Automated Rig Piping review

So this is my second build after I had one 10 gal herms system with one PID. I have been dreaming up this rig for a long time. It is going to be 99% sanitary 25 gal system, hard plumbed with auto valves and all triclovers. i have a ridiculous amount of tri-clovers and sanitary tubing already to be set up. I plan on running;

brewtroller- The full tilt with auto fill on BK and HLT
2 Pumps
5-2 way 12v valves
2-3 Way 12v Valves
2 burners- one on HLT and BK

Please let me know if you find any problems.

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What are the gray boxes w/ the blue levers? Are those manual valves?

yeah I have three manual valves

Are you gravity feeding into the BK? otherwise I don't understand how you are going to get fluid from the MLT to the BK. Whats going to stop the fluid from going to the HLT coil?

Wait... are the blue boxes supposed to be the 2 and 3 way 12v valves?

Reason for manual valve before P2? Without knowing the reason, I would look at removing it and relocating the valve after P1 to the HERMs line to control flow on both the strike/sparge and recirc.

Tv, those are 2 and 3 way 12v Valves. And no I am not gravity feeding the system, the valve under the MLT opens hits the pump and runs right. unless I am missunderstanding that the 3way valves are not in L config.

Here are some comments/questions.

- The diagram has both pumps labeled as P1.
- Same Question as mattd2, what is the purpuse of the manual valve before P2 Inlet.
- Are you planning on recirculating the HLT water?
- Is the CW - cold water? as in your water supply? If so, why is there an additional one on the BK?
- Are you using a cooler?

where are you sourcing the automatic sanitary valves (and for 25 gallon I'm assuming 3/4" or 1") from and how much are they each? I looked around but couldn't find reasonable price ones for my psycho keg washer and want to automate the hell out of it too.

Thank you guys for your input so far, I have been working on redesigning some things before I repost.

Marcb, Check out http://www.tf-valvefittings.com/goods-13.html

They are cheaper if you buy in bulk, the shipping is what gets you. But they are at least $5 bucks cheaper than the brewtroller site.

They are not 100% sanitary, what I am going to do is, cut most of the threads off the fitting using my chop saw. Then drilling both sides of the 1/2 inch fittings to 7/8, then tig welding a 1 inch triclover to each end.

1/2" fittings are closer to 7/8" with the threads, so its pretty easy to just drill them out on the press with a 7/8 drill bit. And the inside diameter of the 1" triclover is 7/8"

the reason I am going to keep them 1/2 is because my chugger pumps are 1/2". Even though I plan on modifying those too with triclovers. The inlets are a little small (maybe 1/4") and can use some opening up.

Marc- I just realized you are in santa clara, I am over the hill in Discovery Bay.. when I get my system going we should brew

kickflip_mj said:

Marc- I just realized you are in santa clara, I am over the hill in Discovery Bay.. when I get my system going we should brew

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Heck yes, you are always welcome over for beers or a brew day at my casa as well. I used a semi automated morebeer herms rig for 20 gallon batches. Check out my hop pellet gunk thread for pics of the last one!

nice system! I am using the 25 gal kettles from northern just because they have no holes in them like the more beer ones.

kickflip_mj said:

nice system! I am using the 25 gal kettles from northern just because they have no holes in them like the more beer ones.

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I found a supplier on eBay that has the same kettles up to 50 gallons with no holes, that may be my next system size unless I go really crazy : )

Are you talking about the 200qt one thats going for $490 something? I saw that and didnt know what the hell i would do with it.lol

How about this? I modified the plans a bit

Few more questions.

1.) Do you have any details on your brew process?
2.) Do you use a chiller? If so, where would it be in the process above?
3.) Do you use water from the HLT for your strike or do you heat your strike water in your BK?
4.) What is the "CW" on the BK?
5.) What is the fitting above the "CW" for on the BK?

Peter_h said:

Few more questions.

1.) Do you have any details on your brew process?
2.) Do you use a chiller? If so, where would it be in the process above?
3.) Do you use water from the HLT for your strike or do you heat your strike water in your BK?
4.) What is the "CW" on the BK?
5.) What is the fitting above the "CW" for on the BK?

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I'm going to take a stab at clearing some of those up.
2, 4 & 5 - It looks like he has a IC mounted in the BK, that is what the CW in and fitting above it is for.

Mat thank you;
1)I will have to do a step by step picture
2)the chiller is in the BK for whirlpooling, and the CW stands for cold water
3)So I fill the hlt with strike water, heat it, transfer it to the MLT and then refill the hlt
4)Cold water
5)The fitting is the out for the chiller, the valve will probably be at the top

kickflip_mj said:

Mat thank you;
1)I will have to do a step by step picture
2)the chiller is in the BK for whirlpooling, and the CW stands for cold water
3)So I fill the hlt with strike water, heat it, transfer it to the MLT and then refill the hlt
4)Cold water
5)The fitting is the out for the chiller, the valve will probably be at the top

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For #3 I think Peter's point might of been that you might look at heating strike water in the BK and Sparge water in the HLT. That way you can still transfer the strike water to the MLT, but the sparge water will be up to temp for the HERMS coil to do its thing.
Also a question for the water pipe on the left, what is this used for? As I can work out it can either flush the HERMS coil, flush P1 or flush P2 (and then either bottom fill the MLT or BK), if this is the case could you do away with the line and 3 way valve after P1 (replace with 2 way) and flush the system with clean water from the HLT? If you leave this in you might want to move the HLT water in valve to after the tee.

I like the Idea of heating the strike water in the BK and transfering it to the MLT.

Matt, The left pipe parallel to P1 is to recirculate the HLT water. The "water in" was to fill the HLT and supply the water to the MLT.

kickflip_mj said:

I like the Idea of heating the strike water in the BK and transfering it to the MLT.

Matt, The left pipe parallel to P1 is to recirculate the HLT water. The "water in" was to fill the HLT and supply the water to the MLT.

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Haha, missed that you could do that with it. Makes sense

The real question is How can I fill the BK now without adding a valve.

Also, If I did a CIP with a 60psi pump and spray ball, would pump 2 break?

Water in HLT, pump to BK through P2 (not running) and bottom fill.
As long as the design pressure of the pump is above 60 PSI you should be good, but explain your CIP a bit better.

Would pump two allow water through it when it is not on?

My CIP is going to be a 60 psi pump for the pressure to run the spray ball in the BK and MLT for easy cleaning. im going to hook it up at the bottom outlets and run a hose back to the top of the tanks. and circulate until clean.

ok i have made changes and now have the piping drawn out.

You can probably save some money and get rid of the extra water in valve that you added on the BK.

To fill your BK for Strike water w/o the extra water in valve, do a combination of step 1 and step 4. That will get the water into your BK. Do that first and then once the BK is filled, start filling the HLT.

Great job, that's a really nice looking setup.

I understand what you are saying Peter, I just don't want that water sitting in the pipes once everything is boiled then turning the whirlpool on and contaminating the boiled wort with unboiled water. (paranoid much?lol)

Thank you peter, it has been a lot of work, and its already turning costly.

Something you might want to consider in your design - moving a valve (not three-way) to the outlet side of your pump, so you can feather the flow rate. If you want to keep from collapsing your grain bed during MT recirculation (especially with 1/2" all around and big grain loads), you want to be able to restrict the outlet pump flow. Restrict on the inlet side is a no-no with magnetic pumps, so I've heard. You want to run the impeller wet to keep from burning out the sleeve bearing.

PLOVE said:

Something you might want to consider in your design - moving a valve (not three-way) to the outlet side of your pump, so you can feather the flow rate. If you want to keep from collapsing your grain bed during MT recirculation (especially with 1/2" all around and big grain loads), you want to be able to restrict the outlet pump flow. Restrict on the inlet side is a no-no with magnetic pumps, so I've heard. You want to run the impeller wet to keep from burning out the sleeve bearing.

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There are manual valves after the pumps on all 3 flow paths, they are just after the auto 3-ways

One concern I am having is the manual valve that slows down the flow to the MLT might need to be adjusted between mashing and sparging. any ideas?

kickflip_mj said:

One concern I am having is the manual valve that slows down the flow to the MLT might need to be adjusted between mashing and sparging. any ideas?

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I'm guessing you are fly sparging. You could adjust the P2 valve to match whats coming in? If you think about it P1's valve should be set up at a good point to not result in a stuck sparge. So leaving that alone and adjusting P2's so that the water level in the MLT is stable.

Ok I figured that I could control the sparge using the volume sensing on the Brewtroller. the liquid is measured as it enters the BK

kickflip_mj said:

Ok I figured that I could control the sparge using the volume sensing on the Brewtroller. the liquid is measured as it enters the BK

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Are you using a liquid/pressure sensor? I found a reasonably priced flow meter after checking out a brewmation system that uses pulse 5v dc output. I figured that flow volume was a more accurate way to measure and as a plus I'm going to make it tri clamp and portable for measuring flow rate into mash tun, hlt and boil kettle.

Can I see what you found?

Also can you explain how you are taking the pulse output and converting it to a flowrate? I have seen a few examples on the Arduino pages but all of them seem to be poling (is that the right term) the digital pin every xxx ms and checking for a count. Seems like you could miss some data that way.
Edit: Ok I think I was reading that wrong - they seem to be polling the pin for 1 ms and counting the number of pulses - that makes much more sense

kickflip_mj said:

Can I see what you found?

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Here you go. In the brewmation setup it feeds into the timer which also acts as a counter.

mattd2 said:

Also can you explain how you are taking the pulse output and converting it to a flowrate? I have seen a few examples on the Arduino pages but all of them seem to be poling (is that the right term) the digital pin every xxx ms and checking for a count. Seems like you could miss some data that way.

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Heh. Not using it yet, could feed it into a timer unit as a flow counter as the brewmation guys do. I wanted to feed it into my BCS but it won't take pulsed input. I may just build a raspberry Pi or sanguino board and write some code to handle the input as I would like to measure flow to open and close valves at the start of the brew process.