Brewtime's BCS Electric Build

So I am going all electric and I thought I would document it here. This has been a project that started in January and if all goes as plan it will be all wrapped up by the middle of May. I have to give props to my wife Jill she told me that if I am going to do this, spend the money an get your dream system because its going to be your last.

I spent months researching systems and what I wanted the brewery to do. I spent countless hours on http://www.theelectricbrewery.com I liked his set up and thought about building that one with modifications. I ended up going with a BCS control box from ebrewsupply .

I was going to re-purpose existing equipment to keep the cost down. I knew that I was going to buy the control panel and not do it DIY like I had before. I knew I was going to go with a 50A services so I can do back to back batches if I want to. 50A will allow me to run the HLT and BK elements at the same time.

Next was what will I use as a stand to hold the kettles My current stand would work but it would be tight as two of the kettles will have 5500W elements in them and the outlet box used took up the real estate between the kettles. Then My wife says " Build a new stand to accommodate everything". So I thought about another welded stand maybe this time Stainless steal. only problem is I cant weld. Then a friend told me about this product called 80/20 extruded aluminum they call it the Industrial Erector Set http://www.8020.net/. this is very cool stuff. I searched the Interwebs to see if any fellow homebrewers used this stuff to build a stand. I found a one Youtube videos but no real detail on any build. I found out that 80/20 Inc will design what ever you want free of charge and price it out and ship it as a kit that you assemble using only 1-2 tools. Needless to say I jumped on that and found a distributor and over the past week worked out a design. The beauty of this material is that you can change it when ever you want to . Can't do it with a welded frame.
It not cheap to buy it in the kit form but if you have the skills with AutoCad you can design your own and buy overrun material on ebay cheaper. I wanted to get all the material at once and not worry about having to have multiple orders. From the time you place your order to the time it hits your front door is 4-5 days. so here is what the new stand is going to look like.



This picture two of the casters are missing the stand will have 4 swivel locking casters. As more items come in I will post the build as it progresses

 

The brewstand came this week took me about 2.5 hours to assemble it the keggles are at the welders and should be ready this weekend.


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The HLT is coming along


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I like the way that stand turned out, can you give a rough cost doing the custom design?

 

After tax and shipping it came to 1,100 it would a bit cheaper if I did not add the three panels the first cost came in at $690 but blowing out the size and using the profile I went with added to the price.


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Nice, keep us updated with your progress

 

80/20 is some good stuff. I've sued their stuff for previous engineering projects. For some reason, I hadn't considered them for a brew-stand. good job, looks like a great start.

 

That stand is awesome... Damn I want to do one like this now. I'm in the process of going electric too. I just got the boil coils and a rims rocket for my boilermakers. I'm also going with a BCS controller. The only difference is I'm assembling/building everything. I'll be building a room down in our basement for the brewery. I was planning on building a counter as a stand, but If I could build a stand with that material for $500 or less, I would. Guess I'll do some research. Thanks for posting it.