Advice on building a brewing sculpture

I'm looking for advice on brewing sculptures as I'm planning on making one soon.

Why do so many people go with the gravity driven system? I found pumps online for about $100 a piece, which really doesn't seem too bad. I foresee that dumping water into the top level pot to be a bit of a task.

Anything that I should know about pumps? If I built a level system that was all pump driven, do I need special pumps?

I do batch sparging, if that makes any difference.

ninjai said:

I'm looking for advice on brewing sculptures as I'm planning on making one soon. Why do so many people go with the gravity driven system? I found pumps online for about $100 a piece, which really doesn't seem too bad. I foresee that dumping water into the top level pot to be a bit of a task. Anything that I should know about pumps? If I built a level system that was all pump driven, do I need special pumps? I do batch sparging, if that makes any difference.

Click to expand...

Bottom line, gravity is cheaper
If you go single tier with pumps, yes you need food grade, heat tolerant pumps as you are pumping hot product that will be consumed. Basically they are not everyday pumps.

I just bought a few of these and they seem to work well: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-High-Qu.../130996115532?pt=BI_Pumps&hash=item1e7ffa184c I have three of them, one for my rims, one for mlt transfer, and one for HLT transfer. I use a Beaglebone black to control their speed via pwm, but you can just hook them up to 12v wall charger and let them go. They are much slower than a march, topping out at about 2.5gpm, but are good for low flow applications like rims and sparge. I still use a march on my boil kettle to recirculate wort through a plate chiller and transfer to carboys. They are listed as food safe, but they are shipped directly from china, so I may be showing my naïveté in believing them, but I am still alive Regardless, have fun building your sculpture, best of luck!

I have a two-burner single tier, direct fired MT with RIMS and direct fired BK. I use a remote electric HLT that sits off to the side. Everything is driven with one steelhead pump using cam locks and silicone hose to move around as needed.
If I was to do it over, I would use the same exact stand, except go with a round cooler MT and direct fire the HLT and BK. I might switch over, but it's a shame not to use the insulated direct fired MT... it looks really pretty, but I've scorched the wort more than once, and even when insulated, the SS tun looses too much heat.

Sticking my garden hose into my HLT isn't too hard and I don't have to spend a lot of money on a pump.
Im going to spend my money on a filter and some (RV?) white potable water hose.
I was on the fence about building a single level with a pump or a "Brew Tree"and I left it up to my daughter what I would build because I couldn't make up my mind. She said "Brew Tree" and she wants to paint flames on it so I'm gonna let her!
:rockin:!LOL

I don't even have to use a hose, I plumbed the stand with a filter and shutoff value to fill the top pot and it also has a sight glass, advantage is no cost for pumps and don't have to be concerned if they will fail.

My son and I have been talking about our design and the space limits, we came up with the idea of a two tier with HLT and MT on the same level and kettle lower, with a one pump system would mean only hot water going through the pump (NO CLEANING of the pump) and gravity for the wort. Then when not in use we could stand it up on end like one of the commercially produced rigs so that it doesn't take up as much floor space. BTW the MT will be a 10 gal round orange cooler. Any words of wisdom on this system idea?

Tex60 said:

My son and I have been talking about our design and the space limits, we came up with the idea of a two tier with HLT and MT on the same level and kettle lower, with a one pump system would mean only hot water going through the pump (NO CLEANING of the pump) and gravity for the wort. Then when not in use we could stand it up on end like one of the commercially produced rigs so that it doesn't take up as much floor space. BTW the MT will be a 10 gal round orange cooler. Any words of wisdom on this system idea?

Click to expand...

This is exactly what I have. I added casters to the side so I can roll it around for storage. Works like a charm.

so tell me about your pump setup, does it just have one flow rate or can you slow it down for fly sparging? what kind is it? got a pic of the rig?

Tex60 said:

My son and I have been talking about our design and the space limits, we came up with the idea of a two tier with HLT and MT on the same level and kettle lower, with a one pump system would mean only hot water going through the pump (NO CLEANING of the pump) and gravity for the wort. Then when not in use we could stand it up on end like one of the commercially produced rigs so that it doesn't take up as much floor space. BTW the MT will be a 10 gal round orange cooler. Any words of wisdom on this system idea?

Click to expand...

This is exactly what I have. I added casters to the side so I can roll it around for storage. Works like a charm.

Tex60 said:

so tell me about your pump setup, does it just have one flow rate or can you slow it down for fly sparging? what kind is it? got a pic of the rig?

Click to expand...

Simple valve at the output side of the pump.

acidrain said:

Simple valve at the output side of the pump.

Click to expand...

The back pressure doesn't cause a problem for the pump? I'm asking because I work with some pumps that pump oil and the back pressure is bad for the seals in the pumps

There are no seals in the pumps... they are magnetic drive which acts as kind of a clutch.

hightechlofi said:

I use a Beaglebone black to control their speed via pwm, but you can just hook them up to 12v wall charger and let them go.

Click to expand...

Whoa, it never occurred to me to try this! Care to explain how to you've got it set up? I've got my beaglebone black mining bitcoins with a few ASIC's but they're not really profitable anymore...Sound like i have a new project coming up!

DangerChristensen said:

Whoa, it never occurred to me to try this! Care to explain how to you've got it set up? I've got my beaglebone black mining bitcoins with a few ASIC's but they're not really profitable anymore...Sound like i have a new project coming up!

Click to expand...

You can use bonescript to control it. Basically, find a pwm pin (I would start with P9_14, it is already correctly configured by default) and use the analogWrite() method which takes an argument from 0 to 1. So if you pass .5 it will run at half speed.

On the hardware side, all it is is a transistor and diode to use the 3.3v output of the BBB to control a 12v signal. Here is the blog post I based my setup on: http://bildr.org/2011/03/high-power-control-with-arduino-and-tip120/

Playing with the BBB as a brewery controller is pretty fun, you can make it really simple, or get as fancy as you want. Mine is still a work in progress, mainly because I keep thinking of functionality to add. I just added flowmeters to all my pumps so that I can use them like a trip meter during transfers and can nail down my volumes. I am also using them to allow me to set a desired flowrate, and let a PID algorithm control the pump power to maintain it. My thought is that I can use this to match the output of pumps for activities such as sparging.

I am using a web interface, so it is kind of nice to be able to control everything from my ipad.

Sorry for the long winded reply, I just get a little excited about the project.

hightechlofi said:

I just bought a few of these and they seem to work well: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-High-Qu.../130996115532?pt=BI_Pumps&hash=item1e7ffa184c I have three of them, one for my rims, one for mlt transfer, and one for HLT transfer. I use a Beaglebone black to control their speed via pwm, but you can just hook them up to 12v wall charger and let them go. They are much slower than a march, topping out at about 2.5gpm, but are good for low flow applications like rims and sparge. I still use a march on my boil kettle to recirculate wort through a plate chiller and transfer to carboys. They are listed as food safe, but they are shipped directly from china, so I may be showing my naïveté in believing them, but I am still alive Regardless, have fun building your sculpture, best of luck!

Click to expand...

What is the thread size on the inlet and outlet of that pump? I was just looking at getting a couple of these for myself!

I went from a gravity system to a 3 kettle/1pump batch sparge direct fired RIMS system and have not looked back. That third tier is tough. I was using a pump to whirlpool on the gravity system anyway. So it was a no brainer for me.