means my current dip tube stick also works for all vessels so was handy on the weekend to work out dough in water volume calculations.

pic removed

Here is the make shift whirlpool set up. I just used the mash tun return valves for this weekends brew and ran a hose over to the kettle. I had a bit of copper pipe shaped in a gentle curve to induce the whirlpool and it worked quite well but the actual return manifold will have a sharper bend, probably at 90 degree's as the one I was using on the weekend angled down to the bottom too much and stirred up the settling a bit. The bit of copper I used was never designed for this but was just used for proof of concept. I'm happy with how it went though.

pic removed

HLT.JPG


Whirlpool_set_up.JPG
 
Looks nice. Love the guages. Easy to read. On wheels too! How did the beer turn out efficiency etc?
cheers
Darren
 
Beautiful work there Justin. Love the gauge on the sight glass especially. A really nice touch. Top darts!

Shawn.
 
Here's another angle of the whirlpool recirculation while I was chilling.

pic removed

As a summary of batch sparging. I love it. It was so quick and very easy to do. I had a calculated 11L of wort recovery from the grain bed to which I added 4L of sparge water to before the first run off and then added another 15L for the second run off. I set the efficiency in promash to a conservative 73% for my first batch and lo and behold I collected exactly 30L at my target OG of 1046 preboil. Nice one.

I think my brew days are going to be very fast indeed in the future. This one really only took me a bit over 4 hours not counting the initial setting up and stuffing round before I started. With preheated HLT water it's going to be a very slick brewing method and very stress free. With fly sparging I was always running back and forth from the brewery to kitchen to cool hydro samples.

CHhilling_and_whirlpooling_2.JPG
 
Looks the goods Justin. Nice tip on using bed frames, and so might go with the patented 'Justin frame' concept.
 
The beer turned out great and it's happily bubbling away. I'm trying to keep the temp down on this yeast a little so the flavours of this yeast don't get too carried away.

I tried this beer with a mix of wheat and Vienna. Intially tastes seem very good indeed, will be interesting to see how it tastes once a lot of the sugars have fermented out.
 
Justin,

Fantastic setup mate - a credit to you :beer:

cheers Ross
 
Justin, that is one great piece of kit :beer: . It looks great, I like the bed frame idea too. Good idea for the mounting bracket on the pump as well. how did you polish up the kegs?

cheers
Andrew
 
Justin,
That setup looks absolutely fantastic, and similar to the way that I will want to ultimately go. Are there any details you have handy re: suppliers etc...? In particular, I am keen to find out more about your disconnects and hoses. It all looks very robust and clean.
Well, I had better get back to feeling jealous!
Cheers,
Steve.
 
justin that is the most simple idea i have seen to date in a brew set up ,neet tidy easy to work around buy the looks of things and mobile well mate yo should patent that one and do up a set of plans and offer them for sale .
as for the commercial ones well i think you have really thought of this from a real homebrewer point of veiw .not from a commercial aspect
i am sure most would agree.

hats off to the "justin brewframe"

delboy
 
I thought you was up to something, lookd great nice work Justin

Pumpy
 
Can you seen any ideas from your brewery Andrew ;). Thanks for your help with my questions about your system too. I have to say I'm pretty happy with those brass quick disconnects. No leaks whatsoever at this stage and no real issues with grabbing hold of them while hot. Happy.

My kegs, well one was already pretty shiny (HLT) and the kettle is only half polished at this stage. I'll finish it up soon, thought I better get the system going first before making it too pretty. But I just sanded them with sand paper. I've only got to the first grade of paper so far which is about 300 grit or so of the black wet and dry. I've got sheets going out to 1200 grit that I'll get to. You'd be surprised how quick they come up.

The mash tun has a bead blasted matt finish on it which is quite nice but I might sand that one too to match. This depends of if and when I insulate the tun. Don't want to spend the time polishing if I'm going to cover it up with insulation. I think I will insulate, heat loss is pretty bad but I had a handle held element to keep bumping temps back up with, plus I step mashed this one just because I could. I only started polishing them when I was bored but I will finish it up soon.

I might make a separate heat exhanger HERMS vessel to go underneath because it would be quite easy and simple to do, so maybe? I wasn't going to HERM it but it's basically there. Wouldn't be much messing around to do.

Cheers, Justin
 
Congratulations Justin, that is a great looking setup you have there, I am in the process of putting together a system thanks to Ross demo day a while back. I am very interested in your sight glass as I have been trying to figure out how to make one myself, would you mind giving me some details on how you accomplished it. Also, for a mash tun I was planning on putting a stainless steel liner inside a keg and filling the gap (about 1 inch) with fibreglass batts for insulation, this would result in a volume of about 25 litres is this OK ?


cheers


Browndog
 
Hi Mongo.

The brass disconnects were recommended to be by AndrewQLD so I can't take the credit, but I think Warren and a few others use them as well. I grabbed mine from bunnings (females ~$6, males ~$3) and got the females with more of a barbed type of fitting on them-as opposed to what I call the normal plastic type hose fittings. Don't know how else to describe that :unsure: If you see the two side by side you'll know what I mean. At this early stage they worked really well. You need a 3/4" to 1/2" (~$2-3) adapter to get them to mate with 1/2" ball valves.

The hose is thick walled 1/2" silicone from more beer, and Grain and Grape sell it too. It's $12.50 a meter but it's great stuff and it doesn't collapse or kink easily when hot-it never kinked at all on brew day even with boiling wort going through it. Super stuff, well worth the price. I used 2m to plumb the brewery but I have another 2m piece for general duties like racking etc.

Thanks for the nice comments guys, its appreciated. It's taken me a little bit of time and a good wad of money to get to this point. It's evolved from the three tier which served me well but I really needed the compactness of this brewery in my new place.

As far as price goes I stopped caring a little while back but it wasn't too bad. I figured this is going to last for years and years so when I break it down over the time I'll use it for I realised I have more expensive hobbies :rolleyes:. I try to scrounge what comes available though, browse ebay always and when I had to I've just bought what I needed.

Fittings are dear and add up real quick, if your on a budget think real hard about them. I got a mix of stainless and brass fittings-I mainly grabbed stainless when the price difference between the brass option and stainless option was minimal-but sometimes the difference between brass and stainless fittings is double. Barbs are a good example.

Hope it helps. It's been good fun. I love the building side of things but I'm really looking forward to the next few batch of beer I'm brewing over the next two months. Summer here we come.

Cheers, Justin
 
Justin.

The bed frame is a good touch. I paid about $25 for a 2.4m length from Bunnings for my burner cradle. We had a spare one in the spare room. However SWMBO wouldn't let me cut it up. <_<

Look at it this way. If you wind up in too much trouble from SWMBO for excessive brewing you can always sleep on your frame. :lol: ;)

Warren -
 
Hi Browndog,

My slightglass uses a push in fitting that I got from a hose and fitting place. I got the idea from Sosmans site here : http://www.metrak.com/wiki/homebrew/moin.c...cc4f46b76438c84

I used a Legris fitting but mine wasn't stainless, ti was around $10. They are however rated to 85C of so. I grabbed some polycrbonate tubing to fit, which I think was 3/8" (but the metric equivalent probably 9 or 10mm OD, I forget now) and fitted them together. I don't knwo how they seal but they do, and very well as long as you seat the tube right down in the fitting. Then I just used a suitable eye bolt to hold the top.

Here's a pic of it along, sorry it's a bit far away. I was going to sell these as ready to go sight glasses on ebay for a while. :rolleyes:

107_0722.JPG

Here's a link to the same ones: http://www.legris.com/legris_com/ProductDi...1&sf=01&ty=3199
 
Love it Warren :lol: :D

It may yet come to that :D
 
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