Single Tier Brew Rig Build Under Way!

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cdematteis

Member
Joined
Jan 21, 2012
Messages
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Location
Manahawkin
A few months ago a friend and I decided to start all grain brewing so I joined this site. A few months have passed and while we have still not brewed our first batch, we are getting close. Initial plans were to buy one large kettle and a few buckets, but after reading through the threads I quickly decided that we needed to go big or go home. After much reading, we decided to model our build off of nicksteck's design with a few mods. We lowered the overall height a bit and also dropped the rear longitudinal support 2 inches to help draw the exhaust from the burners to the rear of the stand. We also built it large enough to accommodate 55 gallon kettles in the future. My Uncle is a welder and helped us weld the stand together. Here are the initial drawings of the stand...

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My high school shop teacher would ding you on the free hand, I say go with it. Looks good
 
Here are some pics of how it turned out. Thanks to my Uncle John for getting us this far. Stand should be dropped off tomorrow and we will sand it w/ 150 grit sand paper and then paint with RustOleum high heat paint.

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Yea, I don't have the cad skills of many people on this site, but a ruler, pencil and some graph paper never let me down.

Same here.. I am still work on labels after three years that look cool.

What size pot are you going?

That is a good size stand.
 
Bought 25 gallon Polarware kettles. The stand is large enough to accommodate the diameter of larger 55 gallon kettles so we won't to have to build a new one down the road. The kettles will rest entirely on the brackets and will not touch the frame of the stand. We will use a simple heat shield under the front of the kettles to protect the thermometers. We are using 10" BG14 burners and plan to plumb the system for NG.
 
Boys like your beer.. nice set up with the NG.. black pipe hooked up to the house is the only way to run a gas rig, good luck with the brewing and cheers.
 
A real man admits his mistakes, and hopefully others will learn form them. I did not take into account the .125" thickness of the steel when measuring for the brackets. This took away another .250" from the diameter of the burner area and the BG-14's were just a hair (.25" to be exact) too big to fit. Nothing a 6 ton bottle jack couldn't take care of though.

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A real man admits his mistakes, and hopefully others will learn form them. I did not take into account the .125" thickness of the steel when measuring for the brackets. This took away another .250" from the diameter of the burner area and the BG-14's were just a hair (.25" to be exact) too big to fit. Nothing a 6 ton bottle jack couldn't take care of though.

Nice!
 
I finally got three coats of Rustoleum High Heat paint on the rig and am ready to start on the gas system. Just to get started and to be able to start brewing, I am going the propane route. I am going to run a length of 1" black pipe along the bottom of the stand with a T under each burner then run a flexible gas line to a needle valve that will allow me to control the flame at the burner.
 
Finally got the gas lines installed. Automation is in our future plans but for now we just want to get brewing. We used 1/2" black pipe and some fittings for the manifold and went with (3) 3' lengths of stainless steel braided hose from the manifold to the burners. We added 3 CVO250's from www.tejassmokers.com for adjustable flame control at the burner. We sealed all NPT threads with RectorSeal 5. We also mounted the pump. Planning to leak test the manifold this weekend.

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Put the finishing touches on the rig and conducted a water and leak test last weekend. Found a propane leak at one of the burner valves and almost lost an eyebrow, but shut everything down safely and resealed the threads. It took me a minute to figure out how to get the March pump to work properly, had no water coming out the outflow at first until I disconnected it from the boil kettle and lowered the hose below the pump.

The last piece of the puzzle (for now) is the heat shield. I have a custom heat shield being cut this week by a buddy that owns a metal shop and will post more pics once its installed. I built the stand big enough to accommodate the diameter of 55 gallon kettles in the future, but the 25 gallon kettles I have now do not reach the outer edges of the stand so the flames and heat lick up the sides of the kettles when centered over the burners. They actually melted one of the polysulfone QD's. I am going to return the polysulfone QD's and spring for stainless ones. All in all it was a very valuable day of testing.

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That stand looks awesome, nice work! What would you estimate it cost for materials and man hours to make that?

I'd really like to build something similar, but I have NO welding skills whatsoever. I know my limitations (skill & time), so I'm resorting to designing and building a wood stand...until I can find more time to learn a new skill. :rockin:
 
Put the finishing touches on the rig and conducted a water and leak test last weekend. Found a propane leak at one of the burner valves and almost lost an eyebrow, but shut everything down safely and resealed the threads. It took me a minute to figure out how to get the March pump to work properly, had no water coming out the outflow at first until I disconnected it from the boil kettle and lowered the hose below the pump.

The last piece of the puzzle (for now) is the heat shield. I have a custom heat shield being cut this week by a buddy that owns a metal shop and will post more pics once its installed. I built the stand big enough to accommodate the diameter of 55 gallon kettles in the future, but the 25 gallon kettles I have now do not reach the outer edges of the stand so the flames and heat lick up the sides of the kettles when centered over the burners. They actually melted one of the polysulfone QD's. I am going to return the polysulfone QD's and spring for stainless ones. All in all it was a very valuable day of testing.

March suggests mounting with the output up, that may help solve your priming problems, although they can be a challenge at times.
 
Awesome. I want to see more so I can plan accordingly for my build. Can't wait to see the heat shield and +1 on cost please????
 
Nice build. Melted one of my polysulphone QDs. The camlocks are great! Looks like you got the Rustoleum "ultra" paint by the gloss finish. The flat regular rustoleum high temp paint rubs off like crazy. The ultra is the only way to go. It's solid, too. My stand gets hot when the burners are going full tilt, but the paint has never flaked, even on the burner windscreens.
 
Wow. You weren't kidding when you said go big or go home. Pretty impressive for someone just getting into all grain.
 
Simply amazing my man! That is a work of art. Not only with this hobby you can brew some different and tasty beers you can also build some awesome contraptions! Great job and great design. Cheers!
 
March suggests mounting with the output up, that may help solve your priming problems, although they can be a challenge at times.

Also, I found that shortening my hoses as much as possible helped eliminate potential air pockets on the pump input side. But flipping the pump head so the output is up is ideal.
 
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