I have been greatly inspired by all the electric brewery builds on HBT. I am now in the planning process for my own version, based on what I have as well as what I want it to do. I'm putting up my plans here to solicit comments and suggestions before I commit to it.
The following system diagram shows roughly what I have in mind.
I have been gravity fly sparging in my previous setup so I plan on doing that here too. That will save one pump from the system. Not shown in the diagram is a grant I plan to put below the MLT, using a float switch to make the pump move the wort to the BK, a gallon or so at the time.
If I were to fire all the heater elements at once they would draw over 58A and pop the 30A circuit breaker. I plan to use the elements both at 240V and 120V to mitigate the current needs. I have selected a 5500W ULD for each the MLT and the BK, and a 3000W LD incoloy element for the RIMS. The following table shows what the current draw is for each type of element at 240V and 120V. The 30A margin is what is left of the current budget when firing each element. I used this as a guide to chose a 3000W RIMS element. 3000W will allow me to do step mashes in 12-13 minutes from 122F to 154F with 8 gallon or so of water in the MLT.
Each element can be set to Off, Low, or High power by a 3-position selector switch. This table shows what I anticipate needing at each step of the brewing process.
One of the master E-brewery builders here said that it would be a design error to allow the operator to turn switches such that it blows the circuit breaker, no matter how stupid it seems. I agree, and to that end I came up with the following switch logic to ensure that the current draw will never exceed 30A on either leg (L1 or L2).
The switch logic prioritizes first the RIMS, then the HLT, and last the BK. I have not yet designed the actual circuit to make this happen, but it should'nt be a big problem coming up with a circuit that matches the above requirements.
So, what do you all think? Does it makes sense? Have I overlooked something?
The following system diagram shows roughly what I have in mind.
I have been gravity fly sparging in my previous setup so I plan on doing that here too. That will save one pump from the system. Not shown in the diagram is a grant I plan to put below the MLT, using a float switch to make the pump move the wort to the BK, a gallon or so at the time.
If I were to fire all the heater elements at once they would draw over 58A and pop the 30A circuit breaker. I plan to use the elements both at 240V and 120V to mitigate the current needs. I have selected a 5500W ULD for each the MLT and the BK, and a 3000W LD incoloy element for the RIMS. The following table shows what the current draw is for each type of element at 240V and 120V. The 30A margin is what is left of the current budget when firing each element. I used this as a guide to chose a 3000W RIMS element. 3000W will allow me to do step mashes in 12-13 minutes from 122F to 154F with 8 gallon or so of water in the MLT.
Each element can be set to Off, Low, or High power by a 3-position selector switch. This table shows what I anticipate needing at each step of the brewing process.
One of the master E-brewery builders here said that it would be a design error to allow the operator to turn switches such that it blows the circuit breaker, no matter how stupid it seems. I agree, and to that end I came up with the following switch logic to ensure that the current draw will never exceed 30A on either leg (L1 or L2).
The switch logic prioritizes first the RIMS, then the HLT, and last the BK. I have not yet designed the actual circuit to make this happen, but it should'nt be a big problem coming up with a circuit that matches the above requirements.
So, what do you all think? Does it makes sense? Have I overlooked something?