Single Vessel, All Electric, NS, NC Brewery

wyzazz said:

Yup, lots of dough for that one though.

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Amen to that. It's nice, but it's still the same basic design we're talking about here. A pot, basket, and a pump. A BCS-460 is way more capable than the simple PID/timer unit the Speidel uses, and even if you added swagelok and triclover fittings, and used a blichmann boilermaker, you'd still be at about 50% of the cost of a Spiedel. To each his own, I guess.....for me a big part of the fun of brewing is learning new things and building stuff.

One thing I noticed about the Speidel, is that it has bolts on the side of the basket...they hold it up on a flip-down "rail". You could potentially eliminate the winch.

Funny thing is, the Aussies had this same discussion 4 years ago! :http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11046

There's some cool (but way overpriced) European systems on this page: http://www.brouwland.com/setframes/?l=&to=http%3A//www.brouwland.com/shop/product.asp%3Fcfid%3D28%26id%3D2547%26xin%3D%26src%3Dpump%26dt%3D21&shwlnk=0

Like us, it looks like the Europeans are using 2000w elements for their 5 gallon countertop systems. That 200L Speidel Braumeister looks more or less like what B-K and others have been thinking about in terms of the hoist.

*I wonder if it's possible to make a countertop 8-10 gallon system? How would you integrate 2x2000W elements in a streamlined way? Would you have to plug the unit into each side of the kitchen and have a mess of cords? I think it would be cool to still use 120VAC but go a bit bigger than the SIMPLE and CB20......

wyzazz said:

Yup, lots of dough for that one though.

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Compared to the JerBrew spreadsheet, not that much more.

I'm all for designing and building your own system. I derive as much pleasure from tinkering with equipment as brewing and drinking beer. It's the acquisition of components that drives me batty. Being up here, it means either a 3 hour round trip to some specialty store or getting nailed with shipping/duty/brokerage.

The Speidel would certainly get a good bit of my attention if was to go this route.

EDIT: I just reread the spreadsheet, the $1500 total includes $500 worth of non-related brewing equipment. So yeah, about $1000 cheaper. Still, sourcing the parts, labour, and the real likelihood of me f'ing something up...

Yeah, it's time consuming and can be a PITA to build something yourself. I think Speidel needs to knock about $1000 off their system before people take them seriously. $2000 is a lot of money, and you're really just buying a large pot with a burner and PID. As an example, most of us build our own kegerators because the price of a commercial kegerator is ridiculous, they are pretty simple to make, and the results are great.

Anyway, that's all I'll say about that. Moving on.

The Aussies were trying to figure out how to "bling up" a BIAB setup and turned me on to this:

Now you sound like Yuri!

scubasteve and others, check out this thread in the classifieds: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f16/custom-mash-tun-161223/#post1861136

It may be a GREAT solution to this; and my idea for the inner "basket" use a 1/4" sankey with the bottom completely cut out and a sheet of perforated stainless steel welded to the bottom.

The dimensions of the 1/4 keg would fit with room as far as diameter, and the height would leave the 1/4 keg at almost the exact same height as the main vessel.

These are all just quick thoughts but I see lots of possibilities here!

EDIT: and if the bottom of the 1/4 keg were removed, the yield would be in excess of 10 gallons, and over 13 if you went to the top of the keg (welded handle holes closed, have wire screen/mesh covering them).

Interesting. So you'd use the black wheeled mash tun as your BK? It would probably work, I'd just want to see how the plastic holds up for the boil......

Yes, my thought is to use the black mash tun as the BK. I would not use the wheeled base that comes with it; I will construct my own.

The vendor is supposed to be checking with the engineer, and if it is supposed to hold up to boiling temps, I am going to pull the trigger on one and try it.

After some measuring and rethinking, I think if I am to try this I will actually use a 1/2 barrel sankey for the inner "grain cylinder" as speidels call it I believe. Using a 1/4 sankey would require too much welding for someone that will have to farm that part out-- i.e. meaning me.

Using a 1/2 barrel my thoughts are to cut off the top and bottom at the welds. This will leave a perfectly intact cylinder only requiring the perf sheet false bottom to be welded on-- no holes to fill-- and yield just a bit under 13 gallons (12.9... gallons).

This development has me quite excited, but I am reserving judgment until I see the specs in regards to boiling temps.

If that doesn't work out, I may still pull the trigger and simply use it in the same manner as described, except in a brutus 20 type setup instead, and just use it as a direct-fired electric MLT.

@cyberpacker - let us know what is said about the boiling temps, if it holds up I may just pick up 2!

If it is good structurally at boiling temps and maintains FDA goodness, I will be picking up one and maybe even if it cannot maintain structural integrity.

Regardless, I will let you all know what I find out.

Use keg handles to hook to no need to remove them.

either use easy dump method 1... Sliding false bottom in and out of the side of the keg.

or method 2 using a hinged full false bottom.

Either way grains dump out of bottom.

dumping out of the top it is too much effort.

Okay, a few of thoughts...

Sparge: Add a valve after the pump and a tee after that. One tee to RIMS, other to a 2nd valve and fresh water supply.

Basket: If you're going to sparge (which I understand may not be necessary), wouldn't it be better to not to have holes on the sides and only on the bottom? You could cut a large opening in the bottom of a cheap stock pot, and throw in a perforated disk (cheese hoop).

Sparge/Chilling/Frementation transfer: Quick disconnect set-up at the top of the RIMS to go from sparge arm, to wort chiller, to filler hose.

Disclaimer: I haven't even brewed a single AG batch yet, so my ideas may not make sense.

Finally someone gets it.

No need for all the drilling and using baskets. Unless you just want to. Sometimes though tinkering is the only reason to do anything.

scratchypants said:

Okay, a few of thoughts...

Sparge: Add a valve after the pump and a tee after that. One tee to RIMS, other to a 2nd valve and fresh water supply. I'll be using something similar to this to "insert" fresh water into what would otherwise be a wort line.

Basket: If you're going to sparge (which I understand may not be necessary), wouldn't it be better to not to have holes on the sides and only on the bottom? You could cut a large opening in the bottom of a cheap stock pot, and throw in a perforated disk (cheese hoop). I considered this as well, it would definitely make things solid. I personally don't want to use a keg for size/weight/aesthetics, but a stockpot might work well. You could easily do the "disk drop"; a hinged false bottom might be trickier...but if you could rig it to slide back an inch or two, then fold down, you could have a folding disk drop mechanism. My only concern with this setup would be the hops. I personally want to use the basket for hops as well, I would want them to "mix" as much as possible....hence holes on the sides of the basket.

Sparge/Chilling/Fermentation transfer: Quick disconnect set-up at the top of the RIMS to go from sparge arm, to wort chiller, to filler hose. Definitely going to do something like this...to also include a spray ball in the lid.

Disclaimer: I haven't even brewed a single AG batch yet, so my ideas may not make sense. See the quote in my Sig Don't worry...I love to sit around and think about how things "might" work...not always the same as how they actually go....

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See above bolded comments.....

Earlier in this thread someone talked about a tankless water heater than can hit 180ish degrees. I haven't found one that can do that. All the ones I find have a saftey that locks them at a max temp of about 145 to 155 degrees. Can someone ID a tankless that can hit 180 degrees? This thread sums up my dream build, but I want to get the 'right' tankless for the job. Any information is appreciated.


chuck

Not sure about a tankless water heater, but you could build a high powered RIMS and accomplish the same thing. It'd probably be a lot cheaper and require a lot less energy.

I have a tankless water heater in my house....it rocks. No cold showers! But no, it doesn't get up to 180....

In post 42 of this thread someone talked about a tankless hitting 180. Mine has a saftey that caps the temp at I think 145. I was curious where this 180 degree tankless came from. It would be nice to have "instant on" mash water or "instant on" sparge water. No heating to temp necessary. A RIMS would only be needed to maintain temp and clarify the wort. The only issue is, I've never found this 180 degree tankless. Thanks for responding. I won't be doing my build until after I get my tax return, so I"ve got time to sort out my design and learn more.
Chuck

Well you are thinking along the lines I was with a conical all in one system.

If you apply a pump to the conical for recirculation plus a basket you'd have the means of eliminating the trub and spent yeast built right in while also ensuring a boil of the full volume.


One of the down sides of my conical idea was the liquid volume at the bottom of the cone. There's a likelihood it'll never boil. Putting a heater element there is not terribly workable because it'll just collect crap but recirculating out the bottom into the top solves that.

You can maintain temperature during ferment with a water jacket.
It'll cost you a couple hundred more but you can get a 50 Liter Conical with a jacket for about $600 plus $75 for shipping from China and a little more for duties and what not. Add a couple more hundred and they would prolly weld ports to install a flange and access through the jacket for a 1" threaded heating element through the jacket or a flange mount element your specifications.

The Chinese conicals I've seen tend to be taller than the American versions, so they sort of lend themselves to the task too.

That's a lot going on in the one vessel but I think it's do-able.

So for about a grand you'd have a one vessel rig that would also allow you temp control during the ferment.

In my search for a conical I've learned a lot of things. I decided that stashing it in a fridge or building a cold room driven by a window air conditioner is just more crap and nonsense than it's worth. I decided that if a conical can't also be thermally regulated than it was simply not worth the money.

So I'm definitely going jacketed.

Installing a couple of 4" diameter pipes through the jacket with flanges to accept the heating elements is only a little more $$ And you could easily go through the top for the boil, mash, and ferment temperature probe.

The jacket can also let you chill the brew on the off chance that no-chill was more of a consolation prize for you.

I only see that people seem to be happy no chilling so long as they can keep oxygen from touching their wort while it cools. I've never tried it.

That is the heart of no-chill isn't it: oxygen exclusion? you could accomplish that with a sealable vessel like a conical and a CO2 cannister.

Another change I'd want to make in the Chinese conicals is the top. They need a port like you have in a corny keg, or something through which to pitch yeast and cast hops. As they are shipped I've only seen them come with one port for a ferm' lock or valve.

In fact the only downside I'm thinking of with this one vessel idea is the spent grains in that basket.
It's definitely going to drip and splatter wort on removal. Well, maybe it doesn't need to.
If it's on a hoist, even a rope and pulley hoist, you have the other hand to manipulate it to get a pan underneath before moving it to one side. So you need a "hotel pan" or something like that.

Having my electric BK tied up for the entire fermentation (usually 2-3 weeks) would be a deal breaker for me.

wyzazz said:

Having my electric BK tied up for the entire fermentation (usually 2-3 weeks) would be a deal breaker for me.

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I hear ya.

For those of us who have, or plan to have, a conical we are still pretty much locked to one brew at a time. It's something to consider.

That is the one down side to spending a bunch of money on a conical.
You can get a whole lot of plastic PET carboys for the same money and also build a zoned cold room.


One of the reasons to get away from Glass is the fact of breakage.
I recently read a post by a guy who had a carboy break for no reason at all just stresses in the glass caused it to let go and he just happened to be washing it. It ripped through tendons and nerves in his arm as it fell.
Having been involved with both cold glass and hand blown glass I know that this is entirely realistic. Glass sometimes just breaks from its own internal stresses and the vast majority of carboys are not made to terribly exacting standards. Those PET carboys are a reasonable alternative.

They also satisfy your preference of having more than one brew happening at one time.


However, 2 - 3 weeks is not that long a period. I usually start another brew about the same time as I'm bottling a brew.
I like bottles. A bottling station is in the designs for my brew sculpture. I can fill and cap 50 bottles in like maybe 30 - 45 minutes or so.

Retrofit said:

Earlier in this thread someone talked about a tankless water heater than can hit 180ish degrees. I haven't found one that can do that. All the ones I find have a saftey that locks them at a max temp of about 145 to 155 degrees. Can someone ID a tankless that can hit 180 degrees? This thread sums up my dream build, but I want to get the 'right' tankless for the job. Any information is appreciated.


chuck

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Yes, I have a Rinnai Tankless R94LSi, out of the box it only goes up to 140 but you can order a mod for it from Rinnai part no. MCC-91-W which is a simple install that then allows your system to go up to 180F, plus it only costs around $100 and is a stock item... for me the economics and time savings make sense.

THANK YOU!!! Now the dream build can begin!

Can't wait to see how it turns out. Hopefully you are on a well because my bottle neck is having to filter out the Chloramine, definitely going to slow things down.

I'm trying to source another keg to cut up for my build, I'm planning to put mine on a stand right next to a utility sink for easy cleaning/filling/draining. Boy this is gonna be fun!

I've been reading this thread over and over because I want to do my own single vessel build. Earlier in the thread people talked about using a 62 qt steamer basket as 'the bag' in this system. I have no issue with this, in fact I like that idea a lot.

I was folding laundry (where all my ideas happen) and I dropped what I was doing, walked over to a 5 gallon Home Depot bucket, walked it over to my keggle, and dropped it inside.

It fits inside, the bottom rests at about the 5 gallon water mark on my keggle. That's pretty high, a lot of 'dead space'. But everyone has talked about RIMS not having dead space because of recirculation.

A Home Depot bucket is maybe $2.50. What does everyone think about filling one of those full of holes and using that as the 'bag' in Single Vessel BIAB system? Is it food safe? Is it still to high as most of the grain might be above the water in the keggle? Any and all thoughts appreciated. I'm just keep thinking that orange bucket is do dang cheap, why not??

Thanks for any advice/opinions/info...

Check the bottom to see if it is PP or HDPE, both of which are predominantly food grade resins often irregardless of application...the kicker will be if there is any printing on the bucket, food grade ink is a whole different story.

Good point, the classic Home Depot bucket has that cartoon dude painted on the side. I knew a $2.50 steam basket was to good to be true.

The bottom of a Home Depot bucket clearly says, HDPE. I got to thinking, could I sand the paint off the bucket? While trying to find my sander, I found my planer and I thought, "This will work." It took about 3 minutes to run the planer bottom to top and shave the paint off. I only poked one hole in the side with the planer, but who cares? The whole next step is to drill holes in it. I know I can fit at least 12 pounds of grain in this bucket, maybe 15 to 16. For my 5 gallon brews this ought to be enough. And for $2.50 plus my time, its a nice prototype. If I like this method, I can always upgrade later. Thanks for the tips on food safe plastic. My $2.50 steamer bucket is half done!

retrofit, your idea is one I considered for a while, but there was considerable volume below the bucket in my keggle (5-6 gallons). The positive is that it sat nicely on top of the keggle via the bucket "rim"

The difference was, I was using a 6.5g fermenter bucket that is undoubtedly food grade. For 5 gallon batches, you would need a very long and vigorous boil to make it work.

I also checked into 7 gallon buckets to see if it might go deeper into the keggle, but the extra length is added with extra "rims", so I would have had to do some trimming, or settle on cutting a larger hole to fit the entire bucket inside.

If you are interested in a larger bucket, 7 gallon, that is definitely food safe, check out usplastics.com That is where I was going to source mine.

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice cyberbackpacker. My first concern was 'food safe'. My second concern was the height it sits at. Mine is floating at that 5 to 6 gallon mark as well. I've found holding all my brew stuff in 5 gallon HP buckets makes it easy to move things around, so I have a ton to experiment on. I'd love a deeper (cheap) bucket. Thanks for the website recomendation. I'll look at it.

It's crazy...there's a million ways to do this. Anyone have a source for mesh bags that are premade? I'd rather not sew one out of "swiss voile" fabric. I have a large 24" x 24" mesh bag from Morebeer, but they aren't as big as you'd think (maybe I could use 2-3 bags for manageability) and yup, you guessed it....Morebeer is out of stock

I have one from Brewmasters wharehouse that works greatl it is ~ 2' x 3'.

Here you go: http://www.brewmasterswarehouse.com/product/0101591/extra-large-coarse-straining-bag

Great timing for the bag question. I returned home from a work trip yesterday to find my 62 qt kettle and steamer basket on the front porch. So, now the last piece of equipment I need to acquire is a bag (I do like the idea of lining the basket with mesh, but I want to get back to brewing ASAP, so I'm going to use the bag for now while I figure that out). I think I read somewhere that the 5 gal. paint strainers work. Can anyone confirm that?

Cyber, how much grain have you been able to fit in that 2' x 3' bag?

I've been cutting up "game bags" for my steeping and partial mash needs. You can fit a rear quarter of a moose in one - pretty big.

boilerinsocal, those 5g paint strainer bags are awfully small... one of the main points of BIAB the aussies make is that the bag should be big enough to fit your vessel inside of it-- this ensures that the grains get fully saturated. People that have used smaller bags, like the 5g paint strainers, have reported very low efficiencies. (I too bought one initially, brought it home, saw how small it was relative to my MLT, and then relegated it to hop sack duty).

As far as the brewmasters grain bag, I haven't tried to max it out, but I bobby_m has a thread on sizing your MLT which he says a keg MLT holds ~37 pounds of grain IIRC, so this bag would easily hold the same amount, as I am capable of fitting my whole keg inside of the bag.

BoilerInSoCal said:

Great timing for the bag question. I returned home from a work trip yesterday to find my 62 qt kettle and steamer basket on the front porch. So, now the last piece of equipment I need to acquire is a bag (I do like the idea of lining the basket with mesh, but I want to get back to brewing ASAP, so I'm going to use the bag for now while I figure that out). I think I read somewhere that the 5 gal. paint strainers work. Can anyone confirm that?

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Ha....finding your brewing equipment on the front porch can either be a good thing or a bad thing.....

Great! Thank you so much. For some reason, it didn't register with me that the paint strainer bag was so small. But now that you have me thinking about it, 5 gal for a 15 gal kettle is way too small! I think the dimensions of my kettle are 18" x 18" x 20", so yeah, the 2' x 3' bag should be more than enough.

Just a thought, but if you boil with that 5gal homer bucket in your kettle I bet it gets really soft and misshapen.

Cyberpackerbacker showed me a site where he bought 5 gallon buckets. That site is eariler in this thread. At the site it says the buckets are good until 190F. I'm going to assume this applies to most 5g buckets.

What I imagined doing with the bucket was mash and sparge. I wasn't planning on using it during the boil, but thanks for chiming in. I think your right, that after 190F, the bucket might turn into weird goo.

My entire RIMS experience is in my theoretical head. I've never done it, but using heatsticks has convinced me I want an in door basement brewery and electric seems to be the solution. A single vessel system shrinks the size of my brewery making a happy wife. Happy wife, happy brewer.

$60 to $80 bucks won't break my bank. I think my 5g Homer bucket will be a prototype before I commit to a stainless steel steamer basket. I'm a frugal brewer, if I bought one of those and realized its not going to work for reasons A,B,C. That would keep me up at night.

Can I ask a stupid question without trying to change the topic of this thread? What does HEX stand for? I see a lot of people write RIMS Hex. I imagine they are talking about their heating element unit? Is it Heat Exchange? I dunno and just curious.