Consider a folding scaffold from Home Depot or Lowes at $97
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053
Here's what I did:
I got 2 folding metal scaffolds from Home Depot ($99 each). On the top rung
of the first scaffold sits a banjo burner with the HLT (Hot Liquid Tank). There's a bridge between the 2 scaffolds made of 2 each 1"x 8"s at the mid level rung that holds the MLT (Mash Lauter Tun). On the lowest level of the
2nd scaffold sits the banjo burner and boil pot. Which is just high enough to allow gravity flow into the fermenter (4 level) which sits on the floor.
I use several drinking water quaility hoses to get the strike water into the HLT. I never have to lift anything until I take the fermenter to the basement.
I use a handtruck to move the fermenters to the basement.
Something that I thought about but have yet to try is moving to boiled wort to the basement in Corny kegs via handtruck then using compressed air to move the wort from the corny into fermenters that sit up on shelves. This would help aerate the wort in addition to moving it up high so I could start the gravity flow process again.
On the minus side this set up takes up more room than a dedicated brew stand when its in full operation. On the plus side the scaffolds fold up to store in a very small space and are easily portable, they have lockable wheels which also affords a great deal of portability and they are useful to me for a variety of other functions. Additionally there is also enough room to add another HLT, MLT and Boil Pot so I could double what Im doing now if I wanted to, which I do and almost have all the equipment to do so.
You could make a 3 level out of 1 scaffold by making a bottom shelf out of
2 each 1x8s and count the floor as your 3rd level the top level could easily hold 2 burners with 2 each 25 gallon pots, same goes for the home-made bottom level.
That will weaken it.
