Advice on my brew sculpture.

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yeastbound

Active Member
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Jul 10, 2009
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Location
Waller, TX
Hey guys,

My father-in-law is a welder, and has agreed to build me a brew stand. All I have to pony up for is the materials. I was inspired by Terapin Chef's rig, and worked this design up in Google Sketchup:

brew_rig.jpg


Can I get an extra set (or two, or three) or eyes on this and:

1. Make sure my math is sound :drunk: and
2. Offer any advice on the design.

Chef's rig is made out of 8 gauge 2" square pipe. To keep the cost (and weight) down, I wanted to go with 11 gauge 1" square pipe. FIL says that structurally I'll be OK with the smaller pipe.

Any comments, ideas, suggestions? Thanks in advance!!
 
What type of kettles, keggles or coolers are you going to use. It bugs me when I see a three tier a foot taller than it needs to be. Yours seems pretty compact.
 
HLT: 1/2 bbl keggle. 15.5" x 23.5" Ball valve mounted at base for flow to the MLT.
MLT: 54 qt. Igloo Marine Ice Chest. 25.5"L x 15.5"W x 15.5"H
Kettle: Same as HLT.

One thing I'm not sure about is the height between the kettle and MLT tiers. The kettle actually is taller than the 20" height. Maybe it should be a bit taller?
 
The 1" should be strong enough, but my personal opinion is it will look "skinny" in proportion to the kegs and such... I'd go with a min. of 1 1/2" sq., the 2" would look nice.

8 gauge is way over kill. That is a wall thickness of .172, even .125 wall is a bit overkill. 13 or 14 gauge would be plenty strong in 1 1/2" and less expensive than .125 wall...

1 1/2" sq for the uprights and 1 1/2"x2" sq for the horizontal pieces would look really sharp too... :mug:
(that is kinda what the tubing in your first drawing looks like)
 
Make sure you've considered transfering from the kettle to fermenter. If you're planning on using gravity, you might have a problem.
 
Looks just like mine. Ended up getting one pump to push through CFC and to fermenter. I put some thin plate for wind screen and to prevent heat transfer around the burners. Looks good to me.
 
I bought a March 809 last night. I was planning on using it on my immersion chiller. No reason I can't use it to go from kettle to fermenter, right?

If not, I can raise the bottom tier up a few inches.
 
If you have a pump, why not go double tier? You can pump from your HLT to your MLT then gravity feed to your kettle, or go single tier. It may save you some cash material wise also.

Either also keep you from messing with 10 gallons of near boiling water at or above eye level.
 
Yeah, if you went single tier you might save enough money to buy a pump. Clean-up would be so much easier with a single tier.
 
If you have a pump, i would go two tier, from what i have read, it is best to go from the MLT to the Boil kettle without pumping... is this right guys?
 
I agree that if you have a pump, make it a two tier. HLT and MLT on the upper tier, BK on the lower and make it so the BK tier is as low as possible. Pump the sparge, gravity drain the MLT.
 
Thanks for the input, guys. Let me sketch something up and I'll post it here tonight.

Bobby, you mentioned making the BK tier "as low as possible". I take it that I should also account for gravity when transferring to the primary, correct? So I should look at 24" or so?
 
+1 on the single teir... It is absolutely extra money for the second pump but you're going to be shelling out a little bit of money for the whole thing and if you can spare the extra cash for another pump, i think single teirs make a few things a bit easier in the long run and the single teirs are a bit esier to upgrade with other little gadgets if you ever wanted to in the future.
 
Thanks for the input, guys. Let me sketch something up and I'll post it here tonight.

Bobby, you mentioned making the BK tier "as low as possible". I take it that I should also account for gravity when transferring to the primary, correct? So I should look at 24" or so?

You can have the BK sitting pretty low, you can pump the wort from the BK to the fermenter. My BK on its burner sits about 14" at its base, maybe 16" at the spigot.
 
Right. Once you have a pump, the BK only has to clear the burner and provide a little drop down to the inlet of the pump (in other words, the March pump won't SUCK the wort up).

I have a single tier and the only thing I'd caution is that I prefer gravity draining the MLT during the sparge.
 
shawnyboy,

I agree with Bobby M on gravity draining the MLT. I think Bobby M is talking about something like this:

Brew Magic 1.jpg


I got lazy and bought the Brew Magic stand pictured above instead of fabricating one. The rest of the brewery I built myself.
 
Hey guys,

Here's the lastest design. Sketckup and I are becoming good friends...

trigger3.jpg


My only real concern about this design is the distance between the HLT and the MLT. Should I be worried about the MLT melting being so close to the propane burner? Has anyone run into this issue?

Thanks again for everyone's help.
 
I'd go with a keggle MLT wrapped in Reflectix foil and an insulated lid. Last brew I did held the temps within 1 degree for 1 hour.
 
I'd go with a keggle MLT wrapped in Reflectix foil and an insulated lid. Last brew I did held the temps within 1 degree for 1 hour.

Would I need another burner keeping heat on it during mash, or is the foil/lid sufficient enough?
 
Would I need another burner keeping heat on it during mash, or is the foil/lid sufficient enough?

Not if you insulate it. You do not want a direct heated MLT for fear of scortching the wort. Lots of brewers turn to HERMS or RIMS systems to not only keep the MLT at a constant temperature but to re-circulate the mash so that the false bottom becomes more effective in clarifing the mash.
 
I book marked this sight, a handy referrance!

Sheet Metal Thickness Chart

Do not use this chart as a reference. It is not for tubing.

Shawn, you are right. 11ga tubing is .120". I don't think you need it that thick though. B3 uses (or did at the time I made my frame) 16ga or .065". Mine is 14ga or .083".

11ga - .120
12ga - .109
13ga - .095
14ga - .083
15ga - .072
16ga - .065
 
Granted there are going to be many opinions on this and they are all equally valid for the respective brewers. I have a keg MLT and I'm not loving it. I do wrap it with reflectix and it still loses a lot of heat fall through spring (I know you're in Texas). You still can't fire the nearby HLT with reflectix on an MLT. It will melt. Worst of all, it's freaking heavy.

My feedback on the latest design is that it's still too high. Having the upper tier, specifically the MLT location at higher than 4 feet is still going to require a step stool to dough in. I'm guessing that you can drop the entire system down by at least a foot. After that, you can lower the second tier by about 3" because the MLT's bottom doesn't have to be higher than the BK's upper skirt. It just has to be higher than the max wort level in the BK (about 4" below the top of the keg skirt).

One other thought about your cooler melting concerns. You can use a thin sheet metal heat shield between the vessels. Another thought is that since you'd pump the liquor to the MLT anyway, it too can be down as low as the BK.
 
The heat shield won't be an issue. I can find a piece of scrap in that shop with my eyes closed. Also, the cooler in my drawing isn't to scale. The Coleman Xtreme I'm looking at is 25.5" long. That's about 9 or 10 inches shorter than my platform.

Final Design (Hopefully!)

trigger31.jpg
 
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