Homemade Stir Plate

so walker mentioned this in passing in one of his posts. so i decided to look it up a bit. found a lot more information on the morebeer.com forums, so if your lookin thats the place to go. here is my rendition. i had an old tupperware tub layin around that had some green paint dried up in the bottom. thats my case for it. the fan, wires, and power adaptorcame out of my "box o' $hi!". and the control knob came with an oversized heat sink i bought for my CPU a while ago. without further ado here she is. now i gots to get me an erlynmeyer flask.



heres a better shot of the cone. thats the control knob on the left.



and here is a shot of the inurds. (thats okie slang for inside parts)



you cant see the top of the fan, but there are a few magnets glued to the top. the guys on more beer suggest using rare earth magnets. i didnt have any, but i did have some fridge magnets. you know the round ones. then i hacked another pc fan in half, and used it for the spacer between the spinning fan and the lid. works great. now time to get that flask.

Cool! I have enough junk around to make about five of these. Did you spring for an actual stirring rod?

Whoa thats sweet! :rockin: cool idea... I may have to check that out.

david_42 said:

Cool! I have enough junk around to make about five of these. Did you spring for an actual stirring rod?

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yeah i bought it at a lab supply shop today for 3.90 i think im gonna go back and get a slightly longer one, and im gonna price flasks too.

Dude that is pretty freakin' awesome!!!!!!!

This is great man, you beat me to this.

I ended up using the fan I decicated to this for my fermentation fride. Now I have to get a new fan to complete my stirrer.

Last time at the LHBS I ran into a guy who brought one of these homemade stirrers in. He even had some of the magnets left over. I asked him if I can buy 2 of them, but he gave me them for free. This was the only thing I didn't know where to get for cheap.

Kai

pc fans are cheap. i only have a 90 mm fan in it, but im thinking about getting a 120 mm fan just so i have more adjustabiliy. the 90 mm pretty much dies if i try to drop the rpms to much. this whole project cost me 3.90 and that was for the stir rod. i had everything else.

i upgraded the stir plate a little bit. first i bought a project box from radio shack, then i added a toggle button. the switch turns it on, the knob adjusts the rpm, and the toggle button will actually adjust from what i call "low gear" and "high gear". there is also a pretty LED. the led is wired in with the push button, so when it is in "high gear" the LED lights up brighter. here she is:



oh and i finally got that flask i was after.

Pretty wicked dude...do a write-up with the parts list for us!

subwyking said:

oh and i finally got that flask i was after.

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This is a nice looking stir plate you have there.

But ditch the airlock and replace it with loosely capped tin-foil. The idea of a stired starter is that it will be constantly aerated. This can't happen when you don't let air into the flask

Kai

I love the diapers in the background. Classic.

Very nicely done!

Though I'm expecting the "food grade guy" to come along and ask about that black stopper....

Dude said:

Pretty wicked dude...do a write-up with the parts list for us!

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ill see what i can do. im actually in the process of writing a .pdf with a ton of info on yeast. sort of a FAQ here on the boards if you will. like saving the slurry, creating slants, starters, so on and so forth. maybe i could throw the stir plate in there as sort of an advanced technique or something. im falling behind though, with brewing and writing... a full-time job, parent, full-time student, a flyer, and a month long language refresher will do that to you.

Kaiser said:

This is a nice looking stir plate you have there.

But ditch the airlock and replace it with loosely capped tin-foil. The idea of a stired starter is that it will be constantly aerated. This can't happen when you don't let air into the flask

Kai

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thats freaking brilliant...... i knew there was a reason for the foil, but never seemed to put my finger on it.

Lounge Lizard said:

Very nicely done!

Though I'm expecting the "food grade guy" to come along and ask about that black stopper....

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the stopper came from a lab supply place, i have no idea if its food grade... so food grade guy if your out there, its probly not. and i dont care.

Little extra info -
Good rare earth magnets are in old dead hard drives, and the price is right!!!

Don't get your fingers pinched!!

subwyking said:

the stopper came from a lab supply place, i have no idea if its food grade... so food grade guy if your out there, its probly not. and i dont care.

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Oooooh.....Food grade guy is going to have a field day with you. This beer is probably ruined because of that. I know I wouldn't drink it.

who's food grade guy

Dude said:

Oooooh..... I know I wouldn't drink it.

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NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mindflux said:

who's food grade guy

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You wouldn't know him.

Cool. I like it!

One thing not to do with stir bars and stir plates in the lab is to add iron filings (what we like to call zero valent iron) to a flask and then add a stir bar. Haha... saw one of the guys I work with do that. All the iron stuck to the stir bar. Experiment ruined. But on the other hand, the mixture just stirs itself without the stir bar. Hehe...

Dude said:

You wouldn't know him.

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Oh ok :rockin:

Dude said:

Pretty wicked dude...do a write-up with the parts list for us!

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I second that! I'd like to see what it takes to make one of these.

subwyking said:

thats freaking brilliant...... i knew there was a reason for the foil, but never seemed to put my finger on it.

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Some uses of a stir plate, that I saw, even involved constant aeration with sanitized air to get even more yeast growth.

Kai

Kaiser said:

Some uses of a stir plate, that I saw, even involved constant aeration with sanitized air to get even more yeast growth.

Kai

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There is a point where too much air stops yeast growth, too.

I am the one that started the homemade stirplate topic on morebeers board. I have made many of these since then including my disco plate....

Monster Mash said:

I am the one that started the homemade stirplate topic on morebeers board. I have made many of these since then including my disco plate....

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Hey man welcome to the board!!!

I love that disco plate. I am SO doing one of those someday. I saw it on the GB a while back and it was love at first sight.