The Brewhemoth - mega picture thread

Just got my Brewhemoth today! I'm not going to caption all the pictures, but a few observations:

- The steel is nice and heavy.
- The finish on the stainless is a *lot* nicer than I expected. It's very nice to look at.
- The welds look nice, but have a bit of surface rust on the inside. A little Bar Keeper's Friend should fix that right up.
- The legs end up tilting in very slightly, making it a bit tippy. I'll be bolting it to a stand, so not a big deal for me.
- The nuts on the feet are welded on only one side. A little chintzy for such a nice product.

Let me know if there are any specific pictures you'd like. I tried to get shots of all the important bits. All of the hardware is from Darren over at Brewer's Hardware. Can't recommend him enough.





















-Joe

-Joe

:rockin: /drool!

Maybe place a couple of flat washers behind the legs on the lower bolts. That would angle the legs out a little bit and resolve the tippy-ness.

I can't tell with the weld for the bottom dump, but the other welds are not rusting. This is normal discoloration from the temperatures of welding. It is nothing to worry about.

Thanks cfrazier, good to know. I wasn't going to worry about it anyway

Going to try to do some volume tests today to see where the liquid covers the chiller/thermowell.

-Joe

Nice ! What is that hopz robot thing. I remember something about that.

Are those valves and fittings included? Their website is a little vague.

jojo: that's my Benderator photobombing the Brehemoth

kgalle: no, none of that stuff was included. It all came from Brewer's Hardware. If you check out Brewhemoth's Tri-Clover Brewhemoth page it says:

1" Tri-clover fitting for #5-1/2 rubber stopper or attachments (not included)
1-1/2" Tri-clover bottom fitting for fast yeast removal (valve not included)
1" racking Tri-clover fitting makes moving beer to keg or bottling bucket easy (valve not included)

-Joe

Hmm, the one pic of the chiller reminds me mine is missing the hop bag loop.

It is very nice and certainly a departure from the Ale Pale.

They should have welded a square of 1/4" plate steel on the bottom of the legs and tapped a hole for the feet. Way too much weight for a side-tacked nut IMHO.

I hope you like the conical. I've got a half dozen batches through mine (not brewhemouth) and I just can't get past not seeing the beer. I'm thinking about bailing.

Bobby,

What you need is someone to weld you a 6" tri clover and put a piece of glass on it.. Check this out.

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=17062&start=160

LOL, ok now we're departing from the practicality of using a conical.

Bobby_M said:

They should have welded a square of 1/4" plate steel on the bottom of the legs and tapped a hole for the feet. Way too much weight for a side-tacked nut IMHO.

Click to expand...

We've had no issues with this design to date, so I think our welders are doing just fine. BUT...this is always something that can be looked into for improvement!

That is, after all, kind of why we do this...to make our product the best it can be and keep our customers happy!

Thanks for the comments and great photos!

I'm at the point where I really want one. But I mostly do 5 gallon brews. Would this be overkill for so little beer?

Bit of a bummer - the 24" thermowell doesn't reach 5.5 gallons of liquid. The cooling coils, however, are almost completely submerged.

-Joe

It look's awesome, but that rusty inside is not cool at all. My stupid mega expensive Blichmann kettles had rust spots on the inside, not something you want to see on stainless.

_

Bobby_M said:

They should have welded a square of 1/4" plate steel on the bottom of the legs and tapped a hole for the feet. Way too much weight for a side-tacked nut IMHO.

I hope you like the conical. I've got a half dozen batches through mine (not brewhemouth) and I just can't get past not seeing the beer. I'm thinking about bailing.

Click to expand...

Bobby, I don't know if you have any available ports in your fermenter, but I added a couple clear poly caps to the 1.5" tri-clamp ports in the lid of mine. It's not a huge viewing area, but I can get a pretty good look inside with a small flashlight, and they were only $6. Most of the time I keep them covered with a loose-fitting lid, so there's no issue with light.

Here she is on her first run. I loaded it up with 20+ gallons of Oud Bruin and pitched a pile of Roselare in. There's ice water in the Igloo. A Love controller switches the aquarium pump.



-Joe

Don't bump that leg off the edge man... dog might get your beer.

Heh, everything is securely bolted to the base. It was fun to wheel it out to the garage for filling, then just scoot it back in the house to ferment.

-Joe

My likey!

Triclover + Chiller... Recently up from $589 to $774, I had been keeping an eye on price since I bought mine ~7 months ago... was hoping to add 2-3 more to my fleet eventually since they were a solid deal... but I'll be honest if the price is gonna start hopping around then I'll pass. You had a good thing going there... might wanna be careful.

wildwest450 said:

It look's awesome, but that rusty inside is not cool at all. My stupid mega expensive Blichmann kettles had rust spots on the inside, not something you want to see on stainless.

Click to expand...

I forgot to mention - it wasn't rust but discoloration from the welding process. A quick wipe with Barkeeper's Friend and a rinse, and the welds were clean and shiny.

-Joe

O'Haggerty said:

Triclover + Chiller... Recently up from $589 to $774, I had been keeping an eye on price since I bought mine ~7 months ago... was hoping to add 2-3 more to my fleet eventually since they were a solid deal... but I'll be honest if the price is gonna start hopping around then I'll pass. You had a good thing going there... might wanna be careful.

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure they had been using surplus tanks up until the price increase, which is one of the reasons they could offer them so reasonably in the first place. When they had to go out and buy new material to make them from scratch they got some serious sticker shock.

Not that I'm making excuses for them - it is certainly bad business to jump the price > 30% out of nowhere. But there it is.

Their new prices are still not unreasonable for a 22-gallon job, imo. They definitely need to come up in weld and build quality to compete at this price point, though.

-Joe

nostalgia said:

I'm pretty sure they had been using surplus tanks up until the price increase, which is one of the reasons they could offer them so reasonably in the first place. When they had to go out and buy new material to make them from scratch they got some serious sticker shock.

Not that I'm making excuses for them - it is certainly bad business to jump the price > 30% out of nowhere. But there it is.

Their new prices are still not unreasonable for a 22-gallon job, imo. They definitely need to come up in weld and build quality to compete at this price point, though.

-Joe

Click to expand...

Valid points and somewhat understandable, I'm just expressing concern wondering if they are trying to close the gap on blingman's crazy pricepoint... which would be a bad choice imo. I think a good chunk of Brewhemoth buyers like myself refuse to cross a reasonable price threshold that most other conicals exist in. Brewhemoth opened themselves up to those extra customers with their realistic pricepoint.

/endrant

Hey look, it works!



-Joe

nostalgia said:

Hey look, it works!

Click to expand...

How do you feel the chiller is performing?

Joe,

Your first run looks like a great test for the Brewhemoth. If you brew a light lager or ale next that you can bottle condition for months without getting any hints of contamination from the Roeselare, I'd say the welds are fine. Please keep us posted and let us know how you will go about cleaning and sanitizing.

Nate

ThickHead said:

How do you feel the chiller is performing?

Click to expand...

So far so good. It was reading 70F about 10 minutes ago, when I heard the pump kick on. I just went down to check and it's 68F. I think I have a spare stick-on thermometer so I can see what the outside of the beer is at too.

dstar26t said:

Your first run looks like a great test for the Brewhemoth. If you brew a light lager or ale next that you can bottle condition for months without getting any hints of contamination from the Roeselare, I'd say the welds are fine. Please keep us posted and let us know how you will go about cleaning and sanitizing.

Click to expand...

I'm going to try to do some sort of spray ball. To sanitize after having the bugs in there I was going to put the conical in-line with my pump and boil kettle. Boil a few gallons of water and circulate it through the whole system. Then I can drop my fittings and whatnot in and sterilize the whole shebang.

-Joe

Actually...I betcha I can solder in a 1/2" NPT or 1" tri-clover fitting next to the chiller tubes. Then with a spray ball, I could sanitize and CIP the chiller along with the rest of the conical.



HHHHHMMmmmmmm

-Joe

nostalgia said:

...so I can see what the outside of the beer is at too.

Click to expand...

Yeah, this is why I was asking really. The chiller diameter seems so narrow that it might have a difficult time maintaining even temperature throughout the vessel. This would be problematic in my mind in assuring tight fermentation temperature control.

nostalgia said:

Actually...I betcha I can solder in a 1/2" NPT or 1" tri-clover fitting next to the chiller tubes. Then with a spray ball, I could sanitize and CIP the chiller along with the rest of the conical.

HHHHHMMmmmmmm

-Joe

Click to expand...

I was going to do something similar. Spare 4" TC cap with a hole drilled and a bulkhead fitting installed to attach my keg washer pipe and spray ball. Then just run a hose from the pump in the bucket up to the cap.

ThickHead said:

Yeah, this is why I was asking really. The chiller diameter seems so narrow that it might have a difficult time maintaining even temperature throughout the vessel. This would be problematic in my mind in assuring tight fermentation temperature control.

Click to expand...

Really it's not much different from a jacket, which only cools from the outside. The jacket has more surface area, but the coils are in the middle of the mass of liquid. Hard to say which is more efficient, but I'm guessing at our scale it doesn't much matter.

Either way, it's better than a swamp cooler

-Joe

nostalgia said:

Really it's not much different from a jacket, which only cools from the outside. The jacket has more surface area, but the coils are in the middle of the mass of liquid. Hard to say which is more efficient, but I'm guessing at our scale it doesn't much matter.

Either way, it's better than a swamp cooler

-Joe

Click to expand...

True. I'm not knocking the chiller method. Just perhaps the chiller design in terms of it's potential efficiency and overall effectiveness. It looks to me like that entire operation would fit snugly inside of a refrigeration unit if need be. Although you wouldn't really get the wow-factor from the "bling" that way. But as you said, it may not really matter at this scale. Keep us posted!

dstar26t said:

I was going to do something similar. Spare 4" TC cap with a hole drilled and a bulkhead fitting installed to attach my keg washer pipe and spray ball. Then just run a hose from the pump in the bucket up to the cap.

Click to expand...

Here is what I did with mine.

cfrazier77 said:

Here is what I did with mine[/IMG]

Click to expand...

I just saw that in your other thread. Is that the rotating CIP ball from Brewer's Hardware?

You said you're using a trash pump - is it rated for heat?

Thanks,

-Joe

It is from Brewers Hardware. The pump is rated for higher than 125 which I used. I can't remember what it was rated for though.

Thanks for the info.

Checked on it again this morning and it's still holding at 68F with very active fermentation. Nice!

-Joe