The Squid! My E-Brewery

Hey all. I want to thank everyone for all the knowledge I've garnered from this site and from http://theelectricbrewery.com. Without these great community resources, I never could have accomplished this.

I finally did a wet test run on my E-Brewery last night. It was a success. I only have a couple minor things left to finish to be able to call it complete. The 3 position switch to individually select one 5500W element at a time was defective. It will only switch one way. That's why the cover is not yet screwed down. I will post pics of it all nice, tidy, and sexy once I get my stand from Marcus over at Brewer's Hardware. Should be shipping any day now...

I call it the squid because i opted to go with a cheaper/smaller enclosure than what Kal calls for. To do this, I had to bring the plugs out of the box via dongles. This method cost about half of the flange mounts that Kal used. In the grand scope of things, it really didn't save me a much. Had I realized just how much I was going to spend anyway, I probably would have just cloned Kal's build. Alas, without further ado, here is my E-Brewery thus far.

Click diagram to see full size

no see pickys..

Hmm, what's the point of having access to upload to my gallery if I can't post them. I'll fix it and point to my website I guess. Side note, works fine posting hotlinks to the images at TEB. What gives?

Nicely done! I was trying to figure out the term "dongle". I think I get it.

Yeah sorry, dongle is more of a computer term. It's the best way I could think to describe the short length of cable exiting the control box and ending in a receptacle. Kinda makes it look like squid tentacles.

Put some fake ones on the other side and call it the predator!!! :rockin:

Nice work!

Haha, predator. Nice. Well I got around to doing almost a full test. I decided to make a years worth of starter wort to put in jars. Had some hiccups, but that's just how it is when you first use your system. I could definitely use the brew stand and RIMS tube that Marcus is building for me. I'm hoping it should come any day now as I ordered on Dec 9th.

We had a stuck sparge at one point, probably because we couldn't get up to 170 mashout temp and had too much water on top of the grain bed compacting it trying to get there. Oh well, the RIMS will fix that problem when I get it.

All in all I would say it was a success though. The control panel worked perfect. The Cooler mashtun held temp perfect. Just gotta get the process for my rig down and get it on the stand.

Very fine work and nice, ultra clear wiring diagram.

Thanks, though most of the credit has to go to Kal over at http://www.theelectricbrewery.com I just mashed together and modified the diagrams he already had.

Where did you find the enclosure at?

Home Depot. http://www.homedepot.com/Electrical-Electrical-Boxes-Conduit-Fittings/h_d1/N-5yc1vZbm4mZ5yctp/R-100404149/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053#specs It has a rubber gasket on the lid, so it should be water tight if you make your holes water tight. The picture on the HD website is for the smaller version.

Lowe's does not carry this box, nor the wire I used. I built this box entirely from http://www.pioneerbreaker.com, Ace Hardware, Home Depot, and ebay. The only thing I got from ebay were the receptacles and plugs. This was a cost savings move as the same rec/plugs were $20+ locally each. I am done going to Lowe's for anything. I made the first 2 of 5 trips there and they never had what I needed. HD always had what I needed. I only went to Ace for the internal wire simply because I was at Ace for something else and picked the wire up while I was there.