upgrades to 1st gen sabco brewmagic RIMS

Howdy! I have recently pulled my first gen SABCO RIMS out of mothballs and am looking to upgrade it. It has single orifice jet burners for heat boost under three tanks and a simple temp. controller and water heater element to stabilize mash recirc. temps. The gas burners and valves that redirect flow through the single pump are all manual ball valves. I have always wanted to have a programmable mash capability.


Here's my plan, v1.0:

1. Have a homebrew.
2. put in nice impinged jets in place of the single jets.
3. shoehorn microprocessor control into the existing wiring to control the heater and the pump.
4. brew some beer
5. put solenoid valves and starters on the burners. Put them under processor control (3 burners)
6. put solenoid fluid valves on under processor control (5 valves)

Here are the existing guts:

Three position switch (off, pump, heat+pump), temp controller (Omron E5CS, which they still make), mechanical relay and GFCI switch. All controlling the water heater element and a 1.65 amp little giant pump.

I have talked to Sabco about what upgrades they have that I can retrofit. They have a burner upgrade but it looks less efficient than an impinged jet. They can't do any control retrofit and suggest buying a new BrewMagic (which is pretty snazzy and $$$) and selling the old but net new $$ would still be about $4k. I think I can get a lot of DIY goodness for that amount.

In particular the BCS-460 looks like it would work for me as I have gone IP device crazy in my house. I have reached out in the ECS forum on this gadget.

I have looked at all the solenoid valve info here and am a bit overwhelmed but that step is down the road.

I'd appreciate any comments from the folks here on my roadmap. Thanks for your help!

-- Art

I am in the middle of building a brewery based on a Brew Magic stand. I could not see paying almost $6000 for a complete system but they sold me the stand only for $900. I do weld but figured I would save alot of time by not having to fabricate a stand. It is making my project take alot less time. I have make some posts about temperature controlling a propane burner (Gas and Temperature Control for Dummies) and making a RIMS System (RIMS for Dummies) that may be helpful to you. If you are into automation I suggest you have a look at the Brewtroller Website. Upgrading your Brew Magic system is the way to go. It will save you lots of cash and you will have lots of fun doing it.

Sawdustguy said:

I have make some posts about temperature controlling a propane burner (Gas and Temperature Control for Dummies)

Click to expand...

This is terrific info and was just what I was looking for.

This solution has two states, on or off,. Can manually control the valve to dial back the burner once you get a boil going?

Thanks.