My Electric Brewery Build!

Little hiccup was that I had to fabricate the top by flattening it out (hammered the heck out of it on cement). Was able to flatten it out and applied a few coats of JB weld, sanding in between. The finally product was excellent!





After painting, testing the "look":

At this point I realized I was over the hump. What I feared most about the project was the metal working:

Soldering some cables:

I did the internal wiring in 5 days. Every night I worked a few hours on it. Still need to go back through and tighten/neaten it all up:






I have to thank Kal for his excellent documentation of the wiring and what each part does and why. I learned a lot!







Initial power on was successful except for power to the pumps. I forgot the pumps -> neutral bus wire:

Getting ready for a test run:

All last week I did test run with water to get myself and the computers "tuned."

Yesterday I ran my first batch.

Everything went excellent. As Kal suggested I definitely need to re-work my ventilation as I had a lot of drip-page.

From start to finish I had 12 gallons of beer in the fermenters in ~5 hours. What the great thing was that is was relatively hands off! I missed my gravity of 1.056 and got 1.060. I estimated my efficiency for the recipe at 87%. I ended up hitting 89.1%. So next run I should have it dialed it!

The cleanup was 1.5 hours and I'm sure I will get that down to 1.0 hours.

As far as the hop stopper, I did a fair amount of research about the negatives. So I have able to get 10 gallons of the wort cooled with 15 minutes and it took me another 15 minutes to get the last 2 gallons.

Can't wait for the next batch!

looks great man! Really nice full on Kal build

Now you can brew brew brew!

CidahMastah said:

looks great man! Really nice full on Kal build

Now you can brew brew brew!

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Your not kidding! I was so relieved last night. Finally was able to get the fermenters rollings and get my life back, !

I plan to brew on Monday as well. Not sure what I'm going to do yet.

It was a great to see 20lbs of spent grains!

Hey beautiful build!! I know what you mean by getting your life back and seeing spent grain again, as I also Just finished my build and brewed two batches this past weekend.:rockin:

I was curious where you got the matting on the floor from?

Great work on the build!

Sam's Club for the mats. Thus far they have been a lifesaver for my feet and back!

jbsengineer said:

Sam's Club for the mats. Thus far they have been a lifesaver for my feet and back!

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Thanks for the info, will be looking for that next time I am there.

After some more tweaking in BeerSmith I believe I actually hit an efficiency of 91.4%.

My sparging was done in 1/2 the expected time so I will slow it down more in my next batch which could increase the efficiency a little bit.

I plan to do another Kal recipe on Monday (it's helping me familirize with the new process and dial in the equipment into BeerSmith). I'm going to try his Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA clone recipe.

jbsengineer said:

After some more tweaking in BeerSmith I believe I actually hit an efficiency of 91.4%.

My sparging was done in 1/2 the expected time so I will slow it down more in my next batch which could increase the efficiency a little bit.

I plan to do another Kal recipe on Monday (it's helping me familirize with the new process and dial in the equipment into BeerSmith). I'm going to try his Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA clone recipe.

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Funny I just rebrewed the BYO Torpedo clone last week - Have brewed it 4 or more times, it is dead on.

Love that brew

Good luck!

is the efficiency that high due to better sparging? i know the temperature control is perfect, but that's obvious

mendozer said:

is the efficiency that high due to better sparging? i know the temperature control is perfect, but that's obvious

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It's dozens of factors. Basically careful attention to detail. Including:

- Good crush
- Proper mash pH
- Long mash with good recirculation
- Doing a mashout to allow wort to flow easier
- Slow fly sparge / keeping water above grain bed / proper flow rate
- Excellent Blichmann false bottom which basically completely elliminates any channeling/shunting

Probably forgetting a few. Again, it's basically looking at each aspect and doing it the best way possible. My efficiency's typically a consistent 95%.

Kal

I heard pH matters but someone told me they used 5.2 and their eff dropped 2%.
What do you mean by "mashout"? I mash in a cooler then drain off followed by a sparge

mendozer said:

I heard pH matters but someone told me they used 5.2 and their eff dropped 2%.

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The product called 5.2 stabilizer from Five Star chemicals? (IMHO that stuff is more trouble than it's worth), or do you mean that they modified or did something else to their mash to get to 5.2 (like adding salts or various grains known to modify mash pH)?

It could be that for someone somewhere doing something to their mash caused their eff by 2%. Without really knowing exactly what they did, it's not very useful information for you to use. Who knows exactly what they did. Proper mash pH is important for proper conversion and many other factors (body/flavour). That much is true. There's not one "right" pH necessarily either. There's a range. Really depends on what you're going after.

mendozer said:

What do you mean by "mashout"? I mash in a cooler then drain off followed by a sparge

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http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter17.html

What is Mashout?

Before the sweet wort is drained from the mash and the grain is rinsed (sparged) of the residual sugars, many brewers perform a mashout. Mashout is the term for raising the temperature of the mash to 170°F prior to lautering. This step stops all of the enzyme action (preserving your fermentable sugar profile) and makes the grainbed and wort more fluid. For most mashes with a ratio of 1.5-2 quarts of water per pound of grain, the mashout is not needed. The grainbed will be loose enough to flow well. For a thicker mash, or a mash composed of more than 25% of wheat or oats, a mashout may be needed to prevent a Set Mash/Stuck Sparge. This is when the grain bed plugs up and no liquid will flow through it. A mashout helps prevent this by making the sugars more fluid; like the difference between warm and cold honey. The mashout step can be done using external heat or by adding hot water according to the multi-rest infusion calculations. (See chapter 16.) A lot of homebrewers tend to skip the mashout step for most mashes with no consequences.

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You should probably start a new thread or search here if you have pH/efficiency questions.

Kal

CidahMastah said:

Funny I just rebrewed the BYO Torpedo clone last week - Have brewed it 4 or more times, it is dead on.

Love that brew

Good luck!

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Mind sharing your recipe?

I haven't done anything with PH yet. I do plan to in the near future.

Also, I just sent out a water sample to Ward labs to get a baseline for brewing salts.

Awesome build. You have some serious woodworking skills. Your stand is beautiful. Now lets see how quickly you use up that pallet of grain from the last group buy.

jbsengineer said:

Mind sharing your recipe?

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no problem - you will need beersmith to adjust.

5G batch, not sure what efficiency BYO uses, so plug in and adjust efficiency to get to the sg.

14lb pale malt
11oz C60
34g Magnum (60) - 14%
28g Magnum (5) - 14%
28g Crystal (5) - 3.5%

Dry hop:
19g Magnum - 14%
19g Crystal - 3.5%
19g Citra - %

152F mash
90 minute boil
SG 1.070 FG 1.018 (1056 yeast)

oh ok, well i dont need mashout since i do a good ratio of water plus my cooler won't heat up lol. just curious. I'm making damned good beer so I wasn't concerned, just curious

Great build. Nice work!!

Cidah - Thanks, I believe they state in the front that their standard efficiency is 65%.

jbsengineer said:

As far as the hop stopper, I did a fair amount of research about the negatives. So I have able to get 10 gallons of the wort cooled with 15 minutes and it took me another 15 minutes to get the last 2 gallons.

Click to expand...

Right now I brew on propane, and I use a 25' CFC to chill. I'm in the very early stages of designing my e-rig, and am trying to sort through all of the many variables in play. One of them is end-of-boil filtering.

I have never used any false bottom or screen in my kettle prior to now, I either throw hops directly in, or use the hop spider apparatus to keep the hops managed. I have managed to clog my CFC with hop flowers a few times and it's not fun at all.

But - one of the variables in my brew process that I really want to "fix" is cooling time - and especially, hot steeping time. Right now it takes me at least 5 minutes from flame-out to the first oz. of chilled wort coming out of the chiller. (Brew outside with no permanent stand or furniture, so I have to do a lot of rearranging, lifting the kettle up high, etc.) By the time chilling is over, the last couple gallons of wort have been steeping at 190-180*F for 20-30 minutes.

I was going to buy an IC - but I thought that seemed like a waste of money, since it's not terribly effective at cooling 10+ gallons. Long-term/in my eBrew setup I want to buy a HEX coil for step mashing. I was thinking about buying a pump instead (which reminds me, I've never heard of Chugger pumps before, thanks for the info) since the pump will be needed to use the HEX coil - and also so that I can chill through my CFC and recirc the chilled wort back into the kettle, lowering the total temperature and actually accomplishing some uniform chilling.

In order to recirc, I am clearly going to need to stop the material from exiting the kettle, and the Hopstopper was my choice until I read what you had just wrote.

So I guess my question is, is the long delay for siphoning the last 2 gallons of wort.... a) a big problem? ... b) worth considering a different filter/strainer approach?

What changes - if any - do you plan to make, to compensate for the Hopstopper's propensity to lose suction at the end of siphoning? Are you thinking about switching to a different product?

My buddy just bought the filter from brewershardware.com. We'll try it on 8/3/12 with the first run of my electric brewery build. They have an informative video and great prices. Down side is that it takes a 1.5" TC.

Way old thread but beautiful job. Just bought a house and have a room already wired to go electric. Was a joy to read through your build and get some ideas