One barrel system
 

What happens when a group of engineers take brewing too far...?

We have been brewing on a two tier three keg system for quite a while and found that 15 gallons isn't keeping up with everyone's kegerator, so a batch size upgrade started becoming necessary. We elected to use these pots:

Mash tun: 25g
Hot liquor: 20g
Boil Kettle: 45g

The hot liquor tank is also the herms heat exchanger. We have access to a tig welder so we are adding all of the fittings plus thermocouple inserts to each of the vessels. The mash tun is also mounted on a rotating shaft for dumping used grains at the end of the mash.

The boil kettle has a hop filter and whirlpool attachment for use when the pump is circulating through the plate wort chiller.

We mounted the boil kettle and hlt on hinged platforms that rest on electronic load cells for water dispensing and volume measurement. The intent is to get the system running on labview software after we get the hardware up and working manually. We have a bunch of solenoid valves to buy...

More to come....

Wow, looks great so far. Keep the pics coming.

Why are all of my friends computer engineers? I need some mechanical engineering friends.

looks nice man. i like that mash tun design on the pivot hanging off the edge of the rig. i might have to borrow that....

one question though... if you are looking for 1 barrel, how are you expecting to brew 31 finished gallons in a 25 gallon pot? are you doing double-mash batches?

Looks great. Where did you get your kettles from?

Wow that's really cool. That little burner has enough umph to get the BK boiling?

45gal Boil Kettle
 

Let me know how your 45gal BK works out. I purchased the same one (I think - Concord) but found it very difficult to weld. My next approach is to silver solder the fittings onto the BK.

Kettle Question-
 

You can find the 45gal BK on Ebay under Concord pots.

They are thin gauge and difficult to weld.

We did buy all the pots off eBay. The welding wasn't too bad, we have a guy who specializes in thin walled stainless welding so he finished them out. We had one weld that we had to patch up with some material but it wasn't too bad. The ticket was selecting the proper feed rod material. It seemed to like the feed rods with a little more iron in them. We also tried using a hand fed wire that worked pretty well.

Thought on volume was that we would mash at almost full. So around 20 gallons of first runnings. Then we should have up to 18 gallons in sparge water. We're hoping that'll hit 30 something after boil... We are going to mash in with water warmed up in the bk.

I am a little worried about time to boil with the burner... We'll test it and find out.

I added a pic with the hlt. Just got it today

Forgot to mention we found an awesome/ cheap place for powder coating. They'll throw your stuff in with whatever big bulk order they're doing at the time. Its in Jackson mi if anyone is interested let me know and I will forward you the contact info.