My Brewtroller HERMS

As many people before me who have joined this site, I've been sitting back now for quite a while reading up on all the great threads that have been posted (Mainly in the DIY category). Early this year, I decided that I was going to upgrade from my "cooler-tun, all-grain" setup and move to a semi-automated system. At first I just wanted a couple tiers and a pump, but then it slowly evolved into so much more. I spent approximately 4-5 months designing, changing the design, modifying the design, researching costs etc., until i finally decided that I needed a bigger budget. I've been wanted to post on my progress now for a couple months, but haven't had the time. I finally decided, now that I'm close to finishing, that I should share this experience with those out there looking to possibly do the same thing. I know, there are already a ton of DIY brewstands, and automated breweries as such, but this is mine, and I do feel that it is different than the rest (although many aspects were inspired by those who have posted their experiences and their rigs). Pictures will have to come later because I am at work now on my lunch break. There just isn't enough time in the day to do all that I need to do (I'll be working on my rig after work tonight until bed time).

My system: 3-keggle, single tier, 2-pump, HERMS system with a honey well intermittent pilot light/gas control valve all controlled by a Brewtroller system. All the fittings are sanitary fittings and almost everything is stainless steel. I built a counterflow wort chiller out of a 50' spool of 1/2 inch stainless steel tubing and a 50' spool of 3/4" ID high temp EPDM hose. The fittings are all HDPE and PTFE.

At this point, almost every individual component is assembled. Now, the entire assembly needs to be put together. I plan on polishing the stand tonight and then assembling. Once everything is put together, I plan to passivate the entire system with citric acid when it's all assembled. I'm hoping to have my first brew session in two weeks...fingers crossed.

This truly felt like a DIY project because my inventory of equipment and skills grew dramatically. Pretty much all the welding for that stand was done by myself, and all of the brazing of the fittings was done by me as well (I learned how to braze during the construction of this rig). I had co-worker of mine (who is a controls genius) help me out with the control panel, which looks freakin' amazing, and most of the electrical stuff. He's also the one who taught me to braze. I went with a stainless steel stand because i plan on brewing a lot and for a long time and have no desire to put a ton of work into a system that will look like crap in a couple years. I live in the northwest and it tends to be moist around here. This baby will shine for decades to come. It was approximately $300 more for cost of materials (stainless vs. mild steel), but you also have to factor in the cost of paint (which I understand probably isn't much, but when the time comes, sanding and repainting will probably never happen and you know it!).

I also plan to do a lessons learned addition to this thread if anybody is interested hearing me ramble.

Thanks to all of you premium supporters who have helped us noobs with your posts. You make a world of difference to many homebrew enthusiasts.


-Michael Lubovich

Michael, I for one am looking forward to see your photos and read what you have learned. Lets check it out.

I am very interested in how your process of researching and fabrication went.

I am interested in seeing the SS coil for the HERMs. Where did you purchase the tubing from?
Sounds like a nice system. Happy brewing.

This first picture is after i polished and before i started assembling everything this evening.

Here is a picture of where i finished for the night

I zoomed in on the lower half of the stand. I used oak for the bottom shelf and carriage bolts to play on the similarities of an oak barrel.

Here is a picture of my HERMs coil inside the HLT. I'm not very proud of this. I spent about an hour on this coil wrapping it around a cornie keg trying my best to be careful not to crease it...but sure enough, almost every wrap has a crease. I got this from nybrewsupply.com. They have a good deal on 304SS tubing. I learned from this coiling mistake to buy one of those spring style benders when coiling the stainless tubing for the counterflow wort chiller. It costs less than $4 and helps to prevent ruining an $80 coil! Just place the spring over the area you are bending, bend, and then slide the spring up to the next place. NO MATTER WHAT THE PEOPLE AT LOWES OR HOME DEPOT TELL YOU, THIS WILL WORK!!! I found that a lot of stores had a hard time picturing stainless steel TUBING (not pipe). Even tool rental companies. I told them i wanted to bend stainless tubing without creasing it, and they wanted to rent me hydraulic benders or conduit benders...not the same thing people! Anyway, don't let anybody tell you that you can't bend 1/2" SS tubing (.02 inch wall thickness). This was one of the most frustrating things. For the hard bends, i eventually forked over the $90 and bought a hand held tubing bender to get the tight radius i needed for the tubing inside the vessels.

For the wort chiller, i went to McMaster and purchases 50 feet of 1/2" 316 SS for around $85.

Anyway, I'll keep this updated when i make more progress. Still need to finish the pilot tubing from the gas control valve, bubbler system, and lots of wiring. Also, the BK is under repairs. Long story, but a hole for one of the fittings was cut at too low a tolerance. As many know, brazing rod is not very good as filling gaps. I spent a lot of time trying to braze the fitting water tight, but no go. I'm having a relative of mine TIG weld the thing.

Cheers!

This is definitely one of my favorites Any update on this one Michael?

Thanks for the interest! Here are some more pictures. I had some trouble with the lids fitting. I bought the kegs on craigslist. Some guy had already cut a hole in the top and it was larger than the lids I bought. I have a friend who has been helping me and he bent some stainless tubing into a perfect circle and tack welded it to the rim for a perfect lid fit (third picture). I also had trouble with the 2-inch TC fitting (second picture) on the boil kettle. I couldn't braze it for the life of me. The hole we cut wasn't within tolerance of brazing capability. When the fitting cooled the internal stress of the joint caused solder to crack. He took it, cleaned it all up and welded it together. Now it is water-tight.

The first picture is inside the control panel of the brewtroller. The fourth picture is the inside of the intermittent pilot light enclosure. You can see the transformer that steps the 12 volt power to 120 volts for the igniter. The fifth picture is the inside of a hobby box from radio shack. This is where the pressure sensors will reside along with the daisy chain wiring for the temperature sensors.

The last things left to do are finish wiring the hobby box for the pressure and temperature sensors, and finish wiring up the pumps. I'm putting the pumps on a speed controller. I know this isn't recommended, but i chose to control the flow over using a valve. I can't see the inside of the valve while the pump is running therefore would not be able to see any cavitation inside the valve. I understand that the valve is magnetic driven and is supposed to slip, but nowhere does it say how much pressure is required to cause slipping. The pump is capable of 12 feet of head pressure. That's approximately 5.2 psi. 90% of flow in a typical plug or ball valve still passes through a valve 50% closed. What i know is that there is a high possibility of turbulence and cavitation. Over a period of 30 minutes to an hour during the mash at a temperature that is highly susceptible to hot side aeration (oxidation), I see the potential for more damage than i want. Slowing the pump down should help minimize this effect. If the pump motor burns out, then i may consider changing my strategies. I'm hoping to get this done by the end of this week and start passivating the metal, but how slow the last 10% of this project has gone, I won't hold my breath.

CFC for the WIN!!!! That thing is awesome. Great looking rig as well.

Looking good... I have found the funding problem in my designing also... glad to see you are moving past yours! I look forward to seeing your first batch!!

what is in the small enclosure in the last picture?

looking good !!

How to you roll the opening on the keggle? I like how clean that looks.

kickrjason said:

what is in the small enclosure in the last picture?

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Looks to be a pressure sensor setup sans tubing.

Bean said:

How to you roll the opening on the keggle? I like how clean that looks.

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I think it's just tubing tacked to the edge. He mentions it in the post.

501Lubovich said:

...I have a friend who has been helping me and he bent some stainless tubing into a perfect circle and tack welded it to the rim for a perfect lid fit (third picture)...

Click to expand...

Good god man....that's beautiful! Nice work and I look forward to seeing this project through to completion.

Peter_h said:

I think it's just tubing tacked to the edge. He mentions it in the post.

Click to expand...

Reading? I'm only here for the pictures !


lol, thanks for pointing that out Peter.

Can't wait to fire this thing up when i get home in October....

Well I started everything up last weekend and it all works. The intermittent pilot light does light the burner (we had to raise the sparker so that it was in the gas stream). The pumps run and the speeds controllers work as well. I did have a little trouble getting the pump to prime. Because the suction tube dips down, there is potential for air pockets to collect at the high points. With a bit of playing around with it, the air pockets are eventually purged out, but i'm considering placing a valve near the high point to relieve the air pocket. I'll follow up with that if I do decide to make this modification.

The stand also gets really hot, so, being the person that I am, I purchased some sheet metal and plan to custom fit a couple heat shields. For nearly the same price, I could have bought pre-made heat shields, but i'd still have to modify one of them anyway to account for the pilot light. I also realized I was short some tubing and could benefit from a couple more fittings.

Tomorrow I will be passivating the stainless. I bought some citric acid and found some information online...

1). Clean equipment thoroughly
2). Prepare a citric acid bath with a ratio of citric acid to water of 1:10 (by weight) at 150 degrees F. I plan to use 3-5 lbs of citric acid and 30-50 lbs of water (3.6 - 6 gallons).
3). Soak for 30 minutes.
4). Rinse THOROUGHLY
5). Rinse again
6). Rinse again!!!

I understand that citric acid is safer than nitric acid, but there is no reason not to play it safe here. I'll probably be wearing gloves, long sleeves, and safety glasses to be safe. I don't really know how dangerous a 10% solution of citric acid is. Lemon juice is 5-6% according to wikipedia and i do recall it stinging the eyes a bit. Double the concetration and i'm sure the sting factor will increase a bit.

Other than that I'll be configuring the Brewtroller. I really have no idea what i'm doing here so it may take a while...i guess we'll find out. I did open the Aduino program and it does appear that the language is already provided for the user to cut and paste in the "user compile options" space. Hopefully it's that easy. If anybody has additional tips on configuring a Brewtroller, i'd appreciate the help. I've visited brewtroller.com and there is some good stuff on there, but I always appreciate extra help.


-Michael

Would love some pictures of the finished product and perhaps the first brew...

Of course!

Citric Acit + Flux = Easy Removal and Clean Joint

Citric Acid + Concrete = Unfavorable Reaction...

More update later, but for now, let's just say i won't be cleaning my garage floor with citric acid anytime soon.

What happened with this thread?

cat007 said:

What happened with this thread?

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This thread will hopefully be starting up again. In the last 13 months I bought a house and my wife gave birth to our first daughter...Spare time has been very rare. I've made a bit of progress since the last photos I posted. I have a fermentation chamber controlled by a brewtroller lite. At this point i'm contemplating full automation, but haven't made the jump yet.

501Lubovich said:

This thread will hopefully be starting up again. In the last 13 months I bought a house and my wife gave birth to our first daughter...Spare time has been very rare. I've made a bit of progress since the last photos I posted. I have a fermentation chamber controlled by a brewtroller lite. At this point i'm contemplating full automation, but haven't made the jump yet.

Click to expand...

Congratulations!

Hi Michael and other Fellow Brewers,

I spent the last year putting together my HERMS. My system consists of HLT (converted Keg with SS HERMS coil, MLT (20 gal Blichman), and BK is 25 gal mega pot. ½ SS tubing between vessels. I have two chugger pumps 1 under HLT, and 1 under MLT. I set up continuous propane under HLT. Brewtroller BX1 (BT) runs system.

I’m up the creek with a paddle at this point, as I can’t figure out how to configure my BT to run my system. I’m completely blind and cannot access the BT interface. I use a screen reader, called Jaws For Windows, turns text into speech and reads in an automated voice through my speakers. Unfortunately, not all web pages are designed accessible-- radio buttons, images, etc. nor is the BT accessible through connecting a PC.

I have recruited several sighted friends to assist with configuring my brewtroller to my HERMS, however, I have been unsuccessful at getting my system working—no one has been able to help! Michael, your system (HERMS) seems to have the same working parts as mine, can you and/or any fellow brewers help me figure out how to make my BT control my HERMS system?

I have tried both Brewtroller Live, and web ap troller. Not entirely sure how to use either of them, and I can’t find any tutorials on the web. Additionally, Some features on each web ap seem to be incompatible with my screen reader.

Once brewtroller is configured and works with my system, theoretically it seems plausible with sighted assistance after creating recipes, I could get to my recipes and start them. I could have a friend walk me through moving around the brewtroller— 2 clicks to get to main menu, 2 clicks to the right to get to my recipes, etc. If I could get the web ap troller to work, I believe I can import recipes from the brewtroller and run them from the web interface—I would have much more control.

Big hurdle at this point is moving around the Brewtroller! Any help you or anyone else can provide for how to teach someone how to set up a recipe etc. and make my BT work with my HERMS would be immensely appreciated. Thanks in advance for your follow-ups!

Jason