Finally building a brew stand - question re: future upgrades

I have decided to have a stand built using desertbrews's plans posted here by lil'sparky https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/3-tier-tree-sculpture-plans-27324/

Eventually, I would one day like to automate the temp control on system with some sort of pid or similar control, but for now I think I will just do the stand and natural gas burners.

Question: If in the future I wanted to add temperature automation, am I wasting a lot of time/energy just making the functional brew stand first? What is the easiest way to add the temp control? All that I really want to be able to do it tell the system maintain the hlt at 170, maintain mash at 155 etc and have it control the burners to do so.

The system that I've seen used some sort of part taken off at gas hot water heater to control the burner and some sort of PID to control that part, but it was a bit over my head

There's no reason that you won't be able to upgrade a "basic" brew stand to temperature control. There are plenty of different options, and which is best one for you depends on how DIY you want to go. Any kind of automation is going to require some ability to read schematics, though, so you might want to start brushing up on that. There are some good threads around here about controlling a burner with a solenoid valve.

Jon,
Automation can be added to most stand designs. When building a stand, determine your budget first.
Also, the design photo you showed, note how the legs are bowed. Angle the legs from the center down at a slight angle to prevent this.
This design is similar but extremely stable:


Electric RIMS tubes are far more cost effective than direct fire mash or HERMS. The cost of adding the furnace parts alone is over $200 (if done correctly so that it's safe). Before I get flamed. I will state that every mashing method has its merits and I am well aware each has it's zealots. I'm speaking from the experience of having built each of those types and the related costs (when automated).

A PID is actually not very difficult to install and wire, nor are gas valves or electric elements. There is a vast library of information on this forum alone on how to do them.

As for automation, there is a large number of brewers who never do automate and are satisfied with batch or fly sparging. It's more a question of how much money you want to throw at your hobby.
This whole hobby is wrapped around the idea of the DIYer trying their hand at something new.

Thanks hoppy guy. I am actually doing the desertbrew stand .. It looks more stable to me than the tree design. I hope it all works out. I am looking for good NG burners at the moment.

I will probably be pretty content with the stand as is but glad to know there are many ways to accomplish the temp automation. This is going to be great!

I'll take a slightly different angle at this for discussion. All automated systems, from a mash temp maintenance perspective, require moving the mash liquor with a pump. I don't care if you're direct firing the tun, or using a RIMS tube, or a HERMS coil, the mash liquor is getting pumped.

Assuming you start with a pure gravity design like a 3 tier, you MAY want to anticipate the future inclusion of a pump and have it collapse down to a 2-tier or lowering the entire height of the stand since the lowest tier no longer has to gravity drain to the fermenter. Sure, it wouldn't hurt anything to leave it alone, but the added height of a full gravity 3-tier is unnecessary in light of an added pump.

As an example in the drawing above, you may want to make the second tier end and then have the top tier be a modular pedestal that can be removed in the future without getting the grinder out.

However, it looks to me like the drawing assumes at least one pump from the very start because I don't think the BK is high enough to gravity drain to a fermenter. If that's true, I don't see why you'd go 3-tier from the start.

Bobby, you raise a great point. I had not even thought about the BK height in order to gravity feed to the fermenter. Thank you for pointing that out.

I would like to avoid pumps, at least at the beginning, to keep price down. Why are pumps needed from a mash temp perspective? I bet there is a really good reason that I am not considering.

Thank you again for pointing out the BK height.