The birth of Zeus. (Non typical brewstand build.)

Grill design, shown with the 11 and 20.5 gallon kettles sitting on top.



The up and down bars are 3/16" x 1" stainless welded on side.

The cross wise bars are 1/8" x 1" stainless laid flat.

The grills are held in place on the stand by 4 or 6 1/4" bolts.

I'm a bit worried about the bars warping with heat from the burner, but so what if they do a bit ?

I thought about making these out of mild steel, but then they would be a rust mess.

I'll have about an 1.25" between the top of my burner and the underside of the pot. That is about the same spacing as on the gas stove we have in our house.

I'm hoping that running the grill bars longwise will allow good air flow around the underside of the pot. The flame won't go outside of the bars at +/- 6", but there isn't a lot I can do about that.

I've tried to minimize the amount of grill bar that gets heated directly by the flame to minimize the amount of heat not going onto the pot and the amount of heat coming back to the frame.

The pots never touch the 2x2 frame, so the frame is not conducting heat away from the pots. I dislike designs that put the pots directly on the frame because usually the frame is cold relative to the flame and pot and the frame is usually impeding the air/flame flow.

I'm not sure I like this design.

I like this design better.



4 pieces of 1x1 tubing cantilevered off of the frame or a cross member of it.

They only catch the 11 gallon pot by a couple inches, but one could bolt tabs to the grill bars to keep the pot centred.

None of the grill bars are in contact with the flame.

The heat coming back to the frame via the grill bars would be minimal.

A 20 gallon pot weighs about 15 x 8.333 + 30 pounds for "stuff" = 150 pounds. Each bar would be holding ~40 pounds at most. It would put the frame members under some torque, in the order of 15-20 foot pounds but it should be OK with that.

The grill could hang the burners on a height adjustable mount.

The only problem is that I need to go out and buy a piece of 1x1 tubing (probably 20 feet) to build this grill. The entire stand will need roughly 10 pieces x 7-8" = 6-7 feet.

However, I could use the left over tubing for the grain mill assembly.

bottlebomber said:

8" max between the counter a roaring banjo burner element.

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Thanks.

My lines would be only a couple inches below the burner.

brewman ! said:

Thanks.

My lines would be only a couple inches below the burner.

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You may want to shield those somehow.

At this point I have to say that figuring out what to build takes longer than actually building it. At least for me, on this stand, anyway.

bottlebomber said:

You may want to shield those somehow.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

If I build the grill with the cantilevered 1x1 tubing, I need to run a 2x2 across the stand on either side of the center pot. I could run the appliance line inside them, to hide them and to shield them.

I don't know how warm those frame pieces would be though. I might be better to run the appliance lines under them and put a piece of stainless sheet on each side. That would be pretty good shielding and the lines would be secured.

When I was picking out my appliance lines, another brand was covered with a nice yellow plastic wrapper. I passed them up due to heat issues with the plastic and they were more expensive.

Stupid double posts...

Updated drawings.

Changed kettle spacing, added mounts for hot water heater, added the new grill structure.

It may too much to ask, but can you add the manifold and plumbing you are planning on using? I may be convinced to hard plumb my stand, although I'd like to see an example of some good hard plumbing.

Sure thing. I'll post it up when I plumb it, which is hopefully later this week.

Basically, I'm using a custom T on top of each pump with 3 valves on the non pump ends. 2 go to the manifold on either side and the other goes up to the return (sparge arm, etc) on the vessel.

I'm putting a union between each pump head on the manifold, so that the manifold breaks down for easy cleaning. Remove 4 screws on the pump heads and crack a few unions and the whole manifold is broken down, ready for washdown in the sink.

However, I'm hoping that by flushing with water and BPW after brewing and a flush again before brewing that I don't need to break it down to wash it very often. But I feel a lot better about having a manifold knowing that I can break it down to wash it if I need to. I don't think I could bring myself to go with a "hard" plumbed manifold.

Why am I using plate mount casters instead of stem mount casters ?

Good question.

It's because my casters are locking, both on the swivel and on the wheel itself and I was not able to find double locking stem mount casters. I was only able to find them as plate mount. Thus my casters are plate mount.

I wanted locking casters so the stand doesn't move when I'm working on a brew and so that I can park it on an incline (driveway ?) and it doesn't roll away.

BTW, I went with 4 swivel casters, not 2 swivels and 2 fixed.

Update.

There is a lot going on in my life at the moment, but I got the top of the stand welded up this week. Sorry, I don't have time to post pictures at the moment.

I'm hoping for a quieter week next week so that I can finish it up.

Tip: don't TIG weld in short sleeves. I got a (mild) "sun burn" on my arms doing so, similar to the burn one might get welding 7018 rods at high current. I knew 7018 rods could give one a sunburn, but I didn't think TIGing would. Now I know better.

How's this project going?

bottlebomber said:

Not if you have a ramp, and use a couple of these instead of casters
http://m.hammacher.com/Product/Default.aspx?sku=11983

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Or you could winch it into the back of your truck

jay8s said:

How's this project going?

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Its was going well, but its stalled at the moment, due to Christmas and a trip to Mexico and now I'm out of town for the weekend.

I hope to get back working on it next week.

I was wondering if you have fired up your on demand water heater and what kind of gpm you can get while still outputting 180 degree water?

JRems said:

I was wondering if you have fired up your on demand water heater and what kind of gpm you can get while still outputting 180 degree water?

Click to expand...

I haven't tested it yet. I'm still welding the stand together.

Sorry for the lack of progress on this project. In addition to being gone most of January, we've been shopping for a new house. We bought one yesterday.

Congrats on the new house! Hopefully it doesn't make the building of this fantastic brewstand a moot point .

Can't wait to see more progress on this. It looks like an amazing project.

BeardedIdiot said:

Congrats on the new house! Hopefully it doesn't make the building of this fantastic brewstand a moot point .

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Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, I'll probably be tailoring a portion of the garage to brewing and it will now be part of a larger setup.

Can't wait to see more progress on this. It looks like an amazing project.

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I can't wait to get back working on it !

Buy a house.. from what i've seen you should just weld your own together.

impressive stuff

That's ok man, we'll be here, waiting

Did you come to a conclusion on how to deal with the dead space problem with your pump manifold? I was thinking about going with a cross-based manifold too, but I was also worried about the dead space in the cross. How much fluid is left behind?

Can wait I see an update

Ha, I was just thinking about this recently too. Slacker!!

Time to revive this thing.

FYI, I'm a busy man these days. We had a baby back in July and now have 3 children, a 7yo, 3yo and 7 month old baby.

The house reno is more or less done. We moved in back in June. It turned out great.

I am now trying to figure out what I want to build. Things have changed since I started this thread.

My previous design was going to be powered by natgas burners. I intended to use it in the garage.

In our new house, I'll now probably have space (next fall) for a dedicated brewery in the basement.

I thought about building replica German barvarian brew haus, (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/ideas-adding-hobby-brewery-tavern-mancave-house-249040/) but I've pretty abandoned that because I'm not sure how much it would get used, especially since our house already has (or will have) really nice space for entertaining/consumption of beverages. Ie, it has a really nice kitchen and family room on the main floor and it will have a great bar/games area/ media room in the basement.

I also rewired the house such that I've got access to a 240V 100A feed in both the basement and the garage. So the question becomes, do I still want to brew in the garage or do I now want to brew in the basement ? Do I want an electric brewery or a gas fired brewery ?

The garage presently isn't heated or insulated but will be at some point. Its going to be a pretty plush garage, with painted drywall, probably a couch, etc.

I'm also considering using steam injection in the mash tuns. My current design uses a natgas fired direct heat mash tun.

I also have a SS table that I bought a while back that I haven't been talking about. If I ended up building a basement brewery, I'd want the sink I bought mounted with that table so they can be used together. However, if I'm brewing in the garage and rolling things out to use, I'd probably rather have the sink built into the brewstand like I had designed.

Lots to think about here. Essentially I'm starting over.

One more thing... I lost all the plans and drawing I made when the SSD on my laptop died. So I'm really back at square one. Yes, I cut the SS tubing to built the designed stand, but that isn't a major impediment to building something new.

Any advice ?

Zeus is being reborn.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/zeuss-rebirth-non-typical-all-steam-brew-stand-455905/#post5854615

wow cool...let's see the finished product.