My new homemade Micro Brewery

Hello I posted some photos of my project in another thread but I guess this is the correct section.

I would love to know what you think of it.

I did some extract brewing many years ago and never got what I wanted from it so now its all guns blazing all-grain

I have been getting really good efficiency out of it.
My IPA with rye was at 93% and last nights schwarzbier was at 89%.


Its a 16 gal. plastic drum with 4 elements (soon to be 6) cooling spiral and filter built in, and an inner barrel made of stainless steel with motor driven blades.




A march pump draws fluid either from an open fitting in the bottom for recirculation or through the filter when transferring to a fermenter.

The digital controller can both be used to heat and cool within a 0.1 degree. I have one on a chest freezer as well and use it as a fermenting chamber/keggerator




The inner barrel is made of stainless steel and the drive is made from a wiper motor. It simply slides on to the drive axle and hooks on to the bearing holding crossbar.




A blade in the bottom lifts and turns the grain
I have made several large holes in the upper blade now and may even abandon that part of the design and go with using simple round bar to move the grain about.

Under the inner barrel I put a crossbar that turns with the main axle to maintain movement around the elements and to prevent settling.


Here is one version of the inner barrel, I have changed it since this picture was taken and have 4 elements now, I will most likely add two more.
I found that on full power grain would burn on the elements , so I wired them two and two in pairs, still some grain got stuck on them so I will try putting three in each set next time. That way I will get the power of one element but with the surface area of three.

The cooling spiral cools 8 gal. from a boil to 60°f in about 30 min.

The stainless steel hose in the bottom is the filter and is connected to one of the fitting leading to the pump.


This pic. is a little dark but is show the inner barrel in place, the recirculation pipe and the first set of holes I put in the upper blade.
There I also have hot water hooked up to the cooling spiral, I have unlimited access to hot water and use it to heat the wort as well as the heating elements.


Dough-In
As you can see there is a bit of grain collecting in front of the blade, I only want this blade to turn and move the grain about. That is why I will most likely change this before my next go.

Thats a nice setup you have there. How many lbs of grain will it hold?

very cool. I like how its different from the traditional all grain setup, I'm curious as well, how much grain will it hold?

Very nice! I really like the compact design.

It will hold about 14 gallons and all the grain needed for that amount.

I have used 14.5 lbs and think that it will hold more then double that.

Well just finish a Grolsch Lager Clone and I think the two sets of two elements will do for now.
There was nothing stuck to them now so I guess I have lowered the surface temp enough.

The ingenuity of homebrewers never ceases to amaze me. As a fellow diy'er, I have found a hobby that I feel at hime with.

Plus, I have a beard. You can't be a brewer without one. Or so it seems.

Looks great! Wish I had the time for more complicated projects.

Is this what is considered a Micro brew?

The setup looks awesome...much more advanced than mine. Where in Iceland? Would love to visit Iceland sometime...

As for the beard comment, I would concur to some extent as I am also bearded. Check out Kjetil from Nøgne Ø....the quintessential brewer "look". However, I'm sure folks like Yooper would take umbrage with the beard comment, hence my "to some extent" clause

bmunos said:

Is this what is considered a Micro brew?

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Well I am not sure, do you have a better name for it or perhaps a name that better suits it?

I simply used my limited language skills to describe it.

Damn man thats is a sweet setup! ton of time and engineering went into it im sure

beowulf said:

The setup looks awesome...much more advanced than mine. Where in Iceland? Would love to visit Iceland sometime...

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Thank you

I am actually just a stones throw from the international airport, and if you decide to be here next weekend you will be greeted with a beer festival.

You are welcome

wedge421 said:

Damn man thats is a sweet setup! ton of time and engineering went into it im sure

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Thank you man

It was born (in my mind) during a visit to a brewery in north of Iceland.

I got the change to have a look inside there mash tun and this is my attempt to replicate it.

It has gone through several changes since version 1.0 and it will most likely go through some more.

.

Help me understand this, when you are done mashing, you pull the stainless part out and boil in the plastic barrel, then cool and transfer to the fermenter? It appears to be a little like a speidel system with modifications. I like it, I would just put all that inside a stainless outer drum.
How do you lauter the grain? Can you?

onthekeg said:

Help me understand this, when you are done mashing, you pull the stainless part out and boil in the plastic barrel, then cool and transfer to the fermenter? It appears to be a little like a speidel system with modifications. I like it, I would just put all that inside a stainless outer drum.
How do you lauter the grain? Can you?

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When I am done I use a winch mounted in the ceiling to lift the inner part.


After raising the inner drum a bit I stop the blades turning, the grain settles and filters out a lot of the smaller bits as the wort runs through it.


I have at that stage used 160-170°f water to "rins" the grain but I don´t know if that is needed or even recommended.


Yes I boil in the plastic drum, it is food grade plastic and I am told that it will not effect flavour or smell.
Using it instead of a stainless drum was simply a matter of cost.

After boiling I pump everything to a fermenter via the stainless mesh filter in the bottom, leaving most of the slurry behind.

I am not totally sure what lauter means but I hope I answered your question.

I can add that building a stainless outer drum is and has always been my plan, I just want to get the system working and learn how to use it before investing more money in to it.
If I can not make good beer with this it is of no use to take it any further.
But since I already have made excellent beer I must start thinking how best to build version 2.0.

I am thinking about making an insulated double layer drum with heating elements away from the wort itself.
I am also thinking of ways to boil using oil filled heating spiral, a heat exchange system of some sort.
I have tons of ideas and sifting through them is just part of the fun.
I will update this tread as things progress.

Excellent! The lauter would be the same as rinsing the grain. I like this idea a lot, its compact, and you don't have to mess with a whole bunch of different tanks. Its always nice seeing another way to do things!

I would like to thank you all for you complements.

I did not know I was going a different way about this, it just felt logical to me to do it like this.

I am going to use this evening to build my version of a bottling gun, just to check if it can be done the way I vision it. If it works I am going to build it in a more professional way and I am sure to post some pictures of it here.

That is a seriously impressive system you have there. I would very seriously consider a system like your's when I have a house where I could have a permanent brewing space.

Also your English is better than some that speak English as their native language. You don't need to apologize for not understanding something as far as I'm concerned.

I keep looking at this system and am wondering why i don't just start over and build something like this. It looks nice and compact, plus it allows you to be constantly adding to it because things like this are never "really" done.

Go for it.

I may add that I have been getting high efficiency mashes out of this system.
My IPA with Rye was 83% and my Schwarzbier was over 87% and both of my first IPA´s over 90%
I have still to do the math on my Grolsch Clone Lager but I think it is about 87%, need to confirm it though.

As I do more thinking on version 2.0 I get happier with this version. I will need a very good reason to build an all stainless system.

It will most likely be an issue with the heating elements that will result in me building a new one, so if you are thinking about build something like it perhaps you should do without them, using a gas burner perhaps.

Wow, this is really nice! I have limited space and this would be great to build for myself. Do you have a parts list and any construction photos?

Thanks for sharing the photos. Great setup.

This is going to make me spend more money...

Thank you RevFry.
No I do not have any photos of the build but I can tell you that the heating elements are from cheap water kettles (tea kettles)
The filter in the bottom is just like many are using here and then there is the copper piping, not much to it really.
The motor is just a wind shield wiper motor and then the temp controller.
The mesh in the bottom has 2 mm. holes (0.07874 inch)

I connected two and two elements together to lower the surface temp of each one.
I also run hot or cold water through the copper spiral to elevate or lower the temp.

Kevin, I believe that this type of setup is much cheaper to build then the big three pot rigs I have seen here.

I think I just found my heating capacity limit.

I just did a 10 gal. light german ale mash and if I am going to go any higher in volume I would like more heating power to reach boil faster.

The grain part of the system has more in it though.
Used 13 lbs. and that is about half of what it will hold.

Got 1.053 pre-boil gravity so I think I did another high efficiency mash

Firebird,
Very cool rig!
My question, For sparging (rinsing the grain), where does the extra, 170 degree water come from? I can visualize the recirculation using the original 4 gallons of strike water but is there another source of hot water (7-8 gallons) you have hiding somewhere?
Being a single tier owner and DIY'er your "Mono-Brew" rig may be taken on as another fun project.
Snake10

I start with all the water Im gonna use right in the beginning, there is no adding water during the mash.
I use the electronic temp controller to run my mash schedule.

The only water I add may be boiled cooled water from a kettle, perhaps a qt. or so

Since the water is being recirculated all the time through the moving grain mash I think that I am getting all I can from the grain, rinsing may not be necessary.

I then raise the inner tub out of the liquid and let it drain untill I get a boil going, by that time the mashed grain is well dry.

I have added the low gravity liquid that drains from rinsed grain to the boiling wort, but just to lower the pre-boil gravity after shooting past intended pre-boil gravity.
BHE has been in the high 80´s or low 90´s
This afternoons light german ale had OG of 1.055, started with 9.8 gal and ended with 7.5 gal. and 13 lbs of grain. (mostly Pilsner malt)

Firebird,
Thanks for the clarification. I'm not used to putting all the water in at one time and recirculating everything at once. Makes since in a way. Guess my limiting factor for that is the size of my keg. Seems when I do a 10 gallon batch, my keggle is full of grain and just 7 gallons or so of strike water. It looks oat-mealish. If i were to add more water( enough to make 13 gallons in the boil) it would overflow. Your plastic kettle doesn't look all that big. What am I missing? Could you describe how your process works. Guess, I'm looking for the steps of brewing that you use. Ex: fill the vessel with 20 gals of water, heat to 155, add grain, ricirc for 1 hour, pull grain out while recircing and bringing temp up,etc.. The water part is throwing me off.
Thanks,
Snake10

Snake10 said:

Firebird,
Thanks for the clarification. I'm not used to putting all the water in at one time and recirculating everything at once. Makes since in a way. Guess my limiting factor for that is the size of my keg. Seems when I do a 10 gallon batch, my keggle is full of grain and just 7 gallons or so of strike water. It looks oat-mealish. If i were to add more water( enough to make 13 gallons in the boil) it would overflow. Your plastic kettle doesn't look all that big. What am I missing? Could you describe how your process works. Guess, I'm looking for the steps of brewing that you use. Ex: fill the vessel with 20 gals of water, heat to 155, add grain, ricirc for 1 hour, pull grain out while recircing and bringing temp up,etc.. The water part is throwing me off.
Thanks,
Snake10

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I'd love to hear this too, but don't worry about converting to US units, just post your brew schedule in your normal units... If we give a damn, we'll do the conversion ourselves . Thanks so much for the info !!

I am limited by the size of my primary fermenting buckets, they are 33 liters (8.73 gal.) but most likely only hold about 28 liters (7.4 gal.) during full-on fermentation.

The plastic drum housing the system is a 60 liter drum (will hold 16 gal.)

I start with 37 liters (9.8 gal.) in the drum and heat that to my dough-in temp using electric power or hot tap water trough the copper piping. Us here in Iceland have unlimited hot tap water at around 80°c (176°f)

When I start with 9.8 gal. I end up with about 7.4 gal. in primary fermenter.

I then pour my milled grain into the inner stainless bucket having the recirculation pump going and the blades turning and start to dough-in.

I then simply elevate the temp during the mash to get all the steps I want, and I can have as a complex schedule as I want.
I either use a 4 or 5 step mash schedule but I will get into that later, I believe I am doing things a bit different there as well.

After mash-out I use a ceiling mounted winch to raise the inner drum out of the wort, I then stop the blades turning allowing the grain to settle forming a filter of sort. Continuing to pump the wort up on to the grain bed untill I see that it no longer flows freely through it. This catches alot of the fine material out of the wort.

I then place the recirculation pipe through a hole in the top of the plastic drum in order to keep everything moving around the heating elements in the bottom and start heating to reach boil.
During the time the wort is heating up from mash-out temp to a boil the grain drains back into the outer drum and that fluid then gets boiled as well.

I then place the inner drum on top of a shallow sterile bucket allowing it to drain even more. If I have used some boiled and cooled water to "rinse" the grain the fluid that collects in this bucket is of a lower gravity and can be used to adjust pre-boil gravity.

I then simply start adding the hops I wish to use to a bag I hang from the side, I could if I wanted just place them in the liquid since them would get filtered away when transferring to the fermenter but this way is less messy.

Then I cool the wort by running ice cold tap water through the cooling spiral in the bottom.

I then close of the tap on the recirculation pump and open the one that goes from the filter and pump everything to the primary fermenting bucket.

Firebird,
Thanks for the write up. I can now visualize what you are doing. Its almost like what guys here call" brew in a bag". Where they simply put their grain in a bag, steep it, then pull it out, boil the wort, ferment. I like your advanced concept better. The mechanics of it make it appealing for a DIY'er. I might just have to make one these. One last question:What is the highest gravity beer you have made so far? Also,You should submit your design to Brew your own magazine. Its really neat and the simple.
Snake10

1.061, fermented down to 1.008
Tasted great
I have not been trying to hit high numbers, it was more of a mistake then anything.
I will have to look into the magazine idea, have not seen it for myself.

Firebird,
Thanks for the info. You have rekindled my desire to use my small brain to build something new. If I build one I will for sure, post pics.
Snake10

Great

Go for it.

Look forward to seeing your version of it

Wow, what an ingenious system - nice job Firebird!!!

I love how compact the entire system is!

Thank you

Extraordinary, quite extraordinary. I hope that you, sir, are an engineer, or the field has lost a great contributor.

Hehe thank you.

No I am not an engineer, I am a construction contractor so building things comes naturally