trying to finish my e-build before i go broke

im slowly working on building my electric brewery. Ive started to gather components, but i dont have a spare few more hundred dollars to finish it the way i want it. id like to get to the point of being able to make beer for as cheap as possible, then upgrade little by little. I'm thinking for now i can do without the pump, and the HLT copper coil. which will save me probably over $200 bucks right now. If need be i can transfer the hlt water to the MLT with a pot little by little.

I still plan to buy the PID and RTD from auber. i dont want to cheap out there.
here are some pics of where im at now. Let me know what you think i can do without to make a batch of beer. then upgrade later... thanks



i accidentaly bought small 240 volt lights for my elements. i hope i can get a wire in there




i already have the spa panel too

You have to heat water for strike and sparge so you need a kettle for that.
You need to boil the wort - you can use the same kettle as you did for your water.

Heat water to strike temp
Gravity feed strike water to MLT (Cooler tun)
Heat water for sparge
Gravity drain wort into a bucket
Gravity drain sparge water into MLT
Dump first runnings into kettle (now a BK). Start heating.
Gravity drain second runnings into a bucket and add to first runnings.

Did this for 4 years before I had a pump. I used propane then. So you'll have to have 1 eKettle up and running. This way you can delay the 2nd PID. Do you have heating elements yet? Contactors? Wire?

I cant see the pics because I am at work but I am kind of in a similar situation. I am using one pid with a heavy duty DPDT switch so that I can switch between the HLT and BK. If you plan on one vessel you don’t need this. Im not buying a pump until I can find one on sale (Chugger has been promising a deal for March Madness for a while now, nothing in stock yet). So I plan to just drain to a bucket and transfer as needed until then.

No reason to have to spent thousands of dollars to get started eBrewing. All the bells and whistles just make it easier. Just make sure you are safe with your connections, everything is grounded, and hooked up to a GFCI (you already have that part) and you can make beer with electricity.

stlbeer said:

You have to heat water for strike and sparge so you need a kettle for that.
You need to boil the wort - you can use the same kettle as you did for your water.

Heat water to strike temp
Gravity feed strike water to MLT (Cooler tun)
Heat water for sparge
Gravity drain wort into a bucket
Gravity drain sparge water into MLT
Dump first runnings into kettle (now a BK). Start heating.
Gravity drain second runnings into a bucket and add to first runnings.

Did this for 4 years before I had a pump. I used propane then. So you'll have to have 1 eKettle up and running. This way you can delay the 2nd PID. Do you have heating elements yet? Contactors? Wire?

Click to expand...

as you can see in the pics, i have a 2 tier system. the bk and hlt already have heating elements installed. I can't fit a 3 tier system in my basement, so that is out. so essentially i have the hlt on the bottom left, the mash tun above that, and the bk to the right of the hlt. so i can still use gravity to drain my wort out of the mash tun.