About Time To Document This (Strut/Penrose/BCS-460 System)

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hyperboarder

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Joined
Jan 31, 2012
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Location
Meridian
So I've been dreaming of my own Electric setup since stumbling upon Kal's site a couple years back. Not sure why, but I'm not a huge fan of brewing with gas, it works fine, I just don't like it that much. Anyway, the budget and timing has never been quite right, so it's been pushed to the wayside a few times.

Back in October my dad was diagnosed with cancer (don't worry, he's done with treatment and doing good) which led my wife and I to decide it was time to move closer to family. This transition was further expedited when we found out she was pregnant with our 2nd child. By no means bad news, just a bit earlier than originally planned :). So back in April we packed up everything in Colorado and moved into the new place in Meridian, ID.

When we were house hunting we were down to two places, one that she liked a bit more (newer, nicer, cheaper, plenty of room for the family but a smaller garage and no obvious place inside to brew) and one that I liked more (huge, plenty of room inside, etc.). I don't have to tell you which we chose, but with this decision made and a 3 week motorcycle adventure to Alaska indefinitely postponed with the impending arrival of a new little one, she felt that I deserved a little something for me. So she finally ok'd the the brewery and I started building a huge budget spreadsheet and ordering parts.
 
The stand was always the big question mark in my mind, obviously Kal's is meant to brew inside but I've never had the room so I needed to figure out something more portable. With the help of the weldless strut thread on here and a long forgotten pad of engineering paper I found in my office, I got to work figuring out what I wanted. After a few iterations I came up with a 6' long over-engineered behemoth that required all but 8" of 6 10' strut lengths and ~110 lbs of hardware. No pics of the designing, but here are some building pics:

Gobs of hardware from Strutchannelfittings.com (highly recommended):


First cut:


All chopped and cleaned up:


After the first night of building:


With the vertical supports in my packed garage:


Really taking shape:


Legs on (that's a 150 lb Great Dane in the back for reference, he's 3' tall at the shoulders):


And casters on:


That's a 17.5 gallon Penrose kettle up there, so like I said, the stand is a monster. I'm worried it's too tall but luckily with the strut, lowering is easy peasy. I can lose about 7" by simply pulling the legs, which I may do after I've actually brewed on it. The arm off the right will house the control panel eventually and I'm still working on if I want to have a shelf or something for the computer/monitor I'm planning on using to control everything. Right now I'm leaning towards keeping it a bit further away as it's not waterproof.

I had a rough idea of cost coming into this but I'm sure others are curious, so here's the breakdown of parts and costs on the stand:



I should also note I'm a cheapskate and will do what I can to save a few pennies. For the Lowes purchases I used a combination of discounted gift cards (cardpool, plastic jungle, etc.) and coupons sourced from various deal sites. The Strut Channel Fittings purchase used a coupon as well (code noted in the picture if you look carefully :) ) so the prices with the 10% off are what I paid.

Some notes on the hardware, you can almost never use all of the bracket holes due to the design of the strut, only two sides are usable as is (without drilling holes in the solid sides). That said I overestimated a bit on the hardware, but not enough that I would have been able to save much, if any, by buying the extra pieces additionally. Plus it's always nice to have extra lying around in case I want to bolt other stuff on.

More to come.
 
Since I started planning this years ago, I had planned on Penrose kettles. I got one when I went all grain and I love it, not the prettiest thing, but functional, big, and priced right. Late last year I noticed this on Brewhemoth's site:

PENROSE_002EX.png


Worried I was SOL on 3 Penroses I gave them a ring. Luckily they had a couple left so I ordered them up and I have the matching set. Since upgrading to a plate chiller a year or so back I'd been using a hop spider which worked, but was never ideal. After stumbling upon some of the new stainless solutions here, I picked up this guy:



I've used it on 2 batches thus far and I'm not sure the utilization is quite up to snuff, so I may upgrade to the 6" diameter one. Either way, great upgrade from the ghetto spider.

One of the "features" of the Penrose kettles is a little piece to piece variation on sizing. Not really an issue unless you want to make one into an MLT. Obviously I do :). Luckily Jaybird makes some good stuff and will do custom work for very reasonable prices. The false bottom I got from him:



Fits a lot better than it appears to, there is a very small gap that I may or may not try to alleviate with some split tubing, but the stand will also help filter out any grain that sneaks around the side. No dip tube, just a street elbow to make sure as much wort as possible gets out. Side note, the false bottom arrived in record time, awesome shipping :).

The other major kettle change is the HERMS coil in the HLT. I timed it well as Stainless was having a special on their 1/2" coils so I ordered up 50'. Not installed yet, but pretty:



I've got a pile of stainless fittings, sight glasses, heating elements, etc. to install still, I'll document those as they come.
 
This is so Sweeeeettt!!! I'm planning the same thing so I'm going to be paying close attention to this thread! Thanks for sharing!
 
The original plan was to do PID controlled a'la Kal, but upon discovering the Brewtroller and the BCS I started to reconsider. I have a couple perfectly good netbooks and a 22" LED TV with a dead tuner so the BCS-460 was in the lead. After finding the awesome DIY stuff over at eBrewSupply I decided BCS was the way to go, I admire the set of awesome built in process controls the Brewtroller has but the BCS seems better suited to my skill set.

I bought the 30A 2 Element Kit from Ryan (awesome guy to deal with BTW) with most of the available upgrades as well as some pieces for the elements and the temp sensors. The kit arrived last week, but not before this did:



She's cute but she's pretty much annihilated my momentum :). That said I've still made progress. Got some layout stuff done with the help of the pup:



Pilot holes drilled:



Managed to get the holes drilled in between 108 degree afternoons. Pro-tip, if you use a cordless drill with a step bit you will inevitably overheat it, so just start with a corded drill and be done with it:



And done!



Oh wait, I need some more stuff in here, don't I:



Next steps are to mount up the heat sink, handles, and the inlets on the bottom. We'll see when I find the time/energy to get that done...
 
Quick aside here to recognize/discuss the vendors I bought from. There are a total of 11 places I purchased from. Of those 11, I had issues or missing parts from 4 of them, just bad luck I suppose. 3 are vendors here and made it right with no fuss, I won't mention specifically who they are.

The one I will mention was Amazon Warehouse Deals, I ordered my big power cord from them and despite ordering a 4-wire, they sent a 3 :confused:. They were also quick to fix it, but being such a huge company I have no idea how that squeaked by.

It was interesting comparison shopping between the different vendors, there were surprisingly large swings in prices on some of the smaller stuff (valves, fittings, couplings, etc.) and again, being a cheap guy, I picked and chose to get the best deal. It may have been a bit less stressful getting most/all of it from one place, but why not spread the love around a bit :).

Anyway, kudos to the following:
Jason at Adventures in Homebrewing
Amazon
Bargain Fittings
Bobby at Brew Hardware
handtrucksandcasters on eBay
Ryan at eBrewSupply
Jay at NorCal Brewing Solutions
The nice ladies at my Lowes service desk
McMaster Carr
Zach at Stainless Brewing
Strut Channel Fittings
Crazy Chuck on Craigslist with the compound miter saw :)
 
Very nice start. I keep going back and forth on electric brewing and continue to stay with propane. I love automation and those electric panels are cool with all the flashing NASA looking lights. I'm about to get rid of a solid cedar hot tub on our deck. That means I have access to the power and I could easily re-route that to my garage, but I'm cool with propane. Now, on the subjet of the baby: when our second was born in 1996, I stopped brewing about a year later. It took too much time and it was just too dangerous with a 4-yr old and 1-yr old wanting to help. I started back in 2009.
 
Looking great from your post it makes me mad that I didn't call and talk to brewhemoth about a Penrose, I have always liked the way they look and the price is nice too. Oh well I will stick with my keggles.

Looking great BTW,
-G
 
Very nice start. I keep going back and forth on electric brewing and continue to stay with propane. I love automation and those electric panels are cool with all the flashing NASA looking lights. I'm about to get rid of a solid cedar hot tub on our deck. That means I have access to the power and I could easily re-route that to my garage, but I'm cool with propane. Now, on the subjet of the baby: when our second was born in 1996, I stopped brewing about a year later. It took too much time and it was just too dangerous with a 4-yr old and 1-yr old wanting to help. I started back in 2009.

Propane is fantastically easy but I hate refilling tanks/running out of gas in the middle of a boil. Happy to be free of that. I will say this is not a cheap project and the break even period is probably longer than I'll be alive, but I'm having a lot of fun planning and building this all. I'm hoping the electric aspect will allow me to keep brewing with the two little girls running around, based on the fireworks we lit off tonight I know my 2 year old still doesn't quite understand the danger of fire :).

Looking great from your post it makes me mad that I didn't call and talk to brewhemoth about a Penrose, I have always liked the way they look and the price is nice too. Oh well I will stick with my keggles.

Looking great BTW,
-G

I got lucky and just happened to catch them when they had a few. I won't say what I paid because I think it was a steal but I like those guys :). I'm not a huge fan of their new kettles though, they seem like they'd boil off a lot, I like the taller aspect ratio of the Penrose. I think they had 4 left after I got mine, so hey, might give them a ring and see what they have. Regardless, it's 2 pieces of stainless, so maybe they'll just throw one together for you :).

Side note, I'm a Mechanical Engineer by trade so I like tinkering and I have to say that the strut stand build has been the most entertaining part thus far. It's like a big kid erector set, the spring nuts will destroy your thumbs but it's worth it to see the final product and then completely rebuild it if you see fit.
 
Made some progress yesterday, got the heat sink and handles mounted up and the bottom of the panel laid out. Cutting out the hole for the heat sink wasn't a lot of fun, I tried a handful of methods and ended up with the jigsaw. It damn near shook my teeth out but it worked. I've got one more non-circular hole to cut for the temp probe jack plate, the rest are circular and shouldn't be bad.

For anyone planning on this, I'd highly suggest investing in a good center punch. I borrowed one from a job a while back and it didn't make it back before my employment there ended, whoops :). Makes for much less wander in the drill bit, I had to elongate one heat sink mounting hole but the rest have lined up well. I'd also suggest posting build pictures on Facebook, your friends will inevitably ask you "What the hell are you making?"

As the outside of the panel is nearing completion I'm trying to decide what I want to do for tags. eBrewsupply now sells them but they're a bit bland and identical to every other electric panel out there. Anyone have any other ideas? I've been poking around etsy a bit too but nothing has jumped out at me.
 
Look for places that do trophies. They can custom engrave on small plaques. I would grnerally look for either engraving places or places that indoor door signs. You might be able to get one sign done and gently chop it to smaller pieces but each label could have a graphic.
 
Very nice looking build! And welcome to Meridian, great city, but you already knew that lol. You should check out the local brew club, Snake River Brewers:


http://snakeriverbrewers.org/ Great group of people and the Prez has an electric system. Club meeting is this coming Thursday as well.

Also don't forget http://www.homebrewstuff.com/ is right in your backyard. Marcus and his crew are pretty helpful.
 
Look for places that do trophies. They can custom engrave on small plaques. I would grnerally look for either engraving places or places that indoor door signs. You might be able to get one sign done and gently chop it to smaller pieces but each label could have a graphic.

Good call, I'll check with the local guys.

Very nice looking build! And welcome to Meridian, great city, but you already knew that lol. You should check out the local brew club, Snake River Brewers:


http://snakeriverbrewers.org/ Great group of people and the Prez has an electric system. Club meeting is this coming Thursday as well.

Also don't forget http://www.homebrewstuff.com/ is right in your backyard. Marcus and his crew are pretty helpful.

I meant to make the last SRB meeting, but this new kid has thoroughly borked any kind of schedule I can keep. I might make this Thursday's, but don't hold your breath :). And yeah, home brew stuff is my go-to bottle shop right now, they're a bit further than Brewforia but their prices are better as is their selection. Great selection of brewing stuff to and their virtual bag is a solid deal for base malt.
 
A couple pics of the recent progress. Heat sink on the outside (mounted, not permanent though, still need to pull painters tape and silicone it on):



In case you're wondering, yes, the handles are a bit too close to the heat sink. I doubt I'll rework as I don't want any ugly plugged holes on top, but we'll see. Requires a bit of a rock climber hold to pick up, it'll help keep my fingers strong :). Here are the SSR's from the inside:



Jigsaw cuts aren't pretty but they'll be hidden most of the time. Again, just test fitting now, not stuck on their with the heat sink paste yet. Planning on drilling the bottom out tonight and then starting on the inside.
 
Great posts, an inspiration for those of us also dreaming about going electric and getting an allowance!

-subscribed.
 
Still haven't found the time to get the damn inlet holes drilled. :smack:

Maybe tonight. Maybe this weekend.
 
Super nice build and great documentary! Excited to see the final product! Congrats on the baby as well! Cute kid
 
I will say this is not a cheap project and the break even period is probably longer than I'll be alive.

Awesome build, and I can relate. I get the SWMBO head shake and eye roll when I begin one of my "little" projects. As an economics guy, you have to factor in the psychological benefits that come from pride, joy, and tasty brew. I believe you've already broken even, good sir! Sub'd.
 
Awesome build, and I can relate. I get the SWMBO head shake and eye roll when I begin one of my "little" projects. As an economics guy, you have to factor in the psychological benefits that come from pride, joy, and tasty brew. I believe you've already broken even, good sir! Sub'd.

I can agree with that. It's been a bit funny, she's trying hard to slow me down a bit to enjoy the process. While I am enjoying the building part, I'm ready to brew on this damn thing, so it's a hard balance to find :).
 
Nice build ... I too live in Meridian. I'm in the process of finishing an electric setup as well (Doing BIAB to start off with). Just finished a tower keezer, as I've decided to go straight to kegging instead of bottling based on recommendations from other home brewers in my neighborhood. Planning my first electric brewing session next weekend, if all goes as planned.
 
Nice build ... I too live in Meridian. I'm in the process of finishing an electric setup as well (Doing BIAB to start off with). Just finished a tower keezer, as I've decided to go straight to kegging instead of bottling based on recommendations from other home brewers in my neighborhood. Planning my first electric brewing session next weekend, if all goes as planned.

Where are you at? I switched to kegging a couple years back, I will never go back to bottling. Sooooo much easier :).
 
I'm in the Locsha Falls subdivision across from Rocky Mountain High School. I figure I can bottle from keg or use a growler if I ever need to take one on the go :)
 
One question I had. I was looking at your parts list and comparing to what strutchannelfittings.com has. What are you using the two strut spring nuts for? I wasn't visualizing how they were integrated into your build.

Gotta admit...you got me considering going this route!
 
I'm in the Locsha Falls subdivision across from Rocky Mountain High School. I figure I can bottle from keg or use a growler if I ever need to take one on the go :)

Ha! Small world, I'm in the same neighborhood, right down on Divide Creek :). I take it you're up north by the County Line guys? And yeah, you can bottle/fill growlers from the tap with the right setup, I've done it multiple times.

One question I had. I was looking at your parts list and comparing to what strutchannelfittings.com has. What are you using the two strut spring nuts for? I wasn't visualizing how they were integrated into your build.

Gotta admit...you got me considering going this route!

The part number is actually for 100 nuts, so the 2 represents 200. The spring nuts are half the attachment system for the pieces of strut, the other being the bolt and washer. There are a few nut/bolt/washer combos used on every bracket.

On that note, for those that have made strut stands, what do you do with the spring part sticking out, snip it? Or just tuck it somehow?
 
Ha! Small world, I'm in the same neighborhood, right down on Divide Creek :). I take it you're up north by the County Line guys? And yeah, you can bottle/fill growlers from the tap with the right setup, I've done it multiple times.

I live on Puzzle Creek, but I've sampled a few brews from the County Line guys during the neighborhood garage sale :)
 
The part number is actually for 100 nuts, so the 2 represents 200.

Haha. Doh! I totally missed that when I was looking at the website. I didn't realize the spring nuts were part of the fastener mechanism, but it makes sense now. I've never worked with these strut frames before, so I'm just a virgin...not too strutty yet...:D
 
I live on Puzzle Creek, but I've sampled a few brews from the County Line guys during the neighborhood garage sale :)

Gotcha, you're only a couple blocks up the road. Shoot me a PM if you want to stop by, drink beer, bs, etc. I've got 2 taps on the kegerator flowing right now and piles of ingredients ready to brew a few more, if only I could find the time :).

Haha. Doh! I totally missed that when I was looking at the website. I didn't realize the spring nuts were part of the fastener mechanism, but it makes sense now. I've never worked with these strut frames before, so I'm just a virgin...not too strutty yet...:D

Don't worry, I drew this thing out about 4 times and even then I had to improvise when I got everything. As I said the fact that you can really only use 2 sides of the strut for attaching things makes it a bit trickier. The Zymurgy article has a decent explanation of how the spring nuts work, the thread here has pictures but the OP used standard nuts, not spring nuts. The only difference is the lack of the spring, which is just used to hold the nut in position, so it makes it easier to visualize IMO.
 
Nice.

Where did you get that mesh hop filter? Did you make it? It seems to fit the height of your bk perfectly. I would love to have one of those myself...
 
Nice.

Where did you get that mesh hop filter? Did you make it? It seems to fit the height of your bk perfectly. I would love to have one of those myself...

A member on here makes them, chads454. He'll make them to your specs and the prices are very reasonable IMO. I got the 4" diameter version, though I'm a bit concerned with utilization right now. Might upgrade to the 6" diameter in the future.

Actually made progress today, finally got the bottom holes drilled. Crappy pic before I cut out the area for the cat 5 jacks:



The holes were pretty annoying. The 2-1/8" hole was slightly small and required some extra time with a drill to fit the power inlet. The 2" holes were not bad (despite being the ones that had a caveat in the tools list in the eBrewSupply instructions), I touched them up with a sandpaper bit and they were nice and smooth. The 1-1/2" holes were notably smaller than they should have been. I completely destroyed my sandpaper bit removing enough material to get the pump outlets to fit. I'd recommend a 1-5/8" hole saw here, it shouldn't interfere with the two screw holes and it will be way easier overall. Also, despite my best efforts, everything isn't lined up quite as nicely as I had hoped. Meh, just aesthetics.

I need to chop a bit off my DIN rail to mount up the contactors (went with the cheaper ones) and I should be set to mount everything inside. Then on to wiring. At some point I'll get serious about the kettles too, though I need to keep one intact as my interim brew kettle for the time being.
 
County Line guys? Might have to take a trip across town to check it out. And you build.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1364509187/county-line-brewing?ref=live

Haven't tried their beer but I hear good things. Hoping for the best, the pro brewers in the valley right now are quite hit or miss in my eyes.

A bit more done, mocked everything up with hardware to get a visual of how bad my misalignment was:



Not bad after all, a bit of overhang on the element outlets but nothing that should interfere with the door.

I believe that concludes the enclosure, I wasn't originally planning on painting it but it's gotten pretty beaten up so I may have to after all. I think I've got a couple cans of flat black I may have to put to use.
 
This is what taunts me every day:



Shelves full of parts that need to be installed or assembled so I can get this thing brewing.
 
No progress as of late :smack:

Needed to catch up on brewing so I knocked out two this weekend to fill up my fermentation chamber and eventually my two empty taps. Hoping to get back to this tomorrow, fingers crossed.
 
Progress!

Needed to get the control panel mounted to the stand, I spent about an hour wandering around Home Depot a couple weeks back trying to figure something out. This is what I came up with:



The box has 4 mounts, you could hard mount through the box if you wanted but it came with nice little "feet" and I wanted to make it easy to remove if needed (ideally I'll be able to put this stand on end for storage). Everything connecting to the box unplugs so no need to leave it on there when not in use. I came up with a sideways "H" of sorts. The two holes in the middle mount to the stand, the legs connect with 1/2" bolts, and the box mounting feet are connected with bolts and wing nuts.

Box mounted:



Backside:



Looks like it should work, semi rigid and easy peasy to remove. It definitely confirmed my thought that the stand is too tall though, the top of the control box is damn near eye level for me and I'm 6'2". I think I'll pull the legs and put the casters directly on the bottom rectangle.

With any luck I'll be able to trim the DIN rail I need to tomorrow (went with the cheap contactors, they're not DIN mount) and start mounting everything to the ground plane in the box. From there it's mostly wiring and paint left on the control panel. Need to get working on the kettles at some point too, dreading drilling the stainless... More to come.
 
And a bit more progress, got the DIN and ground plane stuff mounted tonight. My daughter insisted on helping:



And explaining the components to me:





Finished product:



If I can paint the enclosure this weekend I'll mount this back up inside and get to the actual wiring of everything. I exchanged a few emails with eBrewSupply, I believe I understand everything and with any luck won't screw it up :).
 
looking good hyper, and a great helper there.

Side note: See there is nano over on your side of town trying to get going...Haff Brewery? I believe. My side just has a full brewery with Slanted rock..and $2 Tuesday's.Not that 4 miles to your side is a far trip lol.
 
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