Posted this over on AHA, but thought I would share here as well:
Here’s the brewery - strike water heating up in the Herms to the right. The two upright freezers to the left hold 14.5 gal conicals
Control Panel:
Here’s Brewdog Walden requesting to come supervise
HLT warming up:
Weighing out the grains:
Getting the mill ready:
Mast tun getting ready for strike water and grain…
Moving the strike water to the mash tun and striking in on an American Stout…
Boil Kettle getting prepped for wort…
Spider now in place…
The wort was fly sparged and sent to the boil kettle, now we are just finishing the hot break stage…
Cascades getting ready to swim…
Recirculating chilling and whirlpool going on now, hops removed via the basket - double ganged CFCs - one with hose water, one with recirced ice water - coming out at a nice 55df (though I can get down to 45df if I want…
Now pumping to the conical…
Is it beer time yet?
Almost…
I didn’t take any pictures of cleanup, cause, hey cleanup sucks, but basically dump out the grains, recirc PBW CIP and the fresh water, wet vac out the standing water and we’re done…
Could have used copper but I used stainless as much as possible. Stainless steel is easier to clean, stronger, and holds up better over the years with contact with acidic liquids such as beer.
Nice set-up. Definitely some good ideas here for my set-up. Love that temp controlled fermentor next to the brewery, that’s at the top of my wish list.
Noticed the Electric Brewery control panel. Did you buy premade from him or did you build yourself? Been thinking about building out the basement brewery and going all electric. If you followed the Electric Brewery model, is there anything you would change or modify?
I would love to have an indoor brewery and not have to drag stuff out to the garage and have a nice constant temp year round.
[quote=“Son of a Kraut”]Noticed the Electric Brewery control panel. Did you buy premade from him or did you build yourself? Been thinking about building out the basement brewery and going all electric. If you followed the Electric Brewery model, is there anything you would change or modify?
I would love to have an indoor brewery and not have to drag stuff out to the garage and have a nice constant temp year round.[/quote]
Yeah - I bought the panel preassembled, also the temp probes and the elements. I also bought the precoiled HLT coil, after spending $$ on a coil and ruining it when I did it myself. I did all the hole cutting, valve installation and assembly, on the kettles, and built the stand from scratch.
I pretty much followed Kal’s instructions to a “T”. I did buy the hop strainer he recommends, the Hop Stopper, and hated it. So i went with the hop spider (anyone want to buy one of these used once: http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/hop-stopper). I really like the spider so far.
I will be installing a return valve on the brew kettle with a whirlpool arm so that I can do a true whirlpool at the end as well.
You probably won’t need this, but as you can maybe see, I did a double ganged CFC - first run for hose water, second run for recirc’d ice water.
Aside from those minor tweaks, it was all his plan - I’d do it all again the same way.
[quote=“Stealthcruiser”]
What a nice setup![/quote]
Awesome… thanks. I’ve been interested in trying one of these, but I didn’t want to deal with making one from PVC and strainer bags.[/quote]
yeah - I made one of those years back for my keggle before I went with a false bottom - in fact I still have it if anyone wants to buy it - $10 plus shipping. worked great, I just didn’t like futzing with it given I was using an IC.
Incredible. You or sounds like Kai (?) should submit this for high end distribution, as it is functionally superior to most designs out there, at least I can’t think of one I’ve seen that boiled down the process into anything as fundamental yet ingenius, while focusing on space and thrift. Your execution appears flawless. How about your beer from this system, is it what you were expecting? I’m in awe.
many thanks - Kal (@ www.theelectricbrewery.com) is a great guy and many thanks to him for such a great plan. I had a lot of fun building the system, and even more fun brewing on it.
Does it make my beer better? Maybe only slightly - the constant mash temps via the herms and ability to raise the temp on demand are nice features. But I embarked on this because I had the capability, and after 7 years and approx 2000 gallons brewed, I’d say its more than a ‘flash in the pan’ hobby for me - I just wanted something I had fun brewing on, building and could be proud to ‘show off’.
I’ve brewed three batches so far - a dunkel which is still lagering, an IPA which I just carbed up - so far so good, and mash weasel’s shakespeare clone which is still fermenting. initial tasting on all 3 is great
