Brewing equipment would you love to have, but isn't being made by anyone

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HahnWerke

HahnWerke

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First of all, a short introduction on my part!

I'm Rick, 28, and a home-brewer since about two years! Together with two friends we decided to start brewing our own beer on Valentine's day 2014 and have made fifteen different beers to date. A very enjoyable hobby!

From the very beginning we started with all-grain brewing, and also from the beginning, we thought of various ways to make the brewing process better. My background as an industrial designer and my job as a design engineer at a car restoration company gave me access to 3D modeling and a good selection of power tools, so we quickly had a few unique things in our brewing equipment inventory. Amongst them a 3D-printed thermometer holder and a laser cut stainless 'wrench' to fasten plastic fermentation container lids. The biggest project was a mash filter, that combined a stainless steel spring with a sturdy base to keep it on the bottom of the mashing tun.

Having quit the car restoration company and setting out on my own, I'm thinking of branching out into different markets. So why not beer brewing!

I understand if this is perhaps not the best forum to start this discussion (commercial activities and the like), but I'd like to see this more as a brainstorming session :)

I attached some pictures of the above mentioned equipment. I'd love to hear your ideas on products that aren't available, but should be!

IMG_2465.jpg


IMG_2498.jpg


IMG_2502.jpg
 
Hello barnaclebob,

It looks that way, but isn't really. We cut the small pieces of stainless wire each time and reassemble it afterwards. The two spiral springs screw out of the end caps and T-piece in the centre, then we rinse the spring and reassemble. Not that much work, and it functions really well, never had any problems with filtering!
 
Stick with the Mash Arms... I would also see if you could implement some form of a float valve like the Blichmann version. And it would be neat to see if you could create one that is an all in one top for Keggles with the sparge arm as part of the assembly.
 
The market's positively flooded with custom stuff right now, but demand is high so I'm sure you could find a niche. I'd say one currently unmet niche would be for true sanitary, no-disassembly brew setups. Think integrated CIP, full drain, etc.
 
Hello Bowtiebrewery and aangel,

Thanks for the comments! If by Mash Arms you mean the mash filter, then yes, this is something that I'm thinking of. We're doing the sparging by hand now with a plastic food container lid and a piece of silicone tubing (the water spreads out over the lid and doesn't disturb the filter) but that could indeed be upgraded. I like the comment about the keggles and will look into that!

A full-on brewing no-disassembly brewing setup is setting the bar a bit high for a first product, but who knows!
 
I'll take a stab at this, but it's not hardware equipment per say, but software.

In addition to my brewing hobby, I'm also a model train enthusiast. I probably have 5k worth of trains, track, and operating features that are all digitally controlled from a remote. Model railroaders are no different with our hobby than a home-brewer is with theirs. We spend hundreds of hours thinking about our layouts, surfing through every single maker of product to see what we can do to build our empire bigger.

The problem is, when it comes to laying track, you have to be precise - very precise with your planning. To help us with this, someone developed railroad track laying software where you can build a virtual image of your dream layout on the computer to see how it would function before you went out to start buying parts blind. You can view from any view or angle that you wish. To make this even better, you can upload diffrent libraries with customized pieces and parts, add buildings, plants, trees. You can layer your plans so that one layer is the track, the next is electrical (which often gets very elaborate), the next layer rolling stock, the next layer buildings and so forth. I think I might have paid 70 bucks for this 5-6 years ago.

I think by now, your getting my idea.

It would be cool to have a similar type of software which could be purchased at a reasonable price with some very basic building tools of generic parts that are common in homebrewing. Then, be able to purchase additional libraries of more specific parts from the other major companies that would allow you to build a customized virtual brew stand from your computer from the ground up to see how it would look and function.

This would allow you to pre-measure and add every single bolt, nut, washer, pump, hose, tubing, pots, lids etc. As you build, it makes you a itemized list which includes part numbers and other information.

It wold be a large task for someone, but speaking from a model railroader's point of view, having this software available to build it in front of you would be awesome. I guess this is a basic version of CAD software, but not everyone has that type of software or background to use it.

KT
 
my want for brewing hardware isn't being made by anyone ANYMORE--a slender 3 gallon better bottle.
all of the fermenters I can find are wide and short and so they have a big footprint, not good for fitting into my fermentation chamber.
getting a blow-form molding production line up and running is pretty tricky tho, so I dunno if that's a great option for you and your colleagues.
 
bkboiler said:
my want for brewing hardware isn't being made by anyone ANYMORE--a slender 3 gallon better bottle.
all of the fermenters I can find are wide and short and so they have a big footprint, not good for fitting into my fermentation chamber.
getting a blow-form molding production line up and running is pretty tricky tho, so I dunno if that's a great option for you and your colleagues.
Click to expand...

How slender are you talking? My 3 gallons better bottle is square and pretty skinny.

Also, I'm not sure I understand how that 'mash filter' works, or what it is supposed to accomplish, but it does look cool.

Edit: After looking at it, are you using it to sparge from the bottom of a grain bed? or pass grain-filled liquid through it, leaving the grain behind. If the second one I could see that being messy to clean, though if you just let the spring expand then it wouldn't be too bad, but I don't think a lot of grain would fit.
 
bigken462 said:
I'll take a stab at this, but it's not hardware equipment per say, but software.

In addition to my brewing hobby, I'm also a model train enthusiast. I probably have 5k worth of trains, track, and operating features that are all digitally controlled from a remote. Model railroaders are no different with our hobby than a home-brewer is with theirs. We spend hundreds of hours thinking about our layouts, surfing through every single maker of product to see what we can do to build our empire bigger.

The problem is, when it comes to laying track, you have to be precise - very precise with your planning. To help us with this, someone developed railroad track laying software where you can build a virtual image of your dream layout on the computer to see how it would function before you went out to start buying parts blind. You can view from any view or angle that you wish. To make this even better, you can upload diffrent libraries with customized pieces and parts, add buildings, plants, trees. You can layer your plans so that one layer is the track, the next is electrical (which often gets very elaborate), the next layer rolling stock, the next layer buildings and so forth. I think I might have paid 70 bucks for this 5-6 years ago.

I think by now, your getting my idea.

It would be cool to have a similar type of software which could be purchased at a reasonable price with some very basic building tools of generic parts that are common in homebrewing. Then, be able to purchase additional libraries of more specific parts from the other major companies that would allow you to build a customized virtual brew stand from your computer from the ground up to see how it would look and function.

This would allow you to pre-measure and add every single bolt, nut, washer, pump, hose, tubing, pots, lids etc. As you build, it makes you a itemized list which includes part numbers and other information.

It wold be a large task for someone, but speaking from a model railroader's point of view, having this software available to build it in front of you would be awesome. I guess this is a basic version of CAD software, but not everyone has that type of software or background to use it.

KT
Click to expand...

You could do this with sketchup. Someone could make a "library" of models of typical brew gear like you say, and a simple script to spit out an itemized list.
 
I'm not sure if anybody makes this or not, but I'd like a flow meter that I can measure the amount of liquid is going through my hoses. This would be useful for calculating priming sugar(you would know that you transferred exactly 4.76 gallons of liquid through your siphon and into your keg or bottling bucket), and it would be nice to have before the tap on a kegerator so you knew how much beer has been dispensed, thus knowing how much is left.
 
mrdauber64 said:
I'm not sure if anybody makes this or not, but I'd like a flow meter that I can measure the amount of liquid is going through my hoses. This would be useful for calculating priming sugar(you would know that you transferred exactly 4.76 gallons of liquid through your siphon and into your keg or bottling bucket), and it would be nice to have before the tap on a kegerator so you knew how much beer has been dispensed, thus knowing how much is left.
Click to expand...

Are you looking for flow RATE or flow TOTAL? If rate, google 'rotameter'. For less than $100 you can get flow rate. If looking for a flow totalizer, i'd suggest a weight scale. You can get gram accuracy for over 10kg for similar amount of money. If you get a slightly higher capacity scale you can use it to weigh the keg too.
 
2 devices i'd love to have that I haven't found solutions to yet.

1. 20 gallon conical fermenter that can hold 1 atm of pressure and fit in a chest freezer. Want to finish fermentation under pressure and be able to filter and transfer to a keg in 1 pass.

2. A hop/trub filter for a plate chiller that doesn't clog.
 
There already are conical fermentation chambers on the market but they tend to be expensive. If you could produce a good conical for around $100 you could probably sell a ton.

I haven't found any small conicals on the market yet. I brew 3 gallon batches and have a small fermentation chamber so I can't fit the FastFerment in it. A niche possibly worth exploring.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NMX5DFY/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
 
Last edited by a moderator:
@ZebulonBrewer
I just meant that since BB has ceased production it's very difficult to find anybody that has them in stock.
 
bigken462 said:
I'll take a stab at this, but it's not hardware equipment per say, but software.

In addition to my brewing hobby, I'm also a model train enthusiast. I probably have 5k worth of trains, track, and operating features that are all digitally controlled from a remote. Model railroaders are no different with our hobby than a home-brewer is with theirs. We spend hundreds of hours thinking about our layouts, surfing through every single maker of product to see what we can do to build our empire bigger.

The problem is, when it comes to laying track, you have to be precise - very precise with your planning. To help us with this, someone developed railroad track laying software where you can build a virtual image of your dream layout on the computer to see how it would function before you went out to start buying parts blind. You can view from any view or angle that you wish. To make this even better, you can upload diffrent libraries with customized pieces and parts, add buildings, plants, trees. You can layer your plans so that one layer is the track, the next is electrical (which often gets very elaborate), the next layer rolling stock, the next layer buildings and so forth. I think I might have paid 70 bucks for this 5-6 years ago.

I think by now, your getting my idea.

It would be cool to have a similar type of software which could be purchased at a reasonable price with some very basic building tools of generic parts that are common in homebrewing. Then, be able to purchase additional libraries of more specific parts from the other major companies that would allow you to build a customized virtual brew stand from your computer from the ground up to see how it would look and function.

This would allow you to pre-measure and add every single bolt, nut, washer, pump, hose, tubing, pots, lids etc. As you build, it makes you a itemized list which includes part numbers and other information.

It wold be a large task for someone, but speaking from a model railroader's point of view, having this software available to build it in front of you would be awesome. I guess this is a basic version of CAD software, but not everyone has that type of software or background to use it.

KT
Click to expand...

Hello Kenny,

First of all, cool that you're also into model trains. We used to have a largish collection, but due to unfortunate family circumstances it isn't in our possession anymore.

About the software, that is actually a very good idea! I'm very proficient with SolidWorks, one of the better-known CAD packages, but the problem is that SolidWorks is not a program that can be used by the masses (learning curve + $7000+ dollars for the program...). There are free CAD alternatives, as thekraken points out, such as Sketchup and I think some Autodesk program. Definitely worth looking into! Thanks for the suggestion!
 
bkboiler said:
my want for brewing hardware isn't being made by anyone ANYMORE--a slender 3 gallon better bottle.
all of the fermenters I can find are wide and short and so they have a big footprint, not good for fitting into my fermentation chamber.
getting a blow-form molding production line up and running is pretty tricky tho, so I dunno if that's a great option for you and your colleagues.
Click to expand...

Hello bkboiler,

Good suggestion also. Setting up an entire production line for such a small batch of plastic containers is actually pretty cost prohibitive, but what about a basic stainless version? What would you be willing to pay for such an item?
 
ZebulonBrewer said:
How slender are you talking? My 3 gallons better bottle is square and pretty skinny.

Also, I'm not sure I understand how that 'mash filter' works, or what it is supposed to accomplish, but it does look cool.

Edit: After looking at it, are you using it to sparge from the bottom of a grain bed? or pass grain-filled liquid through it, leaving the grain behind. If the second one I could see that being messy to clean, though if you just let the spring expand then it wouldn't be too bad, but I don't think a lot of grain would fit.
Click to expand...

Hello ZebulonBrewer,

It is a filter using when sparging, but to get the wort out, not sparging water in. Sorry - I'm just getting used to the English terminology, I'm from the Netherlands so for me it's all about maischen en spoelen (mashing and sparging). It's not that messy; the coils of the spring are tightly up against each other (it's the exact product that thekraken is referring to, the Läuterhexe) so grain doesn't get trapped in between, so it cleans easily. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, we snip the wires holding it to the spiral and then redo them for the next batch of beer. I still need to improve that, but I already have some ideas ;)
 
HahnWerke said:
Hello Kenny,

First of all, cool that you're also into model trains. We used to have a largish collection, but due to unfortunate family circumstances it isn't in our possession anymore.

About the software, that is actually a very good idea! I'm very proficient with SolidWorks, one of the better-known CAD packages, but the problem is that SolidWorks is not a program that can be used by the masses (learning curve + $7000+ dollars for the program...). There are free CAD alternatives, as thekraken points out, such as Sketchup and I think some Autodesk program. Definitely worth looking into! Thanks for the suggestion!
Click to expand...

While not on subject, but sorta is. Take a look at RR track planer. I think it's rrtrack.com or something to that effect. You'll kinda see what they use as a way to build a layout. This would be very cool to using something like that to build a brew system.

I have absolutely know idea the technical aspects of building those or what kinda effort it takes going into one, but speaking from a consumer standpoint, I can say they are awesome.

To all the R&D folks out there doing this stuff, hat's off to ya.

KT
 
thekraken said:
FYI, in case you aren't aware: https://store.brewpi.com/mashing/filtering/brewpi-matmill-lauterhexe-kit-bsp
Click to expand...

The basis for our filter is indeed a Lauterhexe! The problem with our brewing setup is that we didn't want to permanently install it in our mashing pot. We stir by hand (it's only a 5 gallon electric pot) so we weren't sure that it would remain lying on the bottom. Dunking it in after the last mashing step and leaving it to settle down didn't work, because the spiral was too long. 'So why don't you cut it?' Yes, that's a possibility, but that diminishes the contact area of the filter. We also wanted an even distribution of the filter spiral over the bottom of the mashing pot, so that's when the spiral design cam into play. As i've said: we haven't had a single problem with it, not even when making Weizens (which I gather are notorious when filtering because of the wheat grains).
 
mrdauber64 said:
I'm not sure if anybody makes this or not, but I'd like a flow meter that I can measure the amount of liquid is going through my hoses. This would be useful for calculating priming sugar(you would know that you transferred exactly 4.76 gallons of liquid through your siphon and into your keg or bottling bucket), and it would be nice to have before the tap on a kegerator so you knew how much beer has been dispensed, thus knowing how much is left.
Click to expand...

As schematix posted, this is something that you can already buy. I don't really want to go into electronics ;) Thanks for the suggestion!
 
schematix said:
2 devices i'd love to have that I haven't found solutions to yet.

1. 20 gallon conical fermenter that can hold 1 atm of pressure and fit in a chest freezer. Want to finish fermentation under pressure and be able to filter and transfer to a keg in 1 pass.

2. A hop/trub filter for a plate chiller that doesn't clog.
Click to expand...

Hello schematix!

1: Are you talking about a fermenter that is basically horizontal to fit in a freezer like this? http://ep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-39276693957820/frigidaire-mfc25v7gw-chest-freezer-for-220-volts-2.gif
Good suggestion. Isn't anybody already making horizontal fermenters? All the big breweries have them...

2: Perhaps this can be combined with the sparging filter of my design? I'll look into this. What kind of filter are you now using?
 
bigken462 said:
While not on subject, but sorta is. Take a look at RR track planer. I think it's rrtrack.com or something to that effect. You'll kinda see what they use as a way to build a layout. This would be very cool to using something like that to build a brew system.

I have absolutely know idea the technical aspects of building those or what kinda effort it takes going into one, but speaking from a consumer standpoint, I can say they are awesome.

To all the R&D folks out there doing this stuff, hat's off to ya.

KT
Click to expand...

Probably started out as a hobby projects - these kinds of projects are very difficult to monetize. In the Netherlands we have Brouwhulp (Brewhelp), a very nice bit of software that somebody built and is actually free of charge. We use it all the time.
 
mrdauber64 said:
I'm not sure if anybody makes this or not, but I'd like a flow meter that I can measure the amount of liquid is going through my hoses. This would be useful for calculating priming sugar(you would know that you transferred exactly 4.76 gallons of liquid through your siphon and into your keg or bottling bucket), and it would be nice to have before the tap on a kegerator so you knew how much beer has been dispensed, thus knowing how much is left.
Click to expand...

I've seen digital flow metering things designed for garden hoses for sale at home improvement stores for like $20-25. I don't know what their temperature tolerance is, though...or sanitizability, or food-appropriateness of materials...

But there's definitely stuff out there. (My professional experience, granted, is that flowmeters sold as such tend to be either +/-10%-odd accuracy, obscenely expensive, or both, but I've only been looking in fairly specialized contexts).
 
NoIguanaForZ said:
Easily available 2 gallon glass carboys.

More sizes and shapes of glass carboys in general, really.
Click to expand...

I've seen a thread on this very forum with all kinds of nasty wounds coming from exploded carboys...

...Which actually should be an incentive to design something that is a lot better ;)
 
HahnWerke said:
I've seen a thread on this very forum with all kinds of nasty wounds coming from exploded carboys...

...Which actually should be an incentive to design something that is a lot better ;)
Click to expand...

Brew Demon's got that covered.
 
csdunham said:
A bottling spigot and wand that thread together. I'm sick of trying to jam a piece of tubing between the two.
Click to expand...

Hello cddunham,

That's actually the way that we do it, a very short piece of silicone tubing that slides right over the spigot and bottling pipe. Perhaps we have a set that is matched quite well, we haven't had any problems. I'll look into that!
 

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