Beer Forum

I have the morebeer 10 gallon 3-tier gravity system but use pumps for re-circulation and whirlpool. I wish the boil kettle (and mash tun) were larger - big enough for a 26g pot.

The way my beer seems, mysteriously, to disappear, I wouldn't mind having a 1Bbl setup. I don't have the fundage for that, if dreams were horses....

brewindruid wrote:Thanks Kbar and Ozwald!

Ozwald...countertop space, good on ya...I do the same damn thing! maybe i flip up sideboard thing..hmmmm

I run 2/15g kettles and a 10g Igloo MLT. The MLT is a prefab I got from Adventures in brewing, very happy with it, man can it hold a temp! Only downside there is I can't direct fire it. I got one hell of a deal on the SS kettles so I might just keep an eye out. I really don't know that a slow ramp, if planned right will affect mash negatively?
I would love to swing a fermenter but I am fiscally challanged as it is, better bottles and controlled ferment fridge have worked great for me!
Kbar...aren't those March pumps 7 or 8 Gpm, even with what an eight foot head. I play musical valves with SS QS"s. I have thought about hard plumging up to kettle height, but my weldless fittings are 1/2.

March pumps are 5 Gpm at no pressure losses, if I am remembering correctly. So, 1+ minutes to go from HLT to MLT with no losses, wich violates the laws of fluid flow in a conductor.

The idea of being able to fly sparge, with an HLT higher than the MLT, intrigues me. I know, you can pump, but why listen to the little March pump whine away for 20-30 minutes when you can use gravity.

I also have access to extruded Aluminum, so building a Blichmann like system is on the design table.

That's exactly what I have, 2 converted kegs as a 15g HLT & BK and a 10g cooler as a mashtun. The elevated HLT also was retrofitted with a HERMS coil after a few dozen batches. I've never had ramp time issues (when I remember to prime the pump anyhow, been there a couple of times). My single pump has a dual input/dual output manifold, the in-side coming from the mashtun & bottom of the BK and the out-side to the HERMS coil & roughly 2/3s up the BK.

I run like this: I fill my HLT full & put my mash strike water in the BK. I get the HLT roughly to dough-in temp & heat the BK to temp. The strike water gets transferred to the mashtun via the pump & HERMS coil. I ramped from the HLT using the total mash volume for a measurement reference & top off the HLT before it was time to run-off (pre-HERMS mod). HERMS or not, the run-off & fly sparge was just watching the mashtun level & balancing the gravity feed with the pump output. At the end of the boil, I can recirc from the bottom of the BK back to the top, and post chill I disconnect the BK return to either run into a bucket or hook up to another sanitized line in the case of the bigger conicals that I got sick of moving. There's a little bit of musical valves involved, but it's pretty minimal and since everything else is pretty laid back, it makes me feel like I'm doing something besides drink & stare at it.

I've also thought about running a couple of hard lines, but the tubing works fine especially with a couple of QD's on them. I guess the 2nd piece of advice I could give after the 'counter-top' would be to leave your design open so it's easy to make upgrades down the road. You'll definitely think of a few as the brew days rack up.

Brilliant!

Thanks for that Ozwald, lots of food for thought! This guy I have found to do my welding knows his stuff.He welds SS, though I am not going stainless, and is an artist/Sculpter as well. He's coming over to check out the system, see how it works now, and get a good feel for where I want to go. Looking fo9rward to this build.

I found I was regularly looking for a place to sit things, so I put some wood shelves under my stand. Under the electric HLT and cooler mash tun, they work fine. Under the propane BK gets a little hot, but I'm planning on converting that to electric too.

Hmmm another good thought, would a heavy gauge metal shelf be better the wood.

Foomench, how did your electric setup go, can you give me any insight on setting ine up!
I have 240 in the garage and was going to do the spa panel bit off a dryer cord, but the dryer cord only handles 30a. So, I thought I would put gang boxes on the stnand, hard wire the stand and plug the kettles into the stand itself? Ultimately I am going to the Brew troller, but not going fully auto.

brewindruid wrote:Foomench, how did your electric setup go, can you give me any insight on setting ine up!
I have 240 in the garage and was going to do the spa panel bit off a dryer cord, but the dryer cord only handles 30a.

I have a 1500W 120V electric HLT now with HERMS coil. I'm going to set up in my basement with a 240V heating element in the BK, for which 30 amps is sufficient. I can't remember off the top of my head if I bought a 4500W or 5500W heating element. 30 amps will handle either. The 120V will continue off a separate circuit.

If you really want to go electric, http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/
I cross-post from there to here, and hope the BN army will let my do likewise from here to there. The baseline Kal design from there is 30A. You run the HLT or BK, but not both at the same time. There is a 50A variation to do back-to-back brews running both at the same time, and a 50A variation to do a single barrel batch with double heating elements.