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Oldyote

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Feb 28, 2010
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Location
Duluth, MN
I've been brewing with a Blichman Boilermaker (10 gallon) kettle. I have a gas range with a 24000 btu burner so it works ok but takes awhile to get a full boil going. I also drive my wife and rest of the family crazy with all of the other brewing paraphernalia that goes along with all grain brewing.

We are looking at building a new house where I would have the opportunity to design a dedicated space for brewing. We are building on a slab (no basement) but I will have an area for a workshop/brewery. I drew up a rough idea and showed it to the builder who immediately started talking about makeup air, carbon monoxide, venting, explosions, and all other forms of you can't get there from here kind of lingo.

I know he was right to question all of those things as I had not considered eveything I would need to do in order to build a safe brew area. I'd love to hear from anyone who has built a dedicated space and what specific considerations I need to take into account in order to create a space I can use without using the entire house budget on the brewery. I currently make 5 gallon batches but would someday likely move up to 10 or 15 and would want to size the area appropriately.

I've also seen some info on all electric brewing but again do not want to burn the house down, or spend thousands of dollars on a reall cool, but I'll be divorced before the house is built electric brewery. We live in Northern Minnesota so outdoor brewing can be a bit on the chilly side many months of the year.

Any and all advice will be appreciated.
 
Electric will get you out of a major exhaust plan, but you'll still want to do something with the vapor from the boil-off.
Your homeowner's insurance will probably require some sort of hood and potentially fire suppression or they'll deny you if something goes south.
Realistically, you aren't going to pull more than 1500cfm and that is not really going to require makeup air, just a window or something you can open so can get good air flow. Yu may just want to install a roll up door that you can keep open in the warm months and not have to worry about fumes and water vapor.
If you get a fan that will do that, you could probably DIY a hood canopy as class 2 hoods usually do not require a licensed installer. If you end up having to go with suppression it is too much money.
Class One hoods with Fire suppression start at about $18000 installed.
 
insulate it seperate from the rest of the house, have big box fans blowing out one wall and a window to open for a full vent on the other side and wear a coat
 
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