The MaxOut Brew Station

You can see the inline probe here at the center bottom. This is the output of the heat exchanger. I do not notice any significant reduction of flow using March 809 pumps and Chugger SS heads.

Thats a nice looking keggle you got! thanks for the info.

Thanks, no problem.

My good sweet gravy. I am entirely jealous of your setup. The restaurant equipment, the multiple coolers, the serving area, the vessels themselves, this is sickeningly sweet. I wish I had even 1/10th of your know-how and energy.

Job extremely well done. Mad sick dope-tastic rizzle dizzle dazzle puddin' pop, in fact.

Chriso said:

Job extremely well done. Mad sick dope-tastic rizzle dizzle dazzle puddin' pop, in fact.

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Thank you...but you lost me at dope-tastic

Somebody found a listing on craigslist in PA for your MLT ( similar)
Looks like $350 If somebody is looking for one...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f16/craigslist-find-not-mine-large-direct-fire-kettle-353415/

Brewskii said:

Somebody found a listing on craigslist in PA for your MLT ( similar)
Looks like $350 If somebody is looking for one...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f16/craigslist-find-not-mine-large-direct-fire-kettle-353415/

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Good price. That is the same model as mine.

MaxOut- love your setup and I hope you ignore all the expletives and derogatory remarks I use should we ever meet in person. Apparently that sort of thing is frowned on in this family forum which only allows people over 21 years of age (Mormons?). I only hope that your immense wealth will help to contribute something to the kickstarter we will eventually launch to build a system exactly 0.01% as cool as yours. I'm sure you already know exactly how lucky you are and exactly how hard you worked to be able to afford all this awesome ****. Congrats, in every way.

Edit: apparently this forum completely asterisk-censors even the most flippant uses of your favorite four letter words. My bad. Let's say carp. Awesome carp. Yeah. That works.

Thanks! daksin.

Holy hell MaxOut......its been a while since I've checked out you progress. Your brewery and commitment to this craft is truly amazing. I can only hope and aspire to have my builds turn out a fraction as nice as the masterpieces that you have created. I'm in the Caribbean right now on some crappy wifi connection checking in on HBT and all I can say is......wow my man. You never cease to impress and amaze me!

Cheers ,,I appreciate the kind words.

Wow man, truly amazing. Someday I wish to have a garage that big and a rig like that. If you don't mind me asking what do you do for work?

I gotta tell ya, your kinda halfassing it. Joke, joke, it's the nicest I have seen. You have some skills. Side note, all the tankless hot water heaters I have put in needed some crazy relief valve..

rs4life said:

Wow man, truly amazing. Someday I wish to have a garage that big and a rig like that. If you don't mind me asking what do you do for work?

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Thanks, I have been self employed for 15 years. I owned a high end automation and security company for a while and was a mortgage broker for a few good years. When the market collapsed I was investing heavily in real estate and was forced to close my brokerage as the majority of the banks I worked with went under. I sold most of my real estate and got into property management for the banks. Currently I am getting back into investing and considering business ideas related to brewing. Basically a jack of all trades but a master of none. :fro:

mikescooling said:

I gotta tell ya, your kinda halfassing it. Joke, joke, it's the nicest I have seen. You have some skills. Side note, all the tankless hot water heaters I have put in needed some crazy relief valve..

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Honestly the tankless hot water heater has been the best money I have spent on the brewery by far. With a mixing valve and a temp probe you could eliminate the HLT all together. I mainly use my HLT for tempering and measurement. I'm surprised more do not use them as they cut hours off my brew day and save energy to boot. They certainly will pay for themselves over time and coming down in price every day. Mine is a commercial direct vent model that heats to 180 degrees and I picked it up brand new off Craigslist for $300.00. Originally I had it mounted to a cart and eventually mounted it permanently to the wall when I piped my shop with propane. Mine has a standard relief valve on the hot side that will simply spill on the floor if over pressure is reached. I think code is to plumb the relief to the outside of the building but I only turn mine on during use and am not concerned.

Has BYO ever contacted you for an article on your set-up?

This beats most of the rigs I see there by far.

Brewskii said:

Has BYO ever contacted you for an article on your set-up?

This beats most of the rigs I see there by far.

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No, but that would be cool Thanks

MaxOut said:

Thanks, I have been self employed for 15 years. I owned a high end automation and security company for a while and was a mortgage broker for a few good years. When the market collapsed I was investing heavily in real estate and was forced to close my brokerage as the majority of the banks I worked with went under. I sold most of my real estate and got into property management for the banks. Currently I am getting back into investing and considering business ideas related to brewing. Basically a jack of all trades but a master of none. :fro:

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I actually want to get into the real estate market in the future (i am in the medical field now and an trying to go to grad school in the next 4 years). If you have any time PM me with your strategy you used for building up your portfolio.

rs4life said:

I actually want to get into the real estate market in the future (i am in the medical field now and an trying to go to grad school in the next 4 years). If you have any time PM me with your strategy you used for building up your portfolio.

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Will do.

Finally no more buckets on 1 BBL brews! It’s been a long time coming but I took the plunge and ordered two Glacier Tanks 31 gallon Uni-Tank conical fermenters. I will still use the buckets in the Brew station fermenter chamber for small batches and test brews. I looked long and hard at the Brewhemoth, Blichmann, Wine Country and Stout Tanks fermenters but decided on the Glacier Tanks. I was trying to compare features, quality and cost ultimately deciding the Glacier Tanks conical had the most bang for the buck. I’m not a big fan of purchasing Chinese made products and prefer to buy American when possible but it ultimately came down to a limited availability of American made conical in this size. I considered plastic initially but quickly decided I didn’t want to chance non sanitary connections on that amount of beer and didn’t want to tear down a bunch of threaded connections between brews. The other main factor that eliminated plastic conical as well as the stainless Blichmann, Stout and Wine Country tanks were they cannot hold pressure. I wanted the flexibility to do pressurized fermentation, transfers and even to carbonate in and store in the tank like a brite.
I placed my order with Mike at Glacier Tanks and he was very informative and helpful. The tanks I chose were in stock and shipped right out within a couple days of preparation and packaging. It was a pleasure to deal with them and the tanks came packaged well but still sustained some dents during shipping. Mike is helping me file a claim with Fed Express Ground to offset the damages. Here is a couple shots of the tanks as I received them.

Beautiful!
Gonna go nicely with the rest of your brewery.

As with most fermenter purchase’s you get the basic hardware and add additional hardware to get your desired configuration. I am not going to go into great detail on the hardware here but instead I will only mention specifics I added for my application. I am going to start a thread “Choosing a Conical Fermenter” that will have a complete detail description of the Glacier Tanks fermenter and hardware.
Here is a shot of the CIP spray ball that installs in the lid 1 1/5” tri-clamp port for cleaning (the lid with the larger 1 ½” tri-clamp opening was an additional $30.00 option) -

Here is a shot of the stainless 15 PSI relief valve with 1 ½” tri-clamp. I got to admit I was a little discouraged by the price but this thing is built like a tank and weighs a ton. I’m sure it would survive an atomic blast. I will use this when carbonating and pressurized fermentation.

1” rotating racking arm for 1 ½” tri-clamp opening -

A few shots of the misc hardware -

8" Thermo-well with 1 1/2" tri-clamp fitting and 1/2" FPT -

Layne said:

Beautiful!
Gonna go nicely with the rest of your brewery.

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Thank You...

liquid filled pressure gauge -

12" lid with 1 1/2" tri-clamp opening and giant 12" tri-clamp with T handle. this thing has to weight 10 lbs not including the clamp. Heavy duty to say the least.

As it turned out the fermenter fit nicely in my Fermenting chamber and the thermo-well accepted the probe from my BCS nicely. Here are a few shots of the Glacier Tanks conical in the fermentation chamber during primary fermentation. If I choose to do a pressurized fermentation all I need to do is turn off the valve to the blow off tube, replace the tube with pressure relief valve and turn back on. I brewed 1 BBL of Hop On Blonde (house lager) yesterday and filled the fermenter for the maiden run.

Here is a shot of the second tank I will use for carbing and storage. I have a 4" carbonation stone on order that goes in the spot where the thermo probe is. Relief valve and pressure gauge on top. I will force carb and then pressure transfer to kegs carbed and ready to go.

A few random shots-

Dude!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You make us all look like hacks. So when exactly are you going pro?

Hoppopotomus said:

Dude!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You make us all look like hacks. So when exactly are you going pro?

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Thanks, no plans on going pro just having fun home brewing MaxOut style. a couple of my friends are getting involved and it's becoming a group hobbie.

MaxOut said:

Thanks, no plans on going pro just having fun home brewing MaxOut style. a couple of my friends are getting involved and it's becoming a group hobbie.

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Keep up the great work! I'm both impressed and inspired by your build. I installed a 100 amp/20 breaker subpanel over the weekend, so one more thing to check off my list. Now onto drywall, cementboard, and tile for the brewery, and then onto kettle conversions, controls, etc. Dropping $7k on a high efficiency boiler to heat my basement floors next week, so I'm not sure when I'm gonna pull the trigger on the control panel. Oh well....as long as I'm making progress, I'm happy.

Gosh, I have so far to go with my build. But this is an inspiration. So many possibilities. I am limited a bit because I have to be mobile. Once I retire from the service and move home I will be ready to create a masterpiece.

Annapolis HB is my brewshop too BTW. Cheers to a work of art!

Hoppopotomus said:

Keep up the great work! I'm both impressed and inspired by your build. I installed a 100 amp/20 breaker subpanel over the weekend, so one more thing to check off my list. Now onto drywall, cementboard, and tile for the brewery, and then onto kettle conversions, controls, etc. Dropping $7k on a high efficiency boiler to heat my basement floors next week, so I'm not sure when I'm gonna pull the trigger on the control panel. Oh well....as long as I'm making progress, I'm happy.

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I've been watching your progress and admiring your work. You will love the heated floors. Good luck enjoy!

trekbiker1500 said:

Gosh, I have so far to go with my build. But this is an inspiration. So many possibilities. I am limited a bit because I have to be mobile. Once I retire from the service and move home I will be ready to create a masterpiece.

Annapolis HB is my brewshop too BTW. Cheers to a work of art!

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Thank you, if your in SoMd give me a shout.

Max, will do. I would love to see your rig in person. It is unreal!