KrazyApe

Recipes 

A special thanks to Lonnie Mac and his great videos on YohooTube!
I thought I'd post some pictures of the finally finished Brutus Ten. The pictures on this site helped me figure out where things went and I figured I'd add to the collection.
Started the Brutus build from scratch a few months ago and finished recently. The wiring was a bit trickier than I expected. We realized that in order to use a PID in our control box, you needed to include a solid state relay (SSR). I read quite a few posts that helped out a lot but in the end, it was definitely a challenge. That being said, I'd be happy to share our adventure with anyone looking for some help. We're now four brews in and it's cool watching the temps stay right on target with the automated system. We're using a spinning sparge arm during the HLT transfer and that works great. I highly recommend you watch Lonnie's videos .... He's a genuine Texas crack up!

bad67z

Recipes 

Very nice work.

dallasdb

Recipes 

Awesome build! I just bought the steel to build a brutus 10.

Can you post links to Lonnie's YouTube vids? Thanks

day_trippr

Recipes 

Awesome looking build, but your pump heads are up-side-down...

[edit] Never mind. Upon zooming into the first pic I could see you flipped the pump heads at some point in your build.

Cheers!

Hammy71

Recipes 

Now that's purdy.

shutupjojo

Recipes 

Nice clean work. Looks amazing. What did you use for the control box ?

WhiteDog87

Recipes 

Your system looks great!!! Nice work!

Ive been checking out alot of these home built automated systems and want to build one myself, but the electrical/circuitry/wiring/control panel stuff looks very intimidating as I have never done any electrical work. Is it as difficult as It looks?
Would you say someone with no electrical experience could figure it out, or does it require some expertise?

Copbrew133

Recipes 

Realy nice, very clean, alot of love went into that.

__________________
Thirsty Mutt Brewing


"When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity; When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."
Robert Pirsig (1948)

KrazyApe

Recipes 

Thanks for the compliments. I mounted the pumps with one upside down so the wires would fit clean into the steel frame in the center. I thought it might be a problem, but when I unscrewed the head of the pump, it seemed like it could just be flipped. So far so good. As for the wiring, I started with a plastic electrical box from Home Depot. It's really not that difficult. I made sure the wires were long enough to run through the frame. The biggest challenge was I started with solid copper wiring ... That sucked! Trying to get it to turn a 90 degree angle like 3 times .... Tough! I wound up yanking it out and going with multi-strand wiring instead, way more flexible. It's the little things that drive you crazy. Figuring out the PID, thermocouplers, SSR, and which wires went where was a pain. I guess, getting through it made the end result more worth it. As for Lonnie's video, here's the first one. I think he has five or something.
Posting a few more pics.

dallasdb

Recipes 

What pressure regulator did you use?

Where did you get the manual valves for the propane (with the yellow handle) and where did you get the flexible yellow propane hose?

Thanks