Need help designing a -COMPACT- AG system

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

kvh

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 20, 2005
Messages
342
Reaction score
0
Location
Baltimore, MD
Ok, so I decided to post this nice and early so I have time to build it all up.

My situation is that I just moved from my apartment with a back yard to a 3rd floor 1BR with an electric stove and no reasonable access to the back yard. Couple that with the fact that in January I'll be headed to NYC where my girlfriend just moved. There we'll have a 5th floor walk up and no one even knows what a backyard is.

Suffice to say, she's gung ho for me to keep brewing (the kegerator is coming with), but I've recently begun AG, and have a decent system. However, I don't have a burner, a pot over 7.5g, or plans for either.

I have been thinking hard about how compactly I could build a system, and here's what I've come up with.

My current MLT, but modified with a pressure-cooker for steam mashes. (I like Mr. X's Design here)
2 five-gal pots for a split boil - I'll have a decent gas-stove up there. (need these - the current one I use isn't mine)
Better bottles or buckets for fermenting - no need for broken glass anymore - bottle bombs were enough.
My modified BeverageAir kegerator. (holds 4 kegs, have 6)

Anything I'm missing? I already do a quasi- recirculated-ice-water system to cool my wort - (more like a siphon from ice-water to another bucket).

I also need to make things as self-managable as possible since I'm losing my brew-partner when I move away.

Thoughts?

thanks all.
kvh.
 
Sounds like cooling's going to be the big challenge for you. Not sure how easy it will be to manage two ice baths at once. You could make a pair of small immersion chillers that would either hook up to the sink's faucet, or use a small pump to circulate ice water.

The other option you might have on the boiling side, I've seen pictures (within the last day, I think) of submersible electric elements that people use for boiling. Maybe something like that could be used, perhaps in a 10-12 gallon pot that's also being heated on the stove, so you wouldn't have to split the boil. Just a thought.... if you could do something like that, though, it would make chilling a lot easier. You'd definately need an immersion chiller (no ice bath for 5 gallons), but you'd only have to wrestle with one pot instead of two.
 
What I currently use is an immursion chiller siphoning 5-10 gallons of ice water. It works ok, but you're right, more boil, more heat, longer cool.

I'll look into the submersible electric heaters - that might be nice. My other issue right now is LONG boils, which leads to darker colored beer and a whole day of only brewing...

I found www.theoverstockedkitchen.com, which has both commercial and non-commercial SS stockpots - they have a pair, 20 and 24 qt, which, while not commercial quality, should be fine, and combined are only about $70. Plus, they'll nest when not in use. I'd like to find a pair about a gallon larger each - so I'll keep looking.

Thanks

kvh
 
Yeah, I agree with Bird that siphoning ice water probably won't cut it. A recirculating system using a pump might be your best bet.

You should also think about how you will maintain good fermentation temps in your apartment. Not sure how warm or consistent it would get in there, but you might want to build a fermentation chamber in your closet. Or get an apartment sized-freezer and a temp controller.

Otherwise, you sound good to go. Best of luck! :mug:
 
Your moving to the wrong place for room. Move to Texas. We'll be glad to have another homebrewer have a place to call home.
 
Bobby_M said:
You probably won't have enough circuits/current capacity to run hot enough elements to go electric.

Likely true, though I was imagining a combination gas/electric system, where the electric kept the boil going a little faster/hotter... Does anyone have more info on what Bird was talking about?

kvh.
 
I think you should go with something like Monster Mash's. Seems nice and compact. Just stick it on the patio. ;)

d659.jpg
 
Ha, yeah, wink wink indeed. That'll be in the works, in 5 years or so. For now, though, I think it qualifies as a fire hazard on the 'patio' (fire-escape).

thx though.
kvh
 
IF...and ONLY IF... you know what you're doing, you may be able to unplug an electric stove (there ought to be an outlet) and use that to incorporate 220v electric into a compact electric HERMS. Look at some of the electric-only systems....that is as small as you'll get with a brew-rig.
 
My thought was for the electric to be used as a supplemental, not primary, heat source for the boil. Do they all require 220V? I know nothing about these setups other than their existance.
 
kvh said:
Likely true, though I was imagining a combination gas/electric system, where the electric kept the boil going a little faster/hotter... Does anyone have more info on what Bird was talking about?

kvh.
You can buy electric 120V 'heat sticks' commercially, or you can make them yourself. Check out this link:
http://www.cedarcreeknetworks.com/heatstick.htm
 
Sorry to dig up my old post, I've been thinking and have more questions now...

The big concern from everyone seems to be cooling the wort. I have an immersion chiller which works fine, it takes a little while, especially since I didn't upgrade it when I switched to a pony-keggle. However I had a thought this weekend.

The first time I used my IC, I tried to run the wort THROUGH my the chiller, which was submerged in ice. That, obviously, was a bust, and I lost an auto-siphon in the process--but what if I did it properly. What if I made a nice beefy copper manifold that would drain off of the brew kettle spigot, through a cooler of ice, and into the fermentor? I recall a number of people telling me that cooling wort in-line, i.e. a bit at a time, produced off flavors of some sort -- something about hop oils I think -- however, it's not really any different than a CFC, or a glycol chiller like the pros use... I KNOW that 16lb of ice can more than sufficiently cool 5G of wort, I've done it.

It's all a matter of making this as efficient and compact as possible. The same cooler I mash in could later hold ice and this copper tubing rig, which would of course be used to flush the sanitizer with before the cooling began.

Feedback? thoughs??

thx.
kvh
 
kvh said:
Sorry to dig up my old post, I've been thinking and have more questions now...

The big concern from everyone seems to be cooling the wort. I have an immersion chiller which works fine, it takes a little while.

Feedback? thoughs??

thx.
kvh

I have an immersion cooler that I used but it would only get the wort to a bit under 100f using tap water. The final cooling took hours in an ice water bath for a 5 gallon batch.

Last time I used a submersion pump in an ice water bath and it was very quick. Place your immersion cooler in the wort as normal. After taking off the boil, use tap water to get the wort to under 100F. Then take a bucket or cooler full of ice and water, attach one end of the imersion cooler to the submersible pump and put the output side of the immersion cooler in the bucket as well. Turn the pump on and when the ice melts poor out some water and add more ice. I used a med sized pot for my ice and water bath, if you use a big enough cooler you will probably be able to forgo the having to add more ice.

I don't remember the exact details but I used 1 or 2 bags of ice and cooled 5 gallons to under 70 F in about 10-15 minutes. The pump is a waterfall pump available at home depot for $40-50, considering at how many hours I have sat around waiting for my wort to cool in the past well worth it.

When doing a large boil on an electric stove, I pour some of the wort into another pot and bring it to a boil and add it to the main kettle. Pull some more wort out and repeat. You could have two smaller pots helping the big pot get to a boil.
 
Photopilot said:
I have an immersion cooler that I used but it would only get the wort to a bit under 100f using tap water. The final cooling took hours in an ice water bath for a 5 gallon batch.

I use my current immersion chiller with ice water already. I fill a spare fermentor bucket with 16lb of ice, then get it floating with cold tap water, than let gravity feed it through my IC in the brew kettle, into another bucket on the floor. I get it to 70, it just takes a while.

kvh
 
Back
Top