I have recently completed my brewing system. It is a single tier, three vessel system. The boil kettle is powered by a 5500 watt element, and controlled by PWM circuit with a dial that I made. The Heat exchanger is powered by a 1500 watt element and controlled by a PID controller. I have created a flow manifold on the front to control where the flow from my pump is going. I incorporated an electric ball valve on the output of the pump to control flow for recirculation. I tried to keep the profile small and compact and in doing so used a hard plumbing concept with quick release camlock fittings to make it easy to remove the vessels for cleaning. Here is my baby.
I have done two batches on it. First batch I had an issue with the homemade false bottom. I tossed it and bought one for sake kegs.
Second batch (yesterday) went really well. The only issue I am still having is figuring out the heat loss when going from BK to mash tun. I account for the grain temp. I think I am getting too much loss from the copper piping. So yesterday I installed thick black pipe insulation to the copper pipes going to the mash tun and going to the heat transfer coil. I think that will help a bunch. It was really cold in my garage yesterday too.
All the electronics work perfectly. The BK gets 12 gallons to a boil in about 30 minutes. I played with the heat coil a bit at mash out and it seems like I could step mash pretty easy if I want. All in all I am happy with it. As soon as I get the process down a bit more, I think the flow for brew day will be great. I don’t have much to compare it too. I have been doing full boil partial mash brews until this. This is my first AG setup.
The heat sinks are there. You can kind of see one of them in the main picture of the rig. Look on the shelf to the right. I cut holes in the box and sealed them to the box. Two SSR’s mounted to one big heatsink and the 120v ssr has its own small one. I work in IT. I used some old CPU heat sinks I found on our junk pile. drilled holes and tapped them.
Cool. You do need some “Batman” labels on those switches though. ;D I just bought a 30A GFCI for my own electric brew setup that I am working on. Costs me $128.00. Yikes! I also bought 120ft of 10/3 wire that cost me $119.00 Yikes again. Need to buy my PID and SSR and that will be another $100 or so. Tripple yikes…and so on. :o
I don’t think you’re allowed to complain about cost when going down this path. To me it’s like a guy driving a Hummer (H1) and complaining about gas costs.
My method? Don’t look at the costs. I decided not to add it all up. I have a guess of about $1500 total. I got all the metal from the second hand store. Habitat Reuse Center. I tried my best to be fruggle on this build. I had all the stuff laying around for the circuit boards. I went with PEX and Copper for my piping which is cheaper then stainless. I did all the fabrication myself so I did not need to pay a welder.
I am actually kind of lost right now. I spent so much of my free time over the last 3-4 months on this. Now that I am done. I don’t know what to do with myself. Well brew with it of course, but I only need soooo much beer ;D I guess it is time to get the snowboard out.
That system is way cool. I’ll be going electric hopefully this year (after the deck gets built) and I plan on doing something similar to what you have there only mine will be inside (basement). Very good job on that. Inspiring to say the least.
Curious, what does it cost you (or other electric brewers) to run something like this? I’m contemplating the idea of going electric, but seeing as how gas is usually so much cheaper than electricity, I’ve had my doubts.
The kind of electric element I’d love to see is a long spiral (just like a small immersion chiller) that sits in the center of the kettle. This would allow a very nice flow where the bubbles rise in the center. This creates even movement of wort that rises in the middle and falls down on the sides. I was looking for such an element when I was thinking about an electric system but I came up short.
