My New Electric HERMS Build

This will be a lengthy write up with a lot of pictures, so patience...


Homebrew, Check


Marked holes with sharpie, and drilled out with 1/16, then 3/8 for knockout






Made a "special" tool to hold the weld fittings...




After welding, the flux wipes right off with a soaked rag when its still hot, BUT you have to wait till the solder has set, if you dont then the liquid solder will get sucked right into the joint and leave holes, and it messes up the finsih(talking from experience) so basically you just wanna leave it for 3 min or so after your done soldering before you touch it(with a wet rag)

camlock with barb for HLT coil


Threaded 90 stainless and inside of camlock to redirect circulation water/wort




Inside BK, i need to take pics of my element enclosures yet...


My handy dandy gallon measuring stick...




How its being used...

Control Panel


Control panel lid about to be made full of holes...


...


...


and about 50 seconds later...






I had some Watlow 93 PIDs sitting around, so I used them, but they dont have an alarm output so i ordered some Auber PIDs yesterday...




im running 40A SSRs at 15.4 amps, so far the smaller heat sinks work. But if ill burn up an SSR im going to move them and install a bigger heat sink.




more...
and yes i know i didnt paint it...yet...im actually waiting for my paint, its gonna take another week or so till it gets here thru sherwin williams, its a hammered bronze, almost like the charcoal but very dark bronze, they were unable to get charcoal hammered, and i really love the hammered look.


heres my panel up and running


GFs dog helping with the wiring...and by helping I mean eating all the wire strippings off the floor...


I cut the bottom out of the panel and made up a stainless plate with all my plug holes in it...

And of course we need a brew table...so I built one...




adjustable pump mounts...




plate for chiller hoses


bolted to table...






pumps bolted to table...


garden hose plate for chiller plate...


chiller plate(20 plate)






Pump Plugin Plate...




sparge hose...am i cheap or a genius? LOL still trying to figgure that out. Its just a piece of silicone hose which i drilled holes in with a 1/8 drill bit.


Brewing with "alternate" timer, since my timer has not arrived yet...


grain bill posing with system...

Very nice build. I would like to have the space to do a build like this one day.


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Just some more random pics...


this is going to be my keggerator, got the chalk board painted on there already...im making a plate that will get riveted to the front with 5 holes for taps and a drip tray holder.

My first batch came out with an 80.2% efficiency. I still need to take a lot more pics, such as my element enclosures, inside of HLT and MT...

My control panel is copied of Kal's electric brewery, but at this point its been pretty heavily modified, the alarm switches for HLT and MT will actually be switches to turn elements on and off, because I can run both of them at the same time the way that I designed my system on a 50A circuit.

The hole above the MT will be a green light, hooked to a relay, the relay will activate when the high or low alarm of the MT PID will come on, and turn the green LED off, so ill know im good by just glancing at the control panel.

Once I make a stand or whatever im going get one of those
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H8REHRU/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
and set it up for Green-Good Yellow-Caution Red-Alarm

Im sure ill change the panel yet, I can just cut another stainless front with the holes on it if I decide to change the cutouts on the front panel, but I haven't decided yet if im going to leave it the way it is, I already know that I probably wouldn't use the alarm light, the buzzer will be on my timer...im just thinking out loud now, so excuse me... technically the system is done except for the paint, but knowing me, ill change things up quiet a bit yet.

The Volts/Amps meter, i used that one because i did not need any transformers or Rectifiers with it, as far as the shunt goes, i just replaced it with a CT.

You make me very jealous. Can you post pics of the HERMS coil and how you have that plumbed?

Nice setup!!!

Christ! As a broke young apt living brewer... all i can say is... i hate you! lol

But seriously, that's an awesome looking set up! Would love to see a video of a full brew with it when you've got her all buttoned up!

PVRPL3H4Z3 said:

You make me very jealous. Can you post pics of the HERMS coil and how you have that plumbed?

Click to expand...

As far as how its plumbed, the wort leaves the MT (with false bottom), goes into pump, from pump it goes into HERMS coil(in HLT), comes out and dumps right back into the MT thru my "sophisticated" sparge tube or did you want a visual?

TheCanisDirus said:

Christ! As a broke young apt living brewer... all i can say is... i hate you! lol

But seriously, that's an awesome looking set up! Would love to see a video of a full brew with it when you've got her all buttoned up!

Click to expand...

Im a broke-young-recently-bought-first-house guy as well...i blew over my budget by about 5 times, I was in the middle of designing it when I realized that Ill be way over, that's when I told myself go hard or go home...i guess I chose to go hard

Video of it in operation may be something I may be able to do when I get a chance...

one thing I don't miss is the sound of a jet engine in my garage when im brewing, its nice and quiet, at least now I can hear my music I, in no way miss propane, even though ive only used it once...

love the build. i'm in the process of putting together my AG stand. i have a few ?s about yours.

those are 44qt bayou classic pots, right? what false bottom did you use in the MT? what are the measurements of each gal/half gal on the measurement stick? and how did you make, where did you get the measurement stick?

spartybrews said:

love the build. i'm in the process of putting together my AG stand. i have a few ?s about yours.

those are 44qt bayou classic pots, right? what false bottom did you use in the MT? what are the measurements of each gal/half gal on the measurement stick? and how did you make, where did you get the measurement stick?

Click to expand...

Yes, those are 44qt bayou classic pots, the false bottoms I got from ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/130900576545?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
And then I threw out the fittings and installed all 1/2 NPT and 5/8 barb so theres no flow restriction. As far as the measurement of each gallon/half gal on the measuring stick, what I did, is with all the equipment installed inside the pots, I dumped a gallon at a time into the pot, measured from bottom up, and so on with each gallon, and the half gallon mark, I just went center to center between each mark. Your pretty much have to measure each pot by itself, because the size of heating elements, hoses used for false bottom...all that stuff throws the measurement off. And then I just had a buddy draw it and cut it with a laser cutter...
And if i remember correctly, each gallon on those pots without any obstructions on the inside(and excluding the first gallon), is 1.5625 inches....

After yesterdays brew, I had to drill those holes out on my sparge hose because they plugged when I first started the HERMS circulating pump.
I gotta figure something else out for a sparge unit.

Yesterdays efficiency was 87.13%
Not bad if you ask me, being that Im still fine tuning the system

pretty awesome build thread.

Quick question as I am slowly building something similar, would it be better to drain the MT from under the false bottom. Just thinking of being able to drain more liquid.

You could place your drain below the MT. But because the drain under the screen is only about 1/8 of an inch off the bottom of pot, it wouldn't make much difference . And when im sparging, i alway leave 1 inch water above grain bed. So really, i dont see a point in having the drain on bottom.


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Are you planning on mounting the panel to your table or just wall hang it?

subbed.

iijakii said:

Are you planning on mounting the panel to your table or just wall hang it?

Click to expand...

I dont know yet, in wintertime ill be brewing inside, so Ill hang on the wall, but Ill probably make some sort or a stand or something to mount it on for when im brewing in my garage, about 4 ft off the ground, with a slight backwards slant...

Way too cool!

Thanks for the link!

Couple questions:

-Are your pumps mounted "upside down" to the underside of the table top?
-Do you have any priming issues with them not being much lower than the kettle drains?
-Any priming or pumping issues having the plate chiller at the same height as the pumps?

bemerritt said:

Couple questions:

-Are your pumps mounted "upside down" to the underside of the table top?
-Do you have any priming issues with them not being much lower than the kettle drains?
-Any priming or pumping issues having the plate chiller at the same height as the pumps?

Click to expand...

-Are your pumps mounted "upside down" to the underside of the table top?

Yes

-Do you have any priming issues with them not being much lower than the kettle drains?

not really, but im probably going to install a T and a valve right after the pump, make priming easier.

-Any priming or pumping issues having the plate chiller at the same height as the pumps?

the chiller plate is AFTER the pump, so that does not make a difference as far as priming goes.

The only issue ive had as far as priming goes is once it goes to a boil i have to close the valve after pump about 60% or it looses prime.

I also loose prime when I run the pump while I dump the grain in when I start mashing. Next time im gonna try turning the pump off when I do that.

Im still waiting for my other 2 taps to arrive...


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