Muddy Creek Brewing Co. Brewery Build- Start to Finish Thread

[MuddyCreek]

Well, let's see...

The pilot system is finished except for the HERMs recirc/sparge return line which I'm doing tonight and the final water test. Tomorrow I'm off to get about 150 lbs of grain to store up along with my other stuff and Saturday will see our boil-test. Assuming all goes well - Sunday will be the inaugural brew with the pilot system.

We'll be doing a bbls worth of wheat ale plus enough on the side for a 6th to use for our August tasting. After that I'll brew up a chocolate stout, a blonde and an amber.

The brewhaus tanks should be in by sometime in early August. We could have gotten them earlier but didn't get word from the supplier soon enough to schedule our guy to fly out and pick them up. His work schedule forced him to wait another week or two. So, that's going to suck. In the meantime, we're getting the finishing electrical done in the brewery and doing more work in the tasting room.

I know... Fun for everyone! Everyone! We have our second tasting on the 30th. We had darn near 200 people come to the first so we're hoping to do even better this time. We'll be serving a vanilla porter and our blonde ale along with everyday favorites Root Beer, Lemonade and Ginger Beer.

Last time we had a tasting, the Martini bar that hosted for us did very well so we are hoping to give them a good night again. We've also invited the owners of the local distillery to let them see how our soft-drinks do with their spirits in mixed drinks. We are hoping to set up some accounts with them for the Root Beer, Ginger Beer and Lemonade.

Moving closer to opening. Always closer. I keep saying that so it must be true!

 

[SavoryChef]

Sounds great!!

 

[samandbekah]

This has beena fantastic read Muddy Creek! Good luck with your last final steps...

 

[MuddyCreek]

Ok, since I know we all love us some photos, I have some more for you. Things are finally ready to get a bit more exciting.

We have some promises to keep. One of them was to help the two pubs that share the building (more accurately own the building and rent to us) get tap systems up and running with our beer. In order to do that with the upstairs Martini bar we purchased a Keezer. We got it for a steal. It has 4 taps on it came with all the lines and connectors and a spare 5 lb cylinder. All we have to do is get the local college football team offensive line to lug it up the stairs for us. (I keed, I keed.) No. Really. That may be a good idea. They lug that thing upstairs we host a party for the team... I think a phone call is in order...

Anyway, that's one of our finds from a local consignment shop one of the owner's wives found. We also found a ton of restaurant sinks, tables and other handy stuff that we got at a great price.

We picked up a Nitrogen Generator which we are calling our "Nitrogenator". (My kids watched Phineas and Ferb if yours did too, you'll get the reference.) And we've got our brand new industrial shiny plate chiller which we'll use to turn our 10 bbls of boiling wort into nice cool ready to pitch wort in about 10 or 15 minutes. I have photos of those attached as well.

I have also talked about our marketing decisions to hold "Tasting Parties" to keep our fledgling following involved in our brewery as we are delayed in opening due to our brewhaus holdup. We had our 2nd tasting party last night featuring Storm the Door Vanilla Porter and Dirty Blonde Ale. (Is Dirty Blonde the most original name in the world? No? Is the the most bold beer ever conceived? No? Do 85% of most beer consumers prefer a light blonde ale that pretty much matches a light lager? Yes? Does that drive most of us brewers insane? Yes? Do we still want to make money in this business? Yes? Am I rambling and talking to myself? Yes.)

Anyway, some of the photos below show people at our tasting parties. over the two parties we've averaged about 200 people at each party give or take. Of course that's not hard to achieve given a free tasting. However we've gotten some really good feedback and what I've been most pleased with is that some of the local home-brew guys have come and even the guys who are very experienced and are well educated in their ability to assess beer quality are impressed with our beers. That's been most gratifying.

Finally, we installed and fired up our pilot system last week and brewed a 40 gallon batch of Wheat Ale called Good Time. It was a rough brew day. Things didn't go perfectly but I did get through it. My gravity came in a bit low but if the beer attenuates well things will come through fine. Given this was the first run on the pilot system I'm not going to be too unhappy with it. There are a number of things to correct and some new fittings to purchase and use but overall - we brewed 40 gallons of beer and it's going to turn out. A guy can't complain about that.

For the pilot system we ended up going with Bubba's Barrels. We recreated (essentially) my personal system and a very small and simplified version of our pro system. We're using an Electric HERM system with a BK, HLT and MLT. We are actually using 5500 watt elements in the HLT and the BK and we throw a little propane under the kettles if we need them to speed things up. (We had a miserable first brew day because the elements didn't fire and we were stuck to only propane. Try working with just propane and 50+ gallons of pre-boil wort. That's what makes for a really really LOOOOONG day! Anyway. We got through it and we hit our numbers fairly well.

And now for the really exciting news - our brewhaus tanks, the big ones, have cleared customs and we should have them in our facility by Wednesday or Thursday of next week. I expect it will take us two or three weeks to get them installed and wired up. We are toying with an unusual brewing process. It's a hybrid all electric HERM/RIMS concept. (I'll go into more details when I know it works. If it doesn't I have to go back to the drawing board and do it old school but if it works it's going to be awesome and sort of re-define how a micro-brewery can do things.) It could be way-cool and was made possible through our Walter White partner.

And last, we have a photo of somebody with our first growler sale! We're are provisionally licensed and legal to sell. We just haven't because it's too much work to go through the hassle of tracking barrels and everything. But we had someone last night who BEGGED us to sell her a growler of Dirty Blonde and so we did. There it is. Our first legal sale of beer and as I expected, it's Dirty Blonde Ale. It was a cash sale so we'll have to get one of the dollars out of it and have it framed as well as photographed.

Anyway, without further ado, here's some more eye-candy.

 

[MuddyCreek]

I'm so tired!

I finished our second batch on our pilot system last night. It has been challenging to say the least. It shouldn't be this hard! My HERM coil is entirely too small. I need to come up with a way to suspend my chilling coil inside the BK so I don't have to hold the behemoth myself. (It takes freakin forever to chill 37 gallons of boiling wort btw. Especially in the summer with less than freezing water coming out of your system...)

Nonethess, despite a very long day - I now have almost enough beer for our next 2 festivals in the fermenters. One more weekend out to do it. (I need to make a few more improvements to make next weekend better. A larger HERM coil will help a great deal. I also learned a bit about boil-off on the larger system vs my smaller system. a rolling boil on a 55 gallon barrel doesn't boil off like a rolling boil on a 5 gallon system. So you aren't going to boil off quite as much wort because the surface area isn't the same. IE, I'm finding with my pilot system I need to plan for less in the boil-off and up my Pre-boil gravity accordingly.

Half my delay over the last couple of weekends was trying to hit my target volume and delaying the hops additions to get the boil volume to the right amount. Well - THAT sucked! Now that I have a grip on that issue I think I can shave some time off.

Also, because the barrels are so vertically stacked, it makes heat distribution throughout them pretty darn challenging. But, you live and you learn. It still works, you just have to occasionally get the wort bed distributed and make sure your heat is evenly mixed.

At the end of all the HARD though - I finished with a 37.5 gallon batch of Muddy Creek Chocolate Stout that hit the numbers DEAD on. I was shocked. It came out perfectly. I overpitched by 150% so assuming everything goes well in the fermenter we are going to be ROCKING the Muddy Creek Ale in about 6 weeks.

(Ya we do it Farmhouse Style here. It takes longer, but the beer is so darn good!)

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, 4 days later and the fermenting room is smelling mighty good. We've got a healthy Krausen and we'll be taking our first beer out of the fermenter this weekend and kegging it. (It's off the pilot system so it's only two kegs, but still - exciting stuff.)

This weekend will be spent tidying up the brewery in a very real and legally binding sense. (Name the movie reference!) Why, you ask? Because we are TOLD that Sunday night or Monday morning will be a very very special day in our history and that we should have plenty of clear and accessible space in the brewery. I'll leave it at that.

There shall be more photos. We're getting close now and so you shall start getting more nuts and bolts of the business side. Maybe you don't want that. If not, let me know now and I'll refrain. We're getting into the supplying of grain, hops, yeast, cleaners etc. as well as the long-term management of our keg-rotation. (Remember, we're farmhouse style so we have to manage our brewing and aging schedule very carefully.) Everything is about inventory management. I just heard that one of the new breweries in the state who is also running a 10 bbl system opened up a month or so ago and actually ran out of beer within a week. That's just horrifying. I mean, what the hell are you going to do if you run out of beer in less than a week?

We've done such a good job with our marketing and pre-advertising that we feel like we're going to have a very good opening. I certainly don't want that to become a nightmare. We do have our store open by the way. (No I don't expect you to buy stuff, but you can at least look at the nice online shop template we found and put together.) We need to add some more products, but the interface is pretty as hell.

store.muddycreekbrewery.com (just copy/paste that as your browser link. The html link doesn't like it but it works fine just like that... trust me.)

enjoy!

I'll have some more photos for you this weekend, perhaps even some of us loading our first kegs into the aging room!

Cheers.

 

[Shuznuts]

Dominate dude! Right on. Please indulge us (me) with all the business aspects that you've encountered and practice thus far. Thanks for all this!


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[WilliamSlayer]

This weekend will be spent tidying up the brewery in a very real and legally binding sense. (Name the movie reference!)
Cheers.

Monte Python! Hope that Muddy Creek doesn't have the same problems as that castle. ..... :O

Loving this blog BTW. Please do feel free to pour out your thoughts and details on your supply chain, brewing process, whatever!

 

[plumber_bob]

Monte Python! Hope that Muddy Creek doesn't have the same problems as that castle. ..... :O

Loving this blog BTW. Please do feel free to pour out your thoughts and details on your supply chain, brewing process, whatever!

Heck I don't remember, but it seems like he skimmed through the pilot system set up. I'd like to know more about that too.

I know he's worried about boring us,... but how the hell can you bore a brewer with in depth details about you building a friggin' brewery? Most every brewer's dream/fantasy! Ain't it?

The more I learn about it, the less barriers I may see. Ha! Just like learning to brew,... period. No details, no walls come down. The ignorant will stay ignorant without information. Fear will not be over came without knowledge.

Pb --- yes,... I worked last night and already have had several. lol

 

[82shovel]

I find it very interesting and look forward to the updates

 

[Pickle29]

Please do fill us in on all the business aspects. Couldn't be more excited to hear about them. Also, seriously nice-looking online store. I may have to order me a pint glass or two.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, you asked for it...

And yes. I did skip the pilot system details. That did get lost in the mania. So let's cover that, shall we.

At first we were simply going to go with a very small pilot system that would give us access to 5 or 10 gallon batches. (It turns out Rogue uses a tiny little 15 gallon system for their "play batches".) However since we are still waiting for our brewhaus system and we have festivals to prepare for the decision was made to get into a larger pilot system that would help us ease into larger brewing and get some kegs ready for festivals all in one move.

To that end we went with Bubba's Barrels for our pilot system. I essentially mimicked our large system on a 55 gallon scale. We still have an EHerm system, however it's somewhat modified. I have my barrels set up on cinder blocks over propane burners with 5500 watt elements in the BK and the HLT. (55 gallons, really 45 boiling) is alot to expect from a 5500 watt element.) We have realized we have to do the same with our pro system. Our electrician has put some serious restrictions on what we can do with our power in the building so we are ultimately going to be "under-powered" in our electric setup. So what we'll do is pipe some natural gas under the BK. In a bit I will explain our HLT. It's a trip.

Anyway, That's what we're doing for our pilot system. With it I can easily kick out 36 to 40 gallon batches of product which gives me two full kegs and a 6th or a corny as I wish. I can run the pilot system pretty much exactly like we're going to run our pro system which helps me standardize our practices. I'm already starting to learn about how scaling needs to work. I've talked to other brewers, I've tested my equipment and ultimately it comes down to that. You just have to learn your equipment and your processes.

So far I've done three batches on the pilot system. My efficiency has improved each time and it should continue to do so. I'm working on improving specific aspects of the process each time. This week I vastly improved the Herms coil which made my mash WAY more efficient and helped quite a bit. I also fixed my chilling coil issue which gave me time to keg some wheat ale while my Dirty Blonde was chilling. That was nice. I'm still in ghetto mode while I wait on ordering proper transfer hose but, as you guys know - you make do with what you have. We're making do and we're getting the job done. I've got 36 gallons of beer in the cooler and another 36 ready to keg on Thursday. A decent yeast cake ready for my next batch of wheat ale and my most valuable yeast cake ready to be saved off on Thursday, so all in all, I'm happy as a pig in poo.

Now, you may remember that I mentioned that I had to do some cleaning last weekend because we had some important stuff happening... Without further ado -

Now for something completely different.

Photo 1, The Brewhaus tanks arrived Sunday night 8/10
Photo 2, My youngest. She knows where the college fund's comin' from...
Photo 3, After the tanks were wrestled into the basement we got them leveled...
Photo 4, The owners in front of the tanks.
Photo 5, Our first official "filled" keg. Good Time Wheat Ale. (Would be a Belgian Wit but I didn't use that type of yeast. ;-)

 

[MuddyCreek]

And now, the business side...

We went with Country Malt Group for our malting needs. It was really very easy to set up an account with them. Basically you need your Federal Tax Id and a pulse. Fortunately I had both at the time of application. I initially put in an order for all our malt, hops, yeast, and cleanser needs for the next month on our pilot system. This will give us time to assemble our 10 bbl system and get it tested. It only took CMG about a week to get our order to us so in about 2 weeks I will order our first LARGE batch of malt.

Now, our month's supply of pilot system malt and accessories ran us about $1600.00 altogether, I'd say. That gives me 4 batches of beer at about 40 gallons each give or take. Admittedly, I have extra hops as CMG only sells in 11# bags so I have quite a bit extra in some of my hops. However we plan on spending somewhere in the zone of 5k a week on materials alone for brewing when we fire up the big tanks. I'll be forthcoming with you when we actually do start writing the checks so you can have an idea what it really costs to fire up the big tanks.

I also contracted a GF malting company out of Chico CA for a small pilot batch of GF lager malt. We're going to put together two GF beers over the next couple of months and we'll start with a lager and move into an amber as well likely. Now, the GF stuff costs an arm and a leg. Because I only purchased enough for 1 pilot batch shipping KILLED me. But, because I am unfamiliar with GF brewing I don't want to dive in and purchase a ton of malt until I'm really comfortable with it and get some experience under my belt. The entire purchase ran about $350. I'll get about 36 gallons of beer out of that so you can see where that's going to be a very costly beer. As we buy more bulk the shipping will go down, but this is why GF beers cost more than regular beers. They cost ALOT more to brew and they take much more effort as you GF brewers know.

I had to also find a couple other hops suppliers as CMG does not have enough hops to support my habit for all my beers. I found a supplier that has 2 of my missing links but I still need a source for one more Hop. (Amarillo.) Ya. That Damn Amarillo. It's like finding fresh water in the middle of the ocean right now. I only use it for one beer, but it's one the products we expect will be very popular so I need to find a dependable source because right now the only source I have is very very expensive.

So currently I'm finalizing hops contracts with CMG and Sugar Hill. That will take care of my Cascade, Centennial and other needs. I merely need to find an Amarillo fix. We are currently working out a deal with our local (and becoming more famous by the day,) distillery to borrow a couple barrels so we can do some bourbon stouts.

We have also leased a 750 gallon CO2 tank for our carb needs. That should be installed in the next day or two. The gas guys will also handle our taproom gas installation. (Nice of them to take that on. I'll carb the kegs but I'll let them handle the top end pushing of the CO2 and Nitro-mixture through the taps upstairs.)

We had to finalize the payments for the sprinkler guy. Shockingly his original quote did not stand. the 17k he quoted turned into 22k + We have no choice to pay it. We were provisionally licensed a while back and that means you have to be inspected within 90 days. (All work has to be completed by then.) We can't have anybody else quote and do it in time so - there we are. Welcome to another aspect of working with contractors.

We also went back to the bank. We always intended to for operating capital. We hoped to use it you know 'AFTER' we were completely finished with construction etc. but some of the new money will be used finishing stuff up. As they say, always plan for more time and money. Turns out that's absolutely true.

Nonetheless we're closer. We should be open within a couple months now. I need about 1 month to get my big system put together, tested and brewing and another month to ferment and age and then BOOM! we're serving.

More later. I gotta go have lunch with my GC. That's how I roll.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Alright, business aspects... business aspects...

**** you didn't think about 101

Of course this applies to my stuff in Montana, so some of it won't apply for everyone.

Footprint

Floor Drains and Floor Water Flow Management:
Probably the biggest thing I'm kicking myself about right now and that I can't easily fix is my floor drain footprint. We designed our drainage system with our plumber, who has helped with a few breweries in the area and we thought we had a pretty good idea. now that we are starting up with our pilot system I am very quickly learning that I don't have nearly enough drain trough areas to account for my low spots. I have water going places I don't want all the time and I am constantly fighting that.

Since I don't have money right now to do the concrete work I need in order to fix the problem properly I'm making do with sand-bags etc. Before we can do tours and things I'll have to get some self-leveling mix in the basement and then get some better concrete work done to actually route water to my proper drains. In the interim I have learned to place my pilot tanks properly to manage water flow etc. and I know what to do with future concrete curbing etc. to handle water flow but for now, poor pre-planning has caused me a water control issue. So there you have ONE "**** I Didn't Think About"

Tank Placement:

I have a pretty standard offset inline tank placement, the flying V if you will. I have my BK, HLT and MLT lined up with the HLT slightly in front and flanked by the other tanks. Now this is great, except that the way we drew up the rooms in the brewery and turned them in to the Feds (in drawings that have to be inspected and basically have to stand for our license to be approved,) I have the milling room pretty far from my MLT. In fact I have my MLT farthest from the milling room.

This problem I CAN fix. I can simply reverse the order of my tanks. It's just a matter of personal preference. Of course then I come up against that weird voodoo of the brewer. Do I change 12 years of my brewing mojo so I can cut off 12 or 15 feet of auger line from the milling room? It will save me some materials and labor with the auger. I could fix it, I'm not sure I will. We'll see. However If I were to do this all over again I would definitely redesign the brewery to make the milling room MUCH closer to the brewhaus. As it is the milling room is practically across the brewery from our Mash Tun. That would be fine if we were Stone and could justify the distance because we were Golden Gods of brewing, but we haven't (and don't really expect to ever,) grown into that. So, tank placement footprint is ANOTHER **** I Didn't Quite Think Enough About.

Opening Day:

We ordered 96 kegs. We figured that would be enough to open with 4 regular beers along with one of those on Nitrogen as well as CO2. After talking with a few local breweries it became pretty clear that this was a very risky decision. A brewery just 4 hours down the road in a very heavily traveled tourist town (Kalispell,) opened this summer with a 10 bbl brewery like us. They had to close within a week because they ran out of beer. They literally had to lock the doors in the middle of a shift. Talk about a brewer's nightmare. One local brewery in a town about 1/3 our size is serving 2 1/2 bbls a night. This town is about an hour away from us. Another brewery about 5 hours away from us opened 2 weeks ago and is going through 1 1/2 bbls a night. This town has about 1000 people in town. (It is an active logging and popular vacation/tourist town though.)

The point is, these breweries are doing very very well when they open, which is kind of expected. We're in Butte which I pointed out from our research is rated in the top 5 per capita in the country for beer and alcohol consumption in the country. Butte folks like them some beer! We expect we'll open with at least 3 bbls a night, at 6 or more kegs an evening in house and 42 a week going farmhouse style it didn't take long for us to realize 96 kegs was absolutely not going to cut it. Now we're in panic mode to try to figure out how to get more kegs without costing an arm and a leg. We want to pick up at least another 90 or 100 because we'd like to distribute a bit too. (For those of you who don't know what farmhouse means - we keg all our beer and allow it to age naturally for about a month. It tastes better than way than just putting it in the keg, force carbing it and putting it out on the taps in just a few weeks from grain. It will take us 6 weeks from grain to glass, but the results are much much better.) However Farmhouse style requires way way more storage capability. There's some more **** I Didn't Think About.

Keg Cleaning:

With more kegs comes more keg cleaning. We can purchase expensive cleaning systems, and I'm sure we will get around to that eventually, but we're on a budget. After much research we came up with a pretty cool system of our own. You get a really good pump (your transfer pump perhaps,) and few used kegs that you fill up with PBW, and sanitizer of choice. Next you line up three or four of your (hopefully freshly finished kegs) that are ready to be cleaned.

You've got your transfer pump hooked up to a gutted sanke connector. The pump is going to put fluid IN to the "beer out" line of the connector. Because the tap is gutted it's going to allow free flow when the tap is "open". The "gas in" line of the connector is going to be connected to a hose that is connected to the "beer out" line of the next keg. Ultimately you're making a daisy chain that runs fluid INTO the "beer out" line and OUT of the "gas in" line.

First your run super hot rinse water from your HLT into the kegs. once you get the kegs hooked up, you want to turn them upside down on a pre-prepared table that lets you do so and has a hole cut in them for that purpose to let the taps and hoses hang down. Then you turn on the pump with all the valves open appropriately. The water runs through the system, spraying into the kegs and purging them out. Feel free to shake them around with gloves. (They'll get hot.)

Next you can unhook the water from the "Beer IN" line and hook up your Pre-Prepared keg of PBW or whatever you want to wash your kegs with. Then you turn the pump back on and run the PBW through all your kegs. This washes out all the kegs one by one. As your original PBW wash keg runs out you can either switch to CO2 to purge through all the kegs (kinda costly,) or you can switch back to HLT and rinse with water. Then go to your sanitizing solution and run that through. After the sanitizer, switch to water again and run that through unless your final sanitizing step is a "no rinse" type.

At the end, remove all the hoses from the sanke taps, let all the drips and drops drain away. Then you can hook up a regular sanke tap and purge the oxygen with CO2 and you have a perfectly good and ready keg.

The end of the daisy chain returns you to a dump container. (If you're running hot water through, that's your trough drain. If it's your PBW it goes back into a second PBW-storage Keg. If it's one of your other cleaning or sanitizing chemicals it goes into one of those storage kegs. Remember to always use proper gloves, masks and protective clothing when using the chemicals. That **** isn't real safe.)

There you have it, a reasonable, safe keg-washing system that won't cost you an arm and a leg as long as you use proper protective gear and shake the kegs as they're filling and draining. You can increase efficiency by adding kegs to the chain because you're just basically waiting for them to fill up and then drain at the end of the cycle. You just want to keep an eye on the state of your cleaner and sanitizer to see if it's getting funky.

I'll post more **** I didn't think about later. I have to think about some **** I didn't think about earlier.

 

[MuddyCreek]

And today's fun brewing thing of the day...

Paperwork!

You probably thought that you would MAKE BEER if you started a brewery. You thought you'd brew up awesome porters, stouts I.P.A.s and other brews and watch with delight as people quaffed your beer and marveled at the complex pairings of hops and malts and your unique flavor and aroma additions that surprise and delight.

Ya, you may get a few minutes here and there to do that. Maybe.

More likely you'll spend time figuring out where your percentage here or there was off, where you can find just a couple more pounds of hops are, or why your water bill is so damn high even though you've done everything humanly possible to be as conservative and efficient as you can while cleaning, sanitizing, brewing, then kegging. But you will DEFINITELY be working on your Federal Reports.

Each quarter (or each month, as you choose,) you are required to fill out a report detailing precisely how much beer you have produced, how much you have served on premises as well as how much you have distributed. All of this is necessary so you can be taxed appropriately for the product you have produced and sold. Now, this is why brite tanks with sight glasses are so tremendously handy! You can fill up your brite tank, mark on the sight glass where it was filled to and mark where it got down to via serving through the taproom and BOOM you know precisely how much you served in your Tasting Room. You also can mark down precisely how many kegs went out to your distributor etc. how many cans or bottles were filled and where they are in your supply/distribution chain.

Ultimately you have to account for every pint of beer that is brewed in the cycle. The TTB wants to know where that beer is and for every ounce that has been sold by YOU to somebody, you're going to pay a tax. If they find out you've messed up, on purpose on accidentally ~ well, let's not let that happen, shall we?

Paperwork becomes your friend. Tracking invoices, tracking inventory, tracking your brewing schedule, tracking your employee schedules. This is predominantly why running a brewery is a full time job. If all we were doing is brewing and packaging beer it might be something a guy could do part time. Honestly that was (still is,) my plan. I want to try to gap two careers until the brewery is going solid enough that it can truly support me fully so I can just dive over and do it 12 hrs a day as it needs me to. Unfortunately, until the brewery is in a position where it's not sucking funds - We kind of need our day jobs to keep priming the pump as it were.

That means all work and no play and Jack being a dull boy. Our tasting parties make us rock stars, but people don't see all the work that goes into that. Folks continually ask us "When are you going to open already?" It's not like we aren't busting our butt's 24/7 to get the place underway. It's just that the absolutely ridiculous amount of work it takes just to RUN a brewery, much less start one from scratch is pretty daunting.

So, that's another thing you need to be aware of. Brewing is the EASY part! Sure, brewing well is hard! It takes a ton of work and constant dedication to continue learning and pushing yourself to try new things and refine your techniques. But the administrative side of actually going pro is a *****. There it is. You have to be prepared to do it as a job. So remember, once you're ready to dive in. You need to love this hobby enough to realize that you'll only be brewing about 25% of the time. The rest of your job is divided between Janitor and Pencil Pusher with some Supermarket stock-boy thrown in.

And every now and then you need to put on the ass-hole hat and tell the folks working for you to get back to work. Course that's part of every boss job. You look for good people and find them, but now and then you find the ones that need just a bit of extra training or motivation too.

So - there's another installment of **** you didn't think about...

P.S. I'm in a great mood today. The above post isn't meant to be pissy. It's just stuff you need to think about.

 

[Spartan1979]

What are GF beers?

 

[MedicMang]

.

 

[natnov]

Gluten free

 

[Spartan1979]

Gluten free

Ahh, thanks.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Sorry about that guys!

There's a couple ways to do Gluten Free (as I'm rapidly learning.) The truth is I am NOT a GF pro and I have to work on a couple of recipes, get them right over the next few months (six probably) and get something out there worth serving to people on a large scale.

Now what I have been told and what I've read predominantly is that the use of sorghum is easy, but ultimately the path to ruin. It leaves too many off-flavors and makes the beer have a poor finishing taste. So, after a great deal of research and talking to people, it seems that the best way to avoid bad Gluten Free beer is to bite the bullet and spend some money on it.

To that end I've done that and spent some money on really decent GF malt. I STILL have to work on doing a decent job of brewing it. That won't be a simple walk in the park but I plan on reading and studying quite a bit before I ever even attempt to screw up any Gluten Free beer on a large scale so that I can be confident about what I'm doing. The eventual goal is to come up with a nice clean high-quality Gluten Free beer (which will be a competitive advantage in my community as our other brewers don't do that.) and unfortunately yes, I will have to charge a bit more for it simply because the malt and labor going into the beer is excessive.

But, in time with good products and good marketing, you do well despite a slightly higher price and significantly lower margin. Well, that's the theory anyway. What the heck do I know? I have to do some more paperwork, clean the brewery, clean and sanitize another fermenter and cold-crash some Muddy Creek Chocolate Stout tonight. All that in preparation for my brew session this weekend which features Skinny Cow I.P.A.

And yet, I'm LOVIN' my j.o.b.

Lovin' it like the mailman loves his route on Tuesdays, when you're at work and your wife's at home with her "sexy" bathrobe on.

 

[MuddyCreek]

So, I just finished a couple pilot batches of Skinny Cow I.P.A. I had to do two batches because my efficiency is crap. In fact I've struggled with efficiency throughout with the pilot system and I've had to "fix" every batch except one. (Muddy Creek turned out darn near perfect, everything else has been really low.)

Well, the culprit is getting fixed. I have always kept my thermoprobe right in the wort return on the MLT so that I know the temperature of the returning wort. On the Pilot system the decision was made to recreate as closely as possible what we have with the pro system. That meant putting the thermoprobe down lower in the mash.

Another annoying little detail is that my pump is not connected directly to an electronic heat gauge to automatically monitor the pump through the HLT temperature. Rather the pump is controlled through the Mash temperature. This "sounds" fine in theory but here's where the problem is at.

Since my HLT is not connected to the control panel the way I want it, it is not being shut off when it reaches a temperature I want it to maintain (say 3 or 4 degrees above my mash temp...) Then when the mash gets low and the pump turns on overheated HLT water which should have stopped heating when it got to a few degrees above the mash temp now gets the mash liquid a bit too warm. This over-heated wort is then added to the top of the mash which is too high above the thermoprobe to adequately register the temp soon enough so what is essentially happening is that about the top 1/3 to 1/2 of my mash is being "mashed out" entirely too soon and I'm losing more of my efficiency than I want.

Heavy sigh... Had I just built the damn pilot system exactly as my home system was done I would never have had the problem. Instead I had to spend hours "fixing" low efficiency batches. But now the problem has been identified and can be resolved before we move to the big system. So there you go. ANOTHER **** I didn't think about. When you have something that works - don't fix it.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, we have just about all the kegs we need in the cooler for our next two festivals. I'll be transferring to cold-crash tonight and that should just about put us in position to wrap it up. This weekend I'll brew some more stout and keg the last of the stuff for festivals. That will put is in position to enjoy some face-time with folks.

The next few batches will allow us to build stock to entice potential accounts. Our next major move is to finish up the large-scale brewhaus and get it running so we can move into full production. Almost all our equipment is here. We're waiting on a tankless hot water heater and some thermo-probes and heating elements.

After that all gets in, we'll get the plumber in to install everything and then we'll fire up the monster tanks. After that - well, it's mayhem.

 

[opiate82]

I was listening to a podcast last night that had an interview with Vinnie from Russian River. He was talking about his PTE recipe and how it needed a lot of tweaking when they opened up their production brewery. He said that if you put the recipe for PTE from the brewpub next to the recipe from the production brewery you probably wouldn't realize they were the same beer.

This kind of echos what I have read about scaling recipes and that especially hop schedules do not scale linearly as you increase batch sizes. Outside of the efficiency issues have you had any issues scaling your recipes up to your pilot system? Would also be curious to hear about how your recipes scale when you jump up to your full production brewery.

Thanks again for all the sharing. It has been fun to watch your journey and very insightful.

 

[MuddyCreek]

From what I've found the hops don't scale the same at all. Malt you can do pretty well in efficiency. Not in ratios, but in efficiency. Once you figure out what your system efficiency is doing - generate your recipes on THAT and you get consistent results when you scale.

(Course, when you make improvements to your process like I'm about to do your efficiency is going to change and you have to recalculate based on that...)

Hops on the other hand has to do with math. Lots and lots of math. You have to look at that alpha acid, the isomerization potential based on what your particular hops has in AA, and go from there. You have to check your freshness, add up all your numbers, calculate how long your boil time and specific volume will be (include your planned boil-off,) and then come up with your hops addition.

After THAT, you taste your beer - take notes and here's the really sneaky part... you get a bunch of tasters together. (different people can taste different things. It's not a knock on you - the brewer - that you simply can't taste every single nuance of every aspect of your products. So you get together a group of different people who CAN taste different off-flavors and such and you have THEM check your products for consistency and off-flavors and reliably fill out forms for you so you can (over time,) get a process down that gives you a consistent, reproducible batch.

With hops you can't go with ratios because you have to do the math with each batch's AA levels and the specific boil-volume to match your final IBUs. That's the short answer.

 

[bobeer]

Thanks for sharing your journey! It's been awesome to read through the thread.

Out of curiosity, do you have any experience with using a big brewhaus system like you are setting up? I, like most homebrewers, would love to start a brewery but I know the bigger system you have the more money you can make which means you're more likely to "make it." My issue is I have zero experience with using big brew systems. Being a home brewer I've brewed up to 15 gallon batches but it's always done the same way... with a cooler MLT and a propane burner. If you don't have any experience using a big bbl system how did you learn how to use it?

Good luck with getting your place opened. If I ever fine myself in your neck of the woods I'll be sure to stop in and try out your beer!

 

[MuddyCreek]

bobeer,

I have brewed on 5 gallon, 10 gallon, keggle and now 1bbl systems personally and I have had the opportunity to peer over the shoulder while a brewer went through the entire process on a 15 bbl gas-fired system. I have not personally brewed on a full 10 bbl system. It is for that reason that I have pretty much custom recreated my personal home-brew system (with extensive advice from the manufacturer.)

There were some modifications. (I did the pilot system in a manner very close to the pro system and as you can see we've had some growing pains.) I've missed my efficiency several times. It has been fixable and the problem has been identified. That's why we do the test batches and all the pilot batches. I am confident that our 1 bbl system would have worked perfectly had it been done exactly as my home system was. However this isn't the case so I'm the one who needs to evolve.

Over the last year of brewing on my personal system, I stopped using my MLT input thermoprobe for a couple reasons. (Well, really for one reason.) It was damaged during a brew session and I didn't "really" need it because the process was so well refined from the HLT onward that it was truly redundant.

The way my home system actually worked was as follows: (It was overly redundant...) I have a control panel (which I still use for the pilot system,) that controls the temperature in the HLT and the pump for the MLT. Since the system is a automated HERM system, what happens is the HLT is controlled to a specific temperature. In fact, 3 degrees above what the MLT needs to be depending on season. (It gets cold in MT and I brewed outdoors so in the cooler months, obviously the HLT temp varied due to heat loss during transfer of the wort in the tubing between vessels.) So ONE PID controller and heating element maintained the HLT at a precise temperature just above the mash temp.

The second PID controller ran the pump. It had a temp probe right at the wort inlet near the top of the MLT that gauged the wort coming in. That of course was set to the mash temp. That ran your pump so that the mash was always set to the proper temperature. As long as you had set the strike temperature properly when you started, mashed in efficiently and got started and fired up the pump you got excellent efficiency because your temps were held within about 1/2 of a degree throughout your mash.

Doing the mashout was as easy as raising the HLT and MLT temps on the controller appropriately and letting the pump do it's job. If you have the spray valve set up at the top of the MLT properly you have built in fly sparging that kind of runs throughout the mash. It's kind of a win-win.

However, if your HLT temp is dead on and you have your probes calibrated properly in your MLT, the input probe isn't really necessary. It ultimately becomes redundant. What you need is a probe in the middle of the mash that ensures that the grain bed is at the right temperature, not necessarily the wort coming in.

The problem with my current pilot system is that it's only 'half' hooked up. The HLT PID controls are not plugged in so that the HLT temp is not being well enough monitored. When the hot liquor monitoring the wort going through the HERMS coil isn't carefully controlled, then my returning wort going to the top of the grain bed was too hot and I was killing the enzymatic processes of the top 1/4 or so of my grain bed too early. That was what was killing my efficiency.

So the issue there was just fixing the HLT temp monitoring process on the pilot system as it should have been done in the first place and saving myself some time and trouble fixing the gravity of the batches. Anyway, the pro-system hasn't been fired up yet and those issues were never going to be "overlooked". We wanted to get some kegs brewed for festivals so we could represent and therefore we got the pilot system up and running. Admittedly we should have done a better job plugging in the HLT to the control panel. Here you have it, Me admitting a clear mistake I made in my eagerness to get some kegs out and ready.

Fortunately none of the gravity issues were bad enough to be unfixable. I had to add DME to get to the proper gravity for 3 different products. One of them turned out well because it was our first and frankly we took our time and the HLT never got too hot. (Actually it was due to a misunderstanding with the electrician so we were without our heating elements so we were dependant entirely on gas and therefore we had less heat to work with. That kept us from over-heating the HLT.)

Anyway, I am confident in our ability to use the 10bbl system. It's very close to the system I've used for the last 5 years or so and after the issues I've had with the pilot system, (and I'm sure the new ones we'll have with the 10bbl system as we're learning it,) we'll figure it out and get our beers out the door with the same quality. I do expect it will take some time tinkering with the new system though. It generally does. At least that's what I've heard from other brewers and that's what I've read everywhere.

 

[bobeer]

Thanks for the in-depth write up! I've never used a system that has a control panel but I hope to in the future. I don't even have pumps in my home brewery!
So you're saying, as far as the button pushing goes, it's pretty much the same on a 1 bbl system as it would be on a 10 bbl system? The only difference is how you have the peripherals setup? I guess a control panel is a control panel whether on a 1 bbl system or 100 bbl system. Very cool.

 

[MuddyCreek]

So in other news,

We are filling out the Food and Health department forms so we can legally make Root Beer, Lemonade and Ginger Beer. Ironically this is a 20 page application which is kind of silly because most of it is completely not applicable to us as we are not making any "real food" excepting the soft drinks. However we still need a "commercial kitchen" in the brewery. However should any laws change in the future guess who will have a commercial kitchen in the brewery?

Once we've finished the app and gotten it approved, that will also mean we can bottle or can our soft drinks if we wanted. We'll also be able to sell kegs of those things to the local distillery who uses them in their mixed drinks or to restaurants if they want to sell them on tap. (We carbonate our lemonade which makes it kinda awesome!)

The tasting room is coming along. We've been shooting for "rustic" all along. The business-side partner put in a call on CraigsList for barn-wood and got a response from a woman who owns a closed silver mine out of town. She'll give us all the wood we want for the price of gas to haul it into town. (She'll also give us a classic old door from the mine.) We'll use the wood to front the bar. We have already talked to a friend who works for the railroad and he's secured 25 feet of railroad track for us. We'll use that for the foot-rail. If you've followed the thread you already know we are going to use cable spools from the power company for our tables. They will be coated in that super self-leveling eurathane (sp?) stuff so they are smooth but retain their "rough" look. We have spools of different sizes so we have a couple that will seat 8 people a couple that will seat 6 and about 10 or so that will seat 4. Then there are 5 or 6 that will seat 2 people. All together we have seating for 100 or so with our extra couches that we'll put over by the corner area where the gas-fireplace is going.

The walls have all been primed so as soon as the floor leveling compound arrives (was ordered last week,) we can finish leveling and then finishing the floor and then do the final painting. After that, we do the bar, put in the taps and start on pretty trim everywhere.

We still have to get some chairs ordered. We've looked at them online and found a few options but haven't made a final decision yet.

For flights, we have a pretty cool idea. We want to take some rounds from a friend who does firewood. We'll have him cut 1" rounds for us which we'll cut holes through for our sampler glasses. The round will be soaked in anti-freeze to prevent shrinking and avoid future critter attack and then it will be lacquered nicely. After that we'll put a small finish plate underneath the round to hold the sample glasses in. That will give us a nice round wood-chip for our sample platters that we think will be unique and very cost effective. Just takes us some effort.

We are having the local tin guys come today to look at manufacturing a vent-hood over our Brew Kettle with an exhaust fan and ducting system. After that's done we have all our construction complete so our inspector can come back and do the final walkthrough and give us our final licensure. (Currently we are provisionally licensed.)

This weekend I kick out some stout and hopefully get the rest of my large kettles organized for the heating elements and thermo-probes. I've got to get them installed and the rest of the currently unused ports plugged up so we can get on with the business of getting these things fired up.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, crap!

Just talked to the sprinkler installation guy. It seems the fellow who put in our stub for the fire-line may not have done everything to code as he needed to and we'll have to have him return to the scene of the crime and possibly "re-do" it.

Ya. That's how this kind of stuff goes. Fortunately, we have a lawyer on retainer. ;-)

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, no bobeer. A 10bbl isn't just the same as a 1bbl system. I'm not pretending that. There are a ton of things to take into consideration. You have to deal with getting your grains mashed in properly on that large of a system and ensuring that your mash is evenly heated throughout. (As I have already shown that can be tricky even on a 1bbl system so I'm not going to pretend that's trivial.)

There's also the sheer bulk of the grain, first dry and then wet that you have to deal with. The cleaning which is an entirely different challenge at this level and the overwhelming task of moving that much wort and getting it up to temperature and then chilled at a pace that meets your needs. Getting 5 gallons of wort up to 154 degrees and then up another 10 or 12 for mashout and then down to 75 degrees is nothing compared to doing the same with 300+ gallons of wort.

All the control panel does is manage the heating and cooling systems that you have in place so you can do the physical work that needs to be done to organize for the next step. Basically from the moment you START thinking about brewing until the beer is in the fermenter and pitched you are working your butt of moving something, cleaning something or worrying about something. And no matter what you WILL be exhausted by the end of the day and I'm only working on the pilot system right now. (Course it's made a bit harder by the fact that we aren't using ALL the cool toys yet as we're holding back on the plate chiller and the super awesome transfer pump and the on-demand hot water heater until we fire up the BIG BOYS.)

Nonetheless, brewing on every size system has it's own challenges and rewards. Smaller systems offer greater flexibility and faster brewing turnaround times. Larger systems obviously allow you to maximize your production and get the most out of your time and materials.

In the end it all works out.

 

[bobeer]

Thanks again for the response!

I understand that the materials are a much bigger aspect to tackle for a bigger system. Interesting about the mash-in though. It's easy to get the grains all the same temp on a small homebrew scale. Never thought about a bigger operation in that sense.
I was just talking about actually running the system though... if it's different from a 1 bbl to 10 bbl. Both have control panels so I was wondering if there's any difference in that aspect. Or is it just the same as far as the button pushing goes.
I'm usually tired after a brew day, since I"m 100% manual at this point, so I can only imagine how it is on a big level! It's worth it though to do something you love for a living!!

 

[MuddyCreek]

Control panel wise, it's different in that you'd want more thermoprobes or more accurate temperature readings in your mash. I have three ports, for example in my mash tun so I can read temps at three different levels to see variations on the big scale. (See the problem I am fighting on the pilot system would never have happened on the large scale because I would have immediately seen that I had large temperature variations between the levels in my mash. That would have tipped me off right away about the issue with the HERMS return wort being too hot.)

So, yes, the control panel on larger systems are generally more complex, one way or another. Our 10bbl panel for example controls two heating elements per "hot kettle" and will be able to track up to 3 thermo-probes in the mash tun as well as a probe in the HLT. I have an extra heating element that is "free-style" for the BK in case I need an extra push to get more boil power. This will be an un-modulated element so it will pretty much just be on full boil. (Although I could hook it up to my pilot system control panel and do whatever I want with it in terms of controlling it's power usage, so I could control it if I really wanted to...)

I probably just ought to post my tank drawings for you.

Ah, now I've gone and done it.

 

[bobeer]

Ha, I wouldn't mind taking a look at the tank drawings. It would also be cool to see a pic of the 10 bbl control panel once that's up! All very interesting. I've been trying to volunteer at local breweries here but they always need help when I'm rotting away at work. One of these days I'll say screw it and take pto and go in. Anything to get some time and experience in there.

Thanks for all the explanations man!!

 

[sch21c]

Muddy, I've just read through the twenty pages of this thread and I'm engrossed in your journey so far. Thank you for taking the time to post everything you have! I don't know if opening a brewery is ever going to be a real thing for me, but I'm a beer geek, a homebrewer, and a business geek, so you're kind of hitting all my buttons.

Please keep up the posting. I hope to have a reason to come to Butte sometime in the (near) future and see all your hard work in person!

Thanks again.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Let's see if these come across properly...

I tried to upload the pdf file but that didn't work so I did a bit of crappy conversion in Gimp to throw together some .jpg files. Here you have our custom HLT, MLT, and BK.

We have 4 element ports in the HLT, and 3 in the BK. We'll also be using direct fire under the tanks as necessary to get things up to temp. The MLT has a very nice wedgewire false bottom and we're putting some thermal underwear around all three tanks. We're putting in a tankless hot water heater to serve the HLT and MLT. That should be in by the weekend. Our Apollo mill is also being wired with a shutoff-switch in the next day or two as well.

By the weekend I ought to be able to fill my pilot system with the precise temperature of water I want in my HLT AND in my mash right from the tankless. Then I can just let the control panel feather the heating element in the HLT and run the pump for the mash lightly. Feeling pretty jacked about that.

We've also put in some bids for keg cleaners. We considered going commando style and building our own keg cleaner but ultimately we just want to get the brewery up and running and since all the partners are still working our "day jobs" we have decided it's easier to purchase a cleaner that does the job in 5 or 6 minutes for us rather than bust our ass on a home-built keg cleaning system for 10 or 15 minutes per keg and wonder if the kegs are as clean as we want them to be.

Anway, here are the tanks...

 

[rwgaro]

What he said - can't say it any better! And I'd bet a paycheck that there are dozens more who lurk with no comments, reading your updates for vicarious thrills. Great stuff...

Muddy, I've just read through the twenty pages of this thread and I'm engrossed in your journey so far. Thank you for taking the time to post everything you have! I don't know if opening a brewery is ever going to be a real thing for me, but I'm a beer geek, a homebrewer, and a business geek, so you're kind of hitting all my buttons.

Please keep up the posting. I hope to have a reason to come to Butte sometime in the (near) future and see all your hard work in person!

Thanks again.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, you may have noticed that I've been holding back a bit on our control system. We have just installed a major component of our brewhaus liquor and wort control system and I guess it's time to finally spill the beans. I've said a few times that we are underpowered due to some restrictions placed on us by our electricians. We have had to get around this by making modifications to how we intend to brew. Originally the plan was to be a fully electric HERM system. However given our restrictions this proved impossible. So we planned on augmenting with gas-fired burners to help us out. Nice, but ultimately I want to rely more on the electric re-circulation processes that I am more comfortable with. So we came up with a third hybrid process that we have implemented as well.

I give you the double-HERM.

I'm not sure if other breweries use this. I suppose it's possible. We bought an industrial tankless hot water heater and had if further modified to handle output up to 195 degrees. This guy can pump out water up to 20 gpm depending on the temperature of water coming in, (We'll probably limit output at around 15 GPM.) So here's how we'll use this thing in our brewery operations...

First off, We'll obviously use it to fill the HLT and MLT with water specifically temped to our mash in needs. Then we'll use the HLT elements and direct-fire burners to maintain at the right temperature. The HERMS coil will maintain the MLT at the right temperature while we mash in. This will give us a very quick process for filling our tanks with liqour at the proper temperatures.

Once we're all mashed in and happy, we get to sit for awhile and marvel at what man hath wrought. Then it comes time for mash out. We'll have the tankless water-in and out lines fitted with TC connectors so we can move our lines all around. For example, we'll be able to recirculate the water in the HLT so we can help IT heat up to mash-out temp quickly. Not only will it's elements and direct-fire be heating the liquor, but the tankless will also help heat up the water quickly to mash-out temp when it's time.

Also, if necessary, we can use an extra hose to circulate the mash not only through the HLT herms but through the tankless so we are running a double HERM through both for mash-out to quickly reach strike out temp. (You can imagine how difficult it is to raise the thermal mass of 450 or so gallons of mash anywhere from 10 to 20 some degrees.) Using a double-HERM helps double the speed in which you're recirculating your wort through the mash.

After the mash-out is finished we can further use the tankless to heat the wort. We can go up as high as 195 as we transfer to the BK. Here we'll set up a circulation in the BK running the wort through the tankless so it can heat up to 195 as the elements are also heating it. As soon as we cover the lowest element we can fire up the electric and of course the burners can go on as soon as there is wort in the kettle. Once we've transferred all the first-wort we can either transfer liquor over from the HLT or bring it over directly from the tankless at the proper temperature into the MLT for sparging. We can then do either a batch or fly sparge as we like. If we do a batch sparge we can let the wort sit for a bit and then hook up to the tankless again and once again heat the wort to 195 as we transfer to the BK. Since we run a HERM system, we generally do batch sparges since the grain is pretty much constantly rinsed throughout the process. However, preferences vary.

Once all the wort has been transferred to the BK, we'll use the water in the HLT to wash, sanitize and rinse the tankless and we're good to go for our next brew session.

Unorthodox? Sure. But we've looked at it and can't figure out why it won't work. We do have some concerns about over-heating the wort as we transfer it to the BK. So we'll be watching that very closely. If we see any carmelization in our early tests we'll be sure to dial down the tankless. However if we can get the wort transferred over even at 165 or 175 that would be a tremendous help in reducing the delta for our boil.

We believe we can get our BK boiling in less than 45 minutes with this system which will definitely shave some time off our brew day without killing our electric and gas bill. So we're very excited about it.

There you have it. Our next big secret. The double herm. I wouldn't be surprised if other breweries use something like this to some extent. It can't be THAT unusual.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, I ran the tankless this weekend on our pilot system. It was not without flaws.

It ran our water up to about 120 or 130 but never got much above that. I needed it to get up to 166 for my strike temp and I was a bit disappointed. I'll need our plumber and electrician to look at the unit and do some trouble shooting. It should have easily handled that at the amount of water our pilot system was using. Better to work that all out now than after we fire up the big tanks.

Still, I managed to get 35 gallons of Clementine brewed in better time than I have been for my last 4 brews. I'm happy with that. Also got our house I.P.A. kegged and that makes us officially ready for all our fesitivals, more or less. Our stout is in the fermenter from last week and that will need to be crashed in a few days and kegged later. That will make us ready for the MBA (Montana Brewers Association) festival in October.

With no other major festivals to prepare for, that frees us to focus solely on getting the big tanks up and running so we can brew on a full scale now. As of Wednesday we'll have all our significant components in and there's nothing but us holding us up.

 

[broncosaurs]

MuddyCreek, I'm one that "who lurk with no comments". Love the thread.

Doing some quick math on the tank-less water heater, to get say, 100* temperature rise @ 15 GPM the BTUs needed is in the range of 820000! I don't know what size the tank-less you have but 820000BTU is huge. I have seen the tank-less plumed in a parallel arrangement to get this output but never seen a single unit this large. The largest Takagi is 380000 BTUs and at 15 gpm this unit will only give about a 40* rise in temp. You might be asking more from the water heater then it is capable of.

General equation:
BTU/hr = GPM x Temp Rise (F*) x 545
KW = GPM x Temp Rise (F*) x .16

Brad

 

[Spartan1979]

MuddyCreek, I'm one that "who lurk with no comments". Love the thread.

Doing some quick math on the tank-less water heater, to get say, 100* temperature rise @ 15 GPM the BTUs needed is in the range of 820000! I don't know what size the tank-less you have but 820000BTU is huge. I have seen the tank-less plumed in a parallel arrangement to get this output but never seen a single unit this large. The largest Takagi is 380000 BTUs and at 15 gpm this unit will only give about a 40* rise in temp. You might be asking more from the water heater then it is capable of.

General equation:
BTU/hr = GPM x Temp Rise (F*) x 545
KW = GPM x Temp Rise (F*) x .16

Brad

Wouldn't they have to be plumbed in series to get the temp higher?