Is anyone familiar with the HighGravity electric brewing systems? I have read/watched videos about making your own. I don’t really want to make my own though I plan to get a some what “permanent” system in hopefully the next year or so and was looking at a morebeer flat sculpture. The overall design and presentation looks very nice. Just looking for some input. Thanks
I looked at high gravity a little bit when designing my new eBIAB setup. I ended up building something pretty dang close to this: http://www.highgravitybrew.com/productc … -p3987.htm
Only difference is the size. Mine runs on a 20 amp 110 volt outlet with a 1500 watt element and it’s only constructed to do three gallon batches in a 7.5 gallon kettle. Those differences aside I spent significantly less than the $1,110 they sell that for and it works so far.
I knew nothing about electronics before diving into my project but read up for a few months here:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f170/Here is my unfinished build thread:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f170/my-ebi ... ee-378087/Ya it is fairly expensive. I love the idea of electric brewing but its about $4754 for everything without a stand. I think the morebeer one was about 6 with a stand last I checked. Your link looks impressive. I have extremely limited experience with electric work. How much cheaper was your build to theirs also how many hours did it take?
So my setup was damn near as cheap and easy as this kind of thing gets but that was what I was looking for personally with limited space and money. A full three vessel setup was just not a possibility. It’s hard to piece together exactly how much I spent because I got a handful of things for my birthday in Nov and some stuff for X-mas and some stuff with gift cards but if I had to estimate I’d say a couple hundred bucks including the kettle, pump, electronics and other random stuff. You could use a bigger kettle with my build and two heating elements as well for full volume five gallon batches. More on that later.
I had no experience doing this kind of thing but that electric section on homebrewtalk really got me through it. I had zero experience with electronics but learned on the fly, asked lots of questions and had a friend check out the finished product before use. I was a fun project and all in all not that much work, a few hours on the kettle and a half a day on the control panel.
If going electric I think there are a few things you really need to consider:
- what’s the budget? This obviously determines a lot.
- what’s the power source? I built mine specifically because it could run on a 20 amp outlet in the kitchen but you have a lot more options with more amps from something like a dryer outlet. If you wanted to use 20 amp outlets to boil full batches you would need two outlets to power two elements. But with more amps you could just use one more powerful element.
- what do you want it to look like? Three vessel, BIAB, RIMS, HERMS, Keggles, Kettles, ect?
Here are some links that really helped me:
the electrical section in general http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f170/
an electrical primer http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f170/electr … rs-145019/
a list of electrical designs that an awesome guy designed to help home brewers http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f170/list-p … ms-382286/
There’s a lot more out there. That forum is pretty much were I learned everything before diving into this. And let me say it’s awesome. It’s like negative one billion degrees or something outside in MN today and I’m tucked away in the kitchen boil an ESB.
