Squam Lakes Brewery with Pictures

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Boar Beer

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My son and I have been brewing for a couple years together and have upgraded our equipment a couple times. The brewing room is a 20 by 24 under ground room (originally designed as a meat cutting room) In this thread i will show the conversion in the room and a 1bb electric set up.

This is what we started out with for a room and equipment
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Then I took everything down and started again.
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I started with 2x2 studs and insulation
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Then I added a layer of FRP, which is an industrial product, used in kitchens and is easy to keep clean.
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The finished wall
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More pictures to come
 
Next we had to get our Electric set up ready. This photo shows the stuff to convert our New 55 gallon Blichmann brew kettle.
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Drill out the holes for the electric. Boy did that hurt to drill into that nice shiny new kettle!

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An inside look
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an outside look
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Then the electric panel100_1654.jpg

More to come
 
Next is to install a new....old junk SS table/sink
but first some repairs I have to get that flat spot bent up
and moved in to the brewery!!!
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Thats if of now more tomorrow.

"Thanks YooperBrew for the Help getting these pictures posted"
 
Wow- great pictures! Thanks for sharing them.

I'm REALLY interested in an electric HLT, so I'm going to be following you around asking dumb questions! :D
 
I would love to hear more about that boil kettle conversion. The $620 kettle cut must really hurt. I have been wondering if you could do a full 1bbl conversion to electric a la the Pol. Can't wait to see more.
 
Ok got a couple more pictures. That table/sink was a real ball buster.

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Much of the work after I got it in was plumbing my other sink drain and pex tube through both ends of the table. It took a bit of head scratching to get it done considering I had an 11 foot table and 12.5 feet of room. And by the way you can see my super high tech timer that i use to regulate the fridge temp.

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You can see the HLT 220 outlet on the right side of the Blichmann. And its grounded to the table. Will ground the Brew kettle to the table and to the Blichmann.
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I covered over the sink for now as i am not sure if I want water that close to the electrics. When I finish the end of the room I will sort that out.
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I plan on testing the brew kettle tonight to see what 10,000 watts of power can do.

The next project is the install the plate chiller and the pump. I will bring in the mash tun and the HLT also.
 
We are using a 20 gallon Blichmann..Our old Brew kettle for our current Mash Tun. It is big enough for most beers. For a big beer we are converting a white 44 gallon Rubbermaid barrel.


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I have two of these white buckets. We have a false bottom coming and will be building it up in the next few weeks for a big beer mash tun. The second one will be our HLT using 6000 watts of heating. Below is our 15 gallon brew kettle which I will be taking the guts out of and using in the HLT. Yes I got too much going on right now but what the H.
 

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Ran into a problem putting the temp probe in. Yep i stripped the threads. So i am going to try to replace the end. I bought a bigger end piece for the probe and will try o rings vs the rubber washer.

I am open for comments.

I will just heat up the tube and remove the old end piece and put the new one in. How about the inside wire, do you think it will melt? I cant seem to get it out. Hopefully it will come lose when i put the heat to it.100_1672.jpg
 
Boar Beer is my dad.

Tonight we tested out the kettle with 40 gallons of water. We didn't have any leaks, which was good. The groundwater temp filling up the kettle was 49 degrees. We turned it on for 10 minutes and got the temp up to about 65 degrees before turning it back off. That's plenty of power. We're just about ready to make a full barrel of beer.
 
Gentlemen this is an amazing set-up. Needless to say I'm ultra jealous

And Jumbo82... you have an awesome dad
 
Ok after a few burned fingers and some choice words to the idiot that picked up the probe after he had sodered the new end on I got it working. Put 40 gallons in the new kettle and tested the set up.

It worked great (by the way it is a Brewmation retrofit I am using) and I did not blow any fuses.

The picture shows all our brewing kettles

The one on the left is the 20 gallon brew kettle / mash tun
Next is the new 55-gallon brew kettle
Next is the soon to be new mash tun
Next is the HLT
And the last one is our old tiny 15-gallon electric brew kettle

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This is the set up with one pump and the chiller.
I am thinking about what to do for the sparge.
Build a stand and put the HLT tank up like in the past or to buy a second pump and pump the sparge water. Does any one use a March pump for that and how low can you get the flow to go?
Or go with a Brewmation Complete Sparge Pump Kit
http://www.brewmation.com/MashPumps.html

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Looks great! Can you give a bit more information on how your element wiring and/or pics? Your terminations into the kettle look very clean and I am at this stage in my rig build and would like to pull off something similar.

:mug:
 
The next project is to fit up the 44 gallon Mash Tun
I have ordered a false bottom from Jaybird. I am planning on using 3/4 pex tube under the false bottom to collect the wort you can see it in the photo. I am going to use a pex connector to the drain so everything will fit

I will make some holes in the tube to let in the wart.

My questions are
1 How big and how many holes?
2 Where along the tube? top, bottom, side, or everywhere
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Please do, we're in the beginning stages of our 1 bbl brewery and we're planning on going fully electric as well. Of particular interest is the mounting of the heating elements, what fittings/gaskets did you use to construct them? Will they stand the high temps, etc. Thanks!
 
Please do, we're in the beginning stages of our 1 bbl brewery and we're planning on going fully electric as well. Of particular interest is the mounting of the heating elements, what fittings/gaskets did you use to construct them? Will they stand the high temps, etc. Thanks!

X2

Thanks BoarBeer!
 
I've got two March pumps with ball valves on on the outflow to control flow. Matching the sparge to outflow is almost as easy as just matching the angle of the valve on each pump. Even without that, its pretty easy to dial it in by just keeping an eye on the level in the mash tun.

That peristalic is nice. A bit pricey for the job. Two march pumps and ball valves will come in over $150 cheaper, but they're not self priming, and the peristalics could be real useful moving fluid to and from fermentors. Are they rated for boil temperatures?

Quick question - just because electricity and liquid tend to make me nervous - with the metal countertop supporting the BK, have you done anything to ground the countertop?
 
Gordie
Thanks for the comments about the pumps.

and yes I have grounded both the control panel and the 220 plug I use for the 15 gallon HLT to the table. You might see a green wire coming down to the table. In addition both the 55 gallon and the 15 gallon kettle are grounded direct to the kettle. And both have GFI.
You can never be too careful and future plumbing will consider where water goes when i get a leak.
 
MikeRLynch and Cyberbackpacker
Below are the photos of the electrical element and the connection material. What you see is what I bought from Brumation I did not build these up my self.
And yes the date on my camera went wako again


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Can you post a link for Brumation? I googled it and came up empty handed. Thanks.
 
MikeRLynch

As for the ability to stand the heat. I have had my small kettle, the 15 gallon one, for over a year and never had a leakage problem or anything.
 
It looks like their (Brewmation) brewery setups use deep sinks for vessels. Interesting idea, sometimes restaurant equipment like that can be found cheap....
 
Can you give us a ballpark on what your elements cost from brewmation? They don't have prices on the site, and seeing as how I'm doing 1 bbl as well, I could just mirror your design (if that's ok ;) )
 
How best to drain from my 44 gallon mash tun?
I am still looking for some ideas on how to drill my pex tube
What size holes , how many and where to locate them.

Or is my approach not good.

I will connect the red tube to a pex tube fitting with a short piece of removable tubing.

I will put a false bottom over the pex tube

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How best to drain from my 44 gallon mash tun?
I am still looking for some ideas on how to drill my pex tube
What size holes , how many and where to locate them.

Or is my approach not good.

I will connect the red tube to a pex tube fitting with a short piece of removable tubing.

I will put a false bottom over the pex tube


Just asking. Why PEX?

Why not make a copper manifold? What are some advantages to using PEX anyway?
 
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