dyqik's budget basement build

Now I have a house to play with, I'm moving my brewing into the basement. Since my wife is changing jobs at the moment, I'm doing this piecemeal and on a budget. Once it's up and running and I can brew indoors, I'll start thinking about a more complete system, probably using a RaspberryPi based controller.

Previously I've been 3-vessel brewing for 5.5 gal batches with a single propane burner and a 11 gallon Bayou Classic pot, using a 10 gal cooler mash tun, and 5 gal cooler as a hot liquor holding tank. I already have a 2kW RIMS tube and Topsflo pump running with a simple standalone PID controller. I'm really not looking to go bigger, as it takes long enough to finish a keg as it is. I'd rather brew more different beers, or repeat a brew to get more beer.

I have a quarter of the unfinished walk-out basement to play with, with a good size window to the outside right where I'm brewing. This will be my first option for ventilation with a window fan - make up air is readily available from another window. The brew area has the 30A 4-wire dryer socket, a dedicated 20A circuit and a dedicated 15A circuit, so power isn't a problem. It's also next to the sewer and vent stack and the water supply for the laundry, so fitting a utility sink isn't too hard. However, the utility sink isn't plumbed in yet, and that will have to wait until we can afford the $800 for the plumber (DIY plumbing is illegal here in MA ) to move the laundry drain down 6", fit the sink disconnects and add a hose bib to feed my counterflow chiller. I'll buy a stainless prep table soon to fit the space between the dryer and the shelves to act as the brew stand, but the wire shelving you can see in the photos below is working OK for now.

This is the space at the start,with everything where it was put when we moved house:



The weekend before last, I fitted GFCI outlets to the 15A and 20A circuits, and fitted a 30A GFCI breaker to the dryer circuit (GFCI breakers for BR type panels can be found online for about the same price as/cheaper than a spa panel). I also built my kettle and control circuit, described in the next couple of posts.

Last weekend I brewed the first batch in the system, and although I got anomalously low mash efficiency for my RIMS/Cooler mash tun compared to what I used to get, everything went well.

This is the system before brewing last weekend, and the final picture is testing, recirculating PBW through the RIMS tube and mash tun to clean them out after they'd sat without being used for 9 months. This is the same configuration I use for mashing. I use the 5 gallon cooler to hold the sparge water, which is heated in the kettle during the mash. The RIMS system is powered from the 15A 120V circuit, so I can run the kettle at the same time. In fact, if I want to heat my strike water _really_ fast, I can use my 2kW Hot Rod on the 20A circuit at the same time as the 5.5kW kettle element, and recirculate some water through the RIMS system to preheat the pump, tube and mash tun, so that I'm drawing a total of 9kW . In reality, it takes me longer to weigh out the grains and mill them and prep my water treatment salts than it does to heat the strike water in the kettle.

My brew kettle is a Bayou Classic 44 qt kettle, bought secondhand from another brewing in the Boston area.

I've used a Still Dragon 2" weldless tri-clover fitting to fit a Brew Hardware 5.5 kW ripple element and Hot Pod to the kettle. I decided I needed the extra length of the tri-clover flange to be able to fit the 14" element inside the 13.5" kettle. I was able to borrow a 1.5" conduit (1.928" actual diameter) Greenlee Punch from work to put the hole in the kettle, but drilling the pilot hole was hard work.

Getting Bobby's ripple element to fit the Still Dragon tri-clover fitting was way too hard. The Still Dragon weldless tri-clover fitting is a little narrower than nominal inside, and about 1/2" longer than it needs to be, which makes threading the ripple element through the fitting very hard. Once it's through, the folded back end of the element sits inside the tri-clover fitting, and is very likely to touch the fitting unless you can get the element bent just right. Then it probably won't go through the fitting again. I believe the straight element is offset bent so that this wouldn't be an issue with it. After an hour or so of bending the element, I was just about able to get it to work without touching, but I am worried about scorching the wort inside the fitting where movement is somewhat restricted.





So don't try and copy this exact kettle design - either use the Brew Hardware straight element with the Still Dragon tri-clover fitting, use Bobby's 2" triclover solder flange, or his new 1.5" weldless triclover flange which he says doesn't have the above problems (and which I discovered in the week after I did this build ). Even more simply, you could go with the usual weldless install and bend the element to fit it in if your pot is too narrow for it. Bending the element to an inch shorter is pretty easy to do by hand.

I've also built a power controller based on the Still Dragon kit, but with a few extra features - a 30A contactor for positive on/off control, and a cheap voltage/current/power/energy meter bought from Amazon to allow me to set specific power levels. I built this into a Harbor Freight ammo box as a cheap temporary enclosure, but it was quite a struggle to get it all in and wired up. Don't do that, buy a proper enclosure with a lift-off front panel.







As you can see, I get about 2700W at 65% setting on the potentiometer. In use last weekend, I got fairly good boil control, with various degrees of boiling between simmer and edge of boiling over between about 60% and 80%. The current/power meter gives a good instant feedback to control this.

I've tested it all over the last couple of weeks - running flat out, I can get 7 gallons of 160F water to a very vigorous boil in 15 minutes. The boil responds almost instantly to changes in power level. Total cost to get from a propane brewing set up to a set up with a power controlled electric kettle on a GFCI circuit has been about $400. It would have been about $50 cheaper if I hadn't gone with the tri-clover option, and a little cheaper still if I'd sourced some more of the components individually online.

Great build! I'm looking to do something similar, although BIAB / 1V. What diameter is your kettle? Did you have any issues getting the StillDragon adapter to fit without leaking?

At just under 14" diameter, I'm concerned that my kettle may be too small for the 2" fitting.