Completed Oast

Check it out...took too long to build, with the heat half my hops dried out on the bine! They are about a month early. Will have some cascades. Each rack will hold about 2 oz (dried weight) of hops. About 1/3 of a five gallon bucket. Last year I didn't get my hops dried enough as I had no good method of weighing them. With this system I can weigh each rack before and after and am targeting 10-15% moisture. I put a space heater at the bottom for quicker drying. Had the heater on for a few hours and the fan ran overnight. I checked them this am and took over 10 oz. of water over night.

looks awesome. I just made a rectangle with firring strips, stapled some chicken wire down, and lay out news paper lol

looks great. I however am a bigger fan of wind down not up. what you really need is the box(well its circular) fan going up in my yard sale next weekend. 6000cfm. but really it looks great hope it works as good as it looks.

Thanks, I could use more cfm than the cheapo Walmart fan.

Nice looking rig. Almost too fancy for my cheap arse.... FEF

zrule said:

Thanks, I could use more cfm than the cheapo Walmart fan.

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That fan will have a hard time moving anything through if those trays are full.

If you can get an old furnace fan, place it in the bottom and wall up the sides around it. Set it so it is sucking the air down through those hops and you will be dry in no time.

I've built a similar but smaller wall mount unit to dry my hops. I worked around alot of upright blast freezers in the blood bank industry; and something I noticed that I plan to do. To help with airflow and drying don't make the shelves the full depth of the cabinet. You leave about 6-8 inches off the full depth of the cabinet and then you stagger the drying shelves so that every other one goes all the way back and the others are pulled up to the front. This gives the air moving through the cabinet an open path that it can zig zag it's way up or down and won't be so restricted by shelves full of hops.

brewswellwithothers said:

...This gives the air moving through the cabinet an open path that it can zig zag it's way up or down and won't be so restricted by shelves full of hops.

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That works, but only if the layer of cones isn't too deep.

Think of it this way, if you have layers of cones that are only 1 or two cones deep, the air will probably prefer to take the zig-zag path instead of passing through the cones. This is fine since the air can contact the cones on the top and bottom.

But now let's say you have a bed that is 6 inches deep. Well the cones on the top and bottom will dry, but the stuff in the middle won't see any airflow. No airflow means it can't give up its moisture.

Oh I would agree with you there, but I think that most homegrown hops being dried in this manner aren't going to be that deep.

What is the benefit of air flow downward as opposed to upwards?

Billy356 said:

What is the benefit of air flow downward as opposed to upwards?

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Upwards is traditional, it will result in less pressure drop through the hops which means a fan that is just barely big enough will have a better chance of getting the job done. The downside occurs when the hops are almost dry. If you have to much airflow, they will start shaking and may shake the lupulin out. Worse case, you wake up one morning to see your hops blown all over the barn.

Downwards will cause slight compaction, which increases pressure drop. This means you darn well better have enough fan. But it also means you won't have to worry about shaking or blow out.

For the record, nearly all of my designs blow down...but as a disclaimer, I'm the only commercial grower that does it that way.