Building a brewtable from SS Work table

[njenabnit]

I picked up one of these brew tables from HD when it was on sale yesterday after checking to make sure that 60 inches was long enough for all 3 of my brew kettles.

I am now in the planning phases for modifying this thing to work with my setup. I have 2 keggles and 1 15.5 gal bayou classic kettle for boiling. I'm all electric with an element in the HLT and the boil kettle. My mash tun is a bottom draining keggle with a right angle elbow kicking the wort back out to the front. I have a HERMS coil in my HLT and a control panel built up.

Currently when I brew, I set my control panel in a chair and my BK and HLT on the driveway. My Mashtun is elevated by 3 brick to allow the bottom drain pipe room. It looks pretty ghetto.

What I'm thinking about doing is first adding casters to make it somewhat mobile, mounting my two pumps to the bottom rack and adding a splash guard, and then somehow elevating my mash tun to allow for bottom drain or cut a hole so it drains under the table top. I would prefer not to cut a hole just to keep the table intact, but I'm not opposed to that if it is the best option.

I'm looking for tips on how to go about doing this. I have some ideas in my mind, but I want to see what the bright folks on HBT can come up with as well. Any ideas?

 

[dfess1]

I'd look into a solid piece of butcher block the length/width of the table top. Then attach it with screws from underneath. From there, you can cut out your drain relief in the block. Reason I'd do that is the heat generated will be conductive across the table top, the wood top should be a bit cooler. Not sure what the legs are made of, but you could weld in a nut in the bottom of the pole. Then get the casters that you can run a bolt through, up through the nut into the leg itself. That could work.

 

[Brettomomyces]

I did exactly this, so I can share my experiences on it, as some pics as well.

My table is 60x30, I got it from another homebrewer on CL and he had already installed some casters on the legs. Little guys, but my system doesn't move much.

I mounted two pumps on the lower shelf, no splash guard yet, but after a couple of really nasty boilovers it's good to know they're in a safe spot. Definitely will end up doing something in the future. What I might reccomend is to use some kind of noise insulator between the pump mount and the table shelf. It's hard to tell, but I feel like the table is "enhancing" the sound from the pumps.

My setup is 3 bottom drain keggles. Originally I was thinking of just using a hole saw to drill just big enough for the bottom drain outlet to slide in. Downside to this is that you would have to unthread the fitting from the triclover underneath the table to be able to pull everything apart. I didn't like that idea, so I used an angle grinder and the filter stand from my false bottom to make an outline. Go very slowly. After cutting the lids off all my keggles I got pretty good at using the angle grinder. I will say its definitely easier to use so that it's pulling toward your line, and then slowing down the speed. It's probably a 5" diameter hole now, I've never measure it, but it's big enough that using a screw driver (or my hands) I can unthread the triclover and pull everything apart from underneath. I clean in place and have only needed to do that once, but it's easier.

My table dips a bit in the middle when it's at full weight, but not even to make me worry for half a second, even with the big holes cut into it.

Reason I'd do that is the heat generated will be conductive across the table top, the wood top should be a bit cooler.

The table top on mine is room temp all the time, no noticable amount of heat transfers to it. The collars from the kegs keep everything a few inches off the top and nearly all of the heat is contained inside the keggles. I insulated everybody with a couple layers of reflectix. Well, one on my mash tun, I need to add some more to that guy.

I've also improved the crazy hose situation since then. I have a 6', a 2', two 2.5' with big C cams for inlet to the pumps, one 3', one 4', and one 14' for filling the fermenter across the room.