burner/logistics for 55 gallon kettle?

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mandoman

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So I'm eyeing the sweet 55 gallon blichman kettles and wondering to myself, "How would you heat 55 gallons?" and "How friggin' heavy is that and would a structure hold it". Anyone have experience doing this kind of thing? It'd be killer to brew a 1 bbl batch using 3 55s and a 42 gallon conical.


Chris
 
Well, firstof all, you wouldn't really be boiling 55 gallons to make a 1 bbl. batch.
figuring in boiloff, you'd probably be boiling at most 36 gallons at a time. If you figure the wort is roughly 8-8.5 lbs per gallon, at most it would be 306 lbs of boiling wort. Add to that the weight of your kettle(maybe 60 lbs) your total is around 370 lbs. I would thimk any kind of steel structure you could put together would hold just fine, so long as the welds are solid. As far as a burner that would boil 36 gallons, I can't answer that. I have a 52 gallon SS pot, but have not yet used it.
 
I'm a gas safety engineer and I love this kind of stuff! For that quantity I'd use an induced draft SS tube-type heat exchanger immersed in the wort. Power wise you are probably looking at 400,000 BTU but that is largely dependent of the efficiency of your system. Also very expensive...

If you didn't go immersion then a jacketed kettle would work. Again, forced draft, custom fabbed which is generally a little out of a homebrewer's scope....

Hmmm... if the kettle is big enough you could simply put 3 KAB5's under it. Very inefficient but it would work. You would need to run them near wide open and use 3 20 lb tanks or a 100lb tank with manifold to prevent freeze-up. Possibly more on a cold day.

What is the diameter of the kettle?
 
chillhayze, great name - my bandmates and I go by that name sometimes.

I could really use your expertise. I'm seriously considering a teeny 'pro' brewery operation. I have completed several business plans and I even have one with my basic keggle system. Of course, the smaller the system the more work so I'm trying to figure out how to fill a fermenter big enough for about a 1 bbl batch and 55 gallon kettle, mlt, and hlt would work perfectly. My biggest stumbling block is how to do it indoors without crazy $10k worth of ventilation. The 55 gallon kettles average around 24" diameter outside and about 28 inches tall. I'm very interested in the internal heating as jacketing something sounds difficult and expensive. Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated!!!!!!


Chris
 
chillhayze, great name - my bandmates and I go by that name sometimes.

I could really use your expertise. I'm seriously considering a teeny 'pro' brewery operation. I have completed several business plans and I even have one with my basic keggle system. Of course, the smaller the system the more work so I'm trying to figure out how to fill a fermenter big enough for about a 1 bbl batch and 55 gallon kettle, mlt, and hlt would work perfectly. My biggest stumbling block is how to do it indoors without crazy $10k worth of ventilation. The 55 gallon kettles average around 24" diameter outside and about 28 inches tall. I'm very interested in the internal heating as jacketing something sounds difficult and expensive. Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated!!!!!!


Chris


If the tube heat exchanger is a route you might want to take there are essentially 2 options: One is to build the heat exchanger yourself. This would require some knowledge of gas combustion, burner design, etc. There is a publication called "The fundamentals of Gas Combustion" it is about $70 but well worth it if undertaking a project such as this.

The other is to call Heatco, give them your information. They do the calculations and quote you on a system. $$$$

The design of this works similar to your household furnace, if gas or oil. Gas is fed to a burner at low pressure (less than one psi) and is forced thru an orifice at this point, the air is drawn in and mixed with the gas. In the presence of heat from an ignition source, the mixture is ignited. These burners are firing into long U-shaped tubes about 2-3" dia. A draft inducer blower is used to pull these hot gasses through the tubes (heat exchanger). Your heat exchanger for this application would need to be appropriate for food applications so you are looking at some 400 series SS ($$$) If the blower did not run, the system would be out of balance and cause many problems which is why if the blower is inoperative the gas cannot ignite due to safety controls. Exhaust is directed through the blower and then outside.

Your setup would involve the tubes running through a kettle. Likely through the side so as to be completley exposed to the wort.

All this boiling would make a lot of steam to get rid of. So much you would need make-up air and a type 2 exhaust hood. Making and installing it yourself wouldn't run more than a few hundred dollars. Might look ghetto but would work just fine for home use (Check NFPA 96). A professional install may run $5-10k.
 
Why does it have to be an indoor system? If I was trying to boil 55 gallons at a time...I'd do what the maple sugar producers do and use wood like in a sugar shack.
 
My boil kettle is a 55 gallon SS drum. I heat it with two 4500 watt hot water elements running on 240 vac controlled by a PID. For a 30 gallon batch, I start with 39 gallons of wort. After I bring the wort to a boil, I back off my elements to 85% power to maintain the boil.

I used to easily boil 21 gallons of wort with a single propane turkey fryer burner from Cabelas. I would think you could easily boil a 30 gallon batch with two of these burners. Indoor would be a major ventilation issue. Outdoor, no problems.

The Chuck Norris approach would also work.
 
I use two SQ-14 burners under my 55gal kettle and it takes less then 20 minutes to go from mash temp to a boil. Once at a boil I can hold it with one of the burners.
 
We're getting closer to figuring out the brewery thing and just found out that NG is an option. I'd like to rig a single lowboy burner using a 300,000 btu NG burner ring (like NB and others sell). I'd like any feedback y'all can offer about this type of set up.

Also, a smaller burner will be used to heat hot liquor. Mash is insulated direct infusion and won't be heated by NG.

My thought is to buy the burner rings (one big, one smaller), get someone to pipe it on the rig and to the inlet for NG from the outside with ball valves on each burner to control the flame. I will either use my old sq14 and kb4 banjo burner stands or build stands. Thoughts?

Chill, I hope you see this if not I'll PM
 
Please forgive me, I know this reply is over two months past the original post but, I’m not sure the math in the first reply is entirely accurate. A 48gal boil for a 31gal (1BBL) finished batch is appropriate. A 5 gal finished batch will have a boil size between 6 and 8.5 gallons, not pounds. Multiply that by 6 to reach 1BBL and your boil is between 36 and 49.2gal. The low end making some fairly weak tea based on today’s typical Microbrews. One gallon is 8lbs so your weight is 288lbs to nearly 400lbs, depending on the size of your boil.

A high gravity beer is going to have a larger boil, towards (or beyond) 48 gallons, which will be the max for your 55gal brew pot. That will fill your pot to less than 4 inches from the top. I don’t know how your boils go but 4 inches isn’t a heck of a lot of room to me. If you look at Blichmann’s own sizing guide you’ll see that 55gal is small for a 31gal batch. The other pots are twice the size of the recommended maximum finished batch except for the 15gal pot which has a max finished batch of 8gal. If you don’t already have your 55gal boiling pot you might concider a larger one. Extrapolating from Blichmann’s own numbers for smaller pots/batches, a 60 or 62 gallon pot seems more appropriate for a 1BBL finished batch.
 
Please forgive me, I know this reply is over two months past the original post but, I’m not sure the math in the first reply is entirely accurate. A 48gal boil for a 31gal (1BBL) finished batch is appropriate. A 5 gal finished batch will have a boil size between 6 and 8.5 gallons, not pounds. Multiply that by 6 to reach 1BBL and your boil is between 36 and 49.2gal. The low end making some fairly weak tea based on today’s typical Microbrews. One gallon is 8lbs so your weight is 288lbs to nearly 400lbs, depending on the size of your boil.

A high gravity beer is going to have a larger boil, towards (or beyond) 48 gallons, which will be the max for your 55gal brew pot. That will fill your pot to less than 4 inches from the top. I don’t know how your boils go but 4 inches isn’t a heck of a lot of room to me. If you look at Blichmann’s own sizing guide you’ll see that 55gal is small for a 31gal batch. The other pots are twice the size of the recommended maximum finished batch except for the 15gal pot which has a max finished batch of 8gal. If you don’t already have your 55gal boiling pot you might concider a larger one. Extrapolating from Blichmann’s own numbers for smaller pots/batches, a 60 or 62 gallon pot seems more appropriate for a 1BBL finished batch.

Well that's some nice math but I say he's fine. My 55 gallon works just fine.
I just did another 37 gallon (into the fermenters) batch of a barley wine with an OG of 1.096. Starting boil of 45-46 gallons. Not a problem at all.
 
I think the traditional brewing rule is 1.3X batch size. 7.5 gallons for 5 gal batch, 13 gallons for a ten gallon batch, and 40.3 gallons for a 31 (1 bbl) gallon batch. THe first 2 I don't think anyone will argue with you about. I'm pretty confident the last one will work, too ;)

Just a note, I'm going with 30 gallon HLT, 41 gallon (yup, 165 qt) cooler MLT, one pump, and the 55 BK. It will work for a while until I can go 10 bbl.

Math is cool, but doing it really brings it home.
 
If you can go with a 55 gallon MLT. My 150# grain + strike water was like 51 gallons.

What I did was I built my MLT from a 55 gallon plastic drum and insulated it. Works even better then my 20 gallon cooler MLT.
 
that's cool. My estimates show just over 100 lbs for my biggest recipe. I'm assuming (I know, I know) that if my mlt is 4 times bigger and my batch size is only 3 times bigger things should still work. 150 lbs is huge, isn't it?

thanks for the encouragement!
 
that's cool. My estimates show just over 100 lbs for my biggest recipe. I'm assuming (I know, I know) that if my mlt is 4 times bigger and my batch size is only 3 times bigger things should still work. 150 lbs is huge, isn't it?

thanks for the encouragement!

yes the 150 pounds was for a 37 gallon batch of barleywine at an og of 1.096
 
this is what you want. It will boil 55 gallons and I mean 55 gallons in 45 mins.
http://www.thegrillstoreandmore.com/image/products/big-pics/7544b.jpg
You will need to get the regulater for it too. You must also get a larger propane bottle. It will pull so hard it will freeze the tank up.
Mine actually froze to the ground. Note about burner. Make sure to check the high pressure nozels on burner. If damaged in any way return them. The burner will not operate properly. *bayoo Burner will not boil 55 gallons of water dont get for this application. It will only get it to 170 degrees. I built my stand out of left over angle 1/2 iron and had my dad show me how to weld.
What will you use for a fermenter?
 
initial fermentations will be split out in to 6 gallon better bottles. Hey, it's cheap. Once the brand is established we may advance to 85 gallon plastic fermenters (conicals) or go straight to 15 bbl jacketed conicals depending on investor interest. For now we're going cheap so we can bail if we start to fail. I'm looking at the flame coming out of the kab6 and thinking it will boil 30 gallons. Next phase choice is natural gas and using ring burners but I'm holding off on that til I see if this works.

Continued thanks for y'alls help
 
I've been looking into this as well, for much the same reason (starting a nanobrewery). I'm actually thinking that submersible heating elements might be a better route to go with 1 bbl batches. I'm not sure how much propane or NG is around you guys, but up here in the Northeast, gas isn't really that much cheaper unless you're heating a house, and I'm pretty sure the local zoning authorities would be much more amenable to not having 400,000 BTU burners indoors in their town.

I've looked into some various elements, and they seem to be fairly reasonably priced. As for tanks, I know tank-depot has some really cheap plastic cone-bottom inductor tanks up to about 110 gallons, and there's another site that does up to 55 gallon plastic barrels which, when insulated, would make a great MLT. That's the route I'm going to be taking when I do go commercial.

So yeah, I vote the electric submersible route.
 
I know this is way past the original date, but if anyone else is still wondering a good way to do this, y'all might consider a rocket stove.

http://www.aprovecho.org/lab/institutional-stove-project/institutional-project

Funny I found this thread through a google search, anyway, these are very efficient wood burning stoves that are capable of up to 1100*. (The website says 1100*C but if not, 1100*F would be great still).

The institutional size (standard manufacturing) says it can boil 30 liters in 22 minutes, BUT there is a guy online who makes ethanol fuel at home claims to boil 40 gallons in 30 minutes with a large version of this stove.

I hopefully will build one of these soon, and try some cooking, but also to heat my HLT and maybe my kettle. Only issue is keeping the mash moving at those temps on the kettle. For all those cooking indoors, the institutional size is designed with a chimney. All other variations could be fitted with a chimney for exhaust gases, and if need be, an intake for outdoor air



TPS
 
I read this long years ago, that's why I'm resurrecting it today. It cropped up during my boil off search.

I built a system with 55 gallon drums, which hold about 60 gallons of wort/water/mash. I use the top food service 32 tip burner running 7" wc service hooked up to 1 and 1/4" pipe over 80 ish feet from the main. I can achieve a boil in about 1 1/2 hrs. I'm looking to increase the pressure to 11" wc to run two burners simultaneously. If I had to do it again, I would use the smaller burners and buy four of them. This would allow some better control, but I think I may be being nit picky.
 
So, after a few uses, I thing the setup I have is fine. I would like to upgrade to an electric HLT so that I wouldn't have to wait around for strike or sparge water to heat up, and shorten my brew day. Although, I might have invested in an Alfa Lava chiller to help me get more hot water out from the chilling of the wort.
 
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