I want some opinions... Ultimate home brewery Design

Hi guys-

I haven't been as active as I have been in the past due to finishing my degree, bass tournaments, and getting engaged.

For my final design project for one of my engineering classes, I'm going to design a home brewing system using Solidworks. The sky is the limit since I can build just about anything now. Full automation, air pistons to move keggles, solenoids- you name it.

SOOOO, what I wanted from you guys is an idea of what you'd consider to be the most important features, improvements you'd like to see in a single tier system, etc.

I'd appreciate any help you guys would want to throw my way!

Tony

Not sure this is practical but what about a single tier that converts to a 3 tier with hydraulics or air cylinders. That way you can fill the HLT or MLT at single tier height but you will be able to do gravity transfers like a 3 tier system. Oh, and of course and air actuated tippy-dump for the MLT.

I'll throw one in, ever seen a starbucks clover coffee machine? Try lautering with a large piston and screen, watch this video:

keep'em coming!

I like the auto-dump idea for the mash tun. Maybe add a stirring mechanism as well.

You could probably do something really crazy with wort chilling. Maybe a CFC that uses a chilled glycol solution rather than water.


EDIT: It goes without saying to put bells and whistles throughout the system.

While I don't brew beer but mead instead. I had an idea for you. An autowasher/sanitizer/dryer unit that you can put your carboys, and other equipment through.

Also a home made pump filter system that has an autowash/sanitize setting for the insides, no clean up needed, no break down and no put back together. No down time. I know that a pump with a filter option would be good, to filter or not would save me time as well as the sainitizer for carboys and equipment and an auto bottler/auto sanitizer.

I'd go for something along the lines of a scale and grinder on the left, dumping into the MLT, an electric HLT with parastaltic pump to recirculate the water through the MLT, another parastaltic pump to get it into a kettle, then a gigantic immersion chiller lowers down out of the ceiling (while making the truck backing up beeping noise, of course!) and the water for that is recirculated through a tank in the lagerator on the right side. Maybe a hatch on the top of the lagerator that slides open for you to pump straight from the kettle into the fermenter. Of course there would have to be taps on the far right, maybe with a sink somewhere in there too.

Maybe skip the truck backing up noise, but you could conceivably have the whole rig go from grain to glass without having to lift anything heavier than a pint glass full of beer.

Make it all stainless and chick full of bling, then put your cheap and easy stirplate on there, too. Just so you don't forget your roots, ya know?

Make it a closed system (no need for external water source for cooling).

Build it on a trailer, maybe a little transformer-ish so that things fold up nice and compact for towing and fold out when ready to brew (though not sure tow-ability is ever an issue).

Or, make it something like a murphy bed that stows away nice and compact against a wall, but pulls down/out with everything in the right place.

Build in a bunch of grain hoppers and hop dispensers for different grain/hop types - add a computer interface that can take any recipe and automatically weigh out/grind the grains and perform the hop additions at the right time.

Make it self cleaning/sterilizing (not sure how - big hood and a steam bath for everything?)

It this just a design? Or do you need to build and test it? Is it an engineering senior project, or a design class? What type of engineer?

This is my current design:



This could easily be a great ME senior project including PID installation and tuning, stand design, FEA, building and testing, fluid dynamics, etc.

Tons of material there if you wanted to take the time. Thermodynamic modeling... I wish I could have found funding for this for my senior design. Unfortunately as a poor college student, it was everything I could do to just stay brewing in college.

Is this just a design project without any physical components?, and to what degree of automation are you going to shoot for.

You know, I just had a thought. Why not a pump to pump the wort into another container from where you make it and make that pump be a cooling system sort of like the hot water on demand system. This way you can pump the wort and cool it at the same time. Just pump it through some chilled copper wire, maybe jacketed in some sort of freon movement chamber. This way you pump it to your fermenting pot and cool it at the same time. Ok, so this is a bit frankenstine idea but cool.

Dude, I could take the next week off from work replying to your request and still not have enough time to get all my ideas on paper.

Maybe I should just do your project for you.

You mind covering for me at work? (EDIT: I just noticed you're in Acton, I work in Billerica, it would be an easy commute!)


First thing's first...What's the goal of your system? Are you trying to optimize a single tier/3-vessel system? Are you willing to totally throw the conventional "homebrewing rig" design out the window and go from the ground up?

a cooler to keep the homebrew handy during a session...

Here are a couple ideas for automated control,
A method to liquefy the mash with water, and a water jet pump to move the mixture to drain, followed with caustic for clean in place.
A method to liquefy the hops and trub in the boil kettle with water, and a water jet pump to move the mixture to drain, followed with caustic for clean in place.
A malt measurement with rotary valve metering for automated batch grain measurement.
A clean in place system for conical fermenters with caustic wash, acid and water rinse.

This is an engineering design class. I have a full machine shop at my disposal, so some of this will be made.

Where in Billerica do you work? I work in Boxboro, MA.

I just came across this thread and noticed it hadn't been updated in a couple months. Any progress with the design? It seemed like it sparked some interest. I know I'm interested to see what you've come up with.

I worked on it for a long time, however I'm still tweaking it. I used a few components from the design for my final project, however the way I am with engineering design, I can't leave well enough alone...

P-Lay:

I'd like to pick your brain a little bit about something.
Would you be so kind as to send me an email at
[email protected]
And give me an email address so we can chat off list.

So what happened here? Did you come up with a final design?

I came up with, and built, a hybrid stainless heat exchanger that also acts as my temperature control setup when recalculating my wort. I wanted to get rid of the coil inside the HLT. I run the hot water from the HLT in the jacket to maintain the mash temp and run tap water to cool after boil. Then I capture the hot water while cooling and use it for cleaning or for a 2nd batch. I didn’t want to go with automated controls, kind of takes the fun out of it.

Check my Gallery.

keithster said:

I came up with, and built, a hybrid stainless heat exchanger that also acts as my temperature control setup when recalculating my wort. I wanted to get rid of the coil inside the HLT. I run the hot water from the HLT in the jacket to maintain the mash temp and run tap water to cool after boil. Then I capture the hot water while cooling and use it for cleaning or for a 2nd batch. I didn’t want to go with automated controls, kind of takes the fun out of it.

Check my Gallery.

Click to expand...

Take the fun out of brewing?!?! Automated makes it easy and to me good, easy to make beer is way more fun than good, hard to make beer. What Gallery?

To each his own. I read a post where a guy ran his system with his iphone. He was grocery shopping and could make adjustments to his sytem at the same time. Crazy cool, just not for me.

My gallery is gone but you can check out my setup on this thread:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/hybrid-heat-exchanger-custom-sculpture-217124/

keithster said:

To each his own. I read a post where a guy ran his system with his iphone. He was grocery shopping and could make adjustments to his sytem at the same time. Crazy cool, just not for me.

My gallery is gone but you can check out my setup on this thread:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/hybrid-heat-exchanger-custom-sculpture-217124/

Click to expand...

big +1 on that rig. Love it.
Some great ideas in there that I am going to steal if you don't mind (when I have the time and money to do mine...it's probably never coming because I've been talking for 5 years now).

keithster said:

...I read a post where a guy ran his system with his iphone. He was grocery shopping and could make adjustments to his sytem at the same time...

Click to expand...

Technology is awesome.