My new brewery! 3 tier, 3 vessel, 2 pid build

Hey everybody! Thanks so much for all of your information sharing and also for all the really great specific ideas I've seen here.

I've brewed on my new rig once and I LOVE it. Everything is all in my basement now so my brewday is probably at LEAST 1/2 hour shorter due to not carrying everything out of the basement and back in when done. Heating water with electricity is pretty slick too, set it and forget it. My first brew on the system went pretty much without a hitch. The only thing I ended up carrying was the dry grain and then the spent grain. Everything else was gravity fed and I pumped the cooled wort into fermenters that were already in my ferm chamber.

I don't have space for a full time dedicated brewery, so I made due with an easy to set up and easy to store rig.The brewery is gravity fed. 10 gallon HLT sits on top of a tool cabinet on the workbench, which gravity drops in my cooler MLT sitting on my workbench which gravity drop into my keggle. My whole brewery stores under my workbench when not in use leaving me a workbench to do other stuff.

On to the pics. I'll answer any questions you have, so shoot.

overview


keg 1


keg 2


boiling!


pumping to fermenter


wort into ferment chamber


BSD

Looks good!

Way to max out the bk, was the boil more then 60 mins, what did you brew?

That was right before I stopped a boilover. I had 12 gallons in the BK and it maxes out at just shy of 15 to the cut top.

I made 11 gallons of my house Irish stout. Next week I'll make a Amarillo, Citra, Simcoe IPA 6 gallon batch.

By the way, it is SO COOL being able to flip off the heater just before boilover, adjust the percent output then kick it back on.

BSD

Have any pics of the control panel/the wiring diagram you used? Looks like a good setup for me to get started into electric until I can add more pieces to my brewery. I currently have a brew kettle and a cooler mash tun. Looking to go electric, so just need another kettle and controller to get started with this similar setup.

Very nice. This is a lot like what I want to do eventually (HLT to MLT (cooler) to boil keggle). Working on getting a keg or two to cut up and convert right now. Then it will be getting the cooler and converting to a mash tun, then it will be saving up and buying all the parts for the electrical.

If you don't mind me asking, could you give me a basic cost run down of what you've spent on this setup? You can PM it if you don't want to put it here. Thanks!

BeardedIdiot said:

Very nice. This is a lot like what I want to do eventually (HLT to MLT (cooler) to boil keggle). Working on getting a keg or two to cut up and convert right now. Then it will be getting the cooler and converting to a mash tun, then it will be saving up and buying all the parts for the electrical.

If you don't mind me asking, could you give me a basic cost run down of what you've spent on this setup? You can PM it if you don't want to put it here. Thanks!

Click to expand...

I'd also be interested in knowing cost...especially of the controller and element setup.

I have a relatively similar setup except I use dual 120v. elements in both the HLT and BK. I have a 12g. european keg as my BK (mostly 5.5-8g. batches) and a 8g. pot as my HLT. When the boil get's vigorous I just switch one element off for a few minutes (single element will keep a light boil) and then turn it back on after the break has died-down. Requires a bit more attention on my part but not much. I've been using Fermcap-S lately, too, and that stuff is miracle juice!

I would say, all in, I spent around $1000 but that includes running a 50' run of the 50 amp service (myself, wire is expensive), putting in a new glass block window with vent to replace the old rotten wood framed window, and installing the ventilation/louvers for the exhaust.

I just converted my gas rig so I didn't have to buy any new equipment.

I built the control panel, got the ventilation done and THEN knocked holes in my kettles for the elements and rtd's. This way I was able to have super minimal downtime for my brewery.

Did I mention it was a totally fun project and kept me entertained for over a month, maybe 2?

BSD