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Monster Mash

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After about a month of work my automated brewery is done. I got everything hooked up last night and powered up my brewery. I set the HLT timer to turn on at 7:00 and the MT for 8:00. After 2 hours they were both at 173 so it will take about 2.5 hours to get 30 gallons of water up to 180.

I have 18 gallons in the MT and when it kicks on it recirculates through the HERMS so it heats evenly. The heat from the HLT also helps heat the MT faster.

I built this to save time but after setting it up I can see that the time I save from brewing will be spent in hooking everything up the night before....
Im brewing a big belgian strong this weekend to test it out..

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Beautifull!!!

with all that technology and electronics I am a little srprised you didn't use a pump and keep everything at the same level. any reason?
 
Looks great! Where did you get your pots? They look homemade almost.... how about a few more pics? Hard to tell whats what in your photos.
 
If I lose power I can still brew with propane...

I built the stand before I automated it and I wanted gravity feed at that time. I kinda wish now that it was 2 tier but it is already built so it's going to stay like this until I move, then I'll keep the pots and scrap the stand.
 
Craig5_12 said:
Looks great! Where did you get your pots? They look homemade almost.... how about a few more pics? Hard to tell whats what in your photos.


The pots are kide of homemade. They are pool filter housings and I got them for free from pool guys, I traded them for beer.

This is what it looked like when it was new before I even had the gas lines hooked up...
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This is what the pots look like when I get them. (this one is bigger)
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Yeah, the stainless ones are getting pulled and replace with composites which is great for me but now that the scrap price is going up there is no incentive for the pool guys to trade me for beer....
 
My first brew with the automated system went pretty well.

I got up at 7:30 and mashed in at 8:00, then I just sat there and watched it since I didn't have to worry about temps. I went in and watched tv with the kids and when the timer went off I set the temp for 168 and went back in to watch tv again.

After 30 minutes I hit mashout and let it sit for another 30 minutes so I went back in and watched tv. I was getting bored because I didn't have to do anything, normally I stand there watching the thermometers and make adjustments as needed.

Everything went smooth and I was finished by 1:00. The only problem was my 1.094 belgian strong came out to 1.074. I overshot my volume by 3 gallons but I did something else wrong to be that far off, it should still be a good beer though.
 
Very cool! Your system rocks MM!

Next time you can do a live pod cast since you have so much time in between tasks. :D
 
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