2.5 Gallons or 10 liters brewery set

Hi all,

I'm planning a 10 liters setup for tests purposes and small batches of special beers.
I got a 10 Gals set up that need to be rebuilt but it will wait a bit.
The 10 gals setup was a flat setup with 2 kegs, 2 pumps, 1 Igloo cooler.
I was doing fly sparging and was heating with 55 000 BTU LPG burners.
I had a Herms module but I blew it up just before moving from europe.

What I got so far: 16 qt, 12 qt and 9 qt stainless pots, pump, stainless nipples, ball valves and small bits

I'm a bit stuck on mash tun setup and heating...
I think I'll go with batch sparging as it's easy and works fine.

I want to go with a herms module that I could use for this set and it's big brother.

The stepping process will be automated, and I really need stepping temp for some malts I use.

I was thinking of a simple return and a motorized paddle to go with batch sparging, but I need some advice.
Will it be enough to recirculate the wort or should it be mashed with a paddle ?
I was thinking about using a round insulated cooler as mash tun with a stainless braid. I saw a nice one at Canadian Tire. But I can do one myself with a pot and insulation.

About heating, I'm not decided. Will it be electric or gas ?
As I will already be using electricity with the herms, I'd be tempted to go all electric but I'm not used to it and for that capacity I hope I'll find small low density elements to boil the wort.

Last thing, I plan to use one pump only, so I'm thinking about a 2 tier.

Any comment or advice is welcomed.

Btw, have you good online shops in Canada for heater elements ?

With a small capacity, Electric would be easier to set up, I would think. I don't think motorizing would be worthwhile on such a small mash, good manual stirring and recirc should be perfect.
Personally I would not want to do all that work and have only 2.5 gallons, though, I'd at least want 5, but to each his own.

That's what I was thinking about electricity
I got some troubles sourcing the heater elements, but I won't let it down.

The size is mainly for test purposes.
I got a pal who owns a maltery and in some time, we might add a brewery.
But before that, we've got to test in small quantities even if grain is cheap, it's always a pitty to waste beer !

Have you seen the latest byo? There's an amazing electric fired counter top AG system for 2.5-3 gallon batches. It looks awesome. Go dig out a copy. I don't think there's any advice for building a system that we could give you that would surpasse the plans in that issue. It's the one by Jeff Karpinski.

Oh good. It turns out it is online...

http://***********/images/stories/CountertopBrutus/countertopbrutus.jpg

Here's the article;

http://***********/component/resource/article/1987-countertop-brewing-system

2.5 gallon batches are perfectly sized for the stovetop. You can use a pot as the mash tun, direct heat it on the range, and then just strain/sparge out of it to the kettle on another burner. 2.5 gallons is small enough that you can just pick up the pots and dump them back and forth, no need for pumps and stuff.

UhOh thanks !!
I'm going to read this !

I'll try to grab tips to make my own as I want it to be portable, well movable with my explorer, in one single part.

There is a multitude of information in the thread that started it all, and the BYO article.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/countertop-brutus-20-a-131411/

Oh my god...I just realized.....Jeff Karpinski = Jkarp.

LOL....

World's too small !