Picobrew + BrewPi Set up

After many fits and starts i've settled into a system that more matches my goals and objectives in brewing.

First, I wanted to be able to understand what was happening before, during and after brewing and fermenting so that I can improve and manage the systems better. So systems that record data as it goes.

Second, I wanted to be able to focus on the beer and the process rather than the mechanics. I don't need to figure out how to maintain temperatures, that problem has been solved many times over on these forums.

Third, I wanted a streamlined system with easy to clean components that are easy to access and maintain. Which is still a work in progress.

After trying a number of approaches (extract, BIAB, three vessel (well only once)) I landed on the Picobrew Zymatic for my hot side and BrewPi for fermentation control (thanks FuzzeWuzze for the brewpi instructions). 10 batches in i'm happy with what I'm seeing.

I know this is going to be a bit of a journey to optimize the system and dial in what I want it to do.

So to get started here's a picture of my system set up for a brew day today. As I sit here typing it's chugging away on a left hand milk stout clone. While a batch of BierMuncher's centennial blonde (with some Nelson Sauvin thrown in for good measure) is cold crashing in Fridge 1.

I'll add in more details as I go. I'm trying using a SS BrewTech Mini Brew Bucket instead of the keg on the PicoBrew and I think I like it so far! <EDIT:> I want to give some credit to the guys over at Stainless, they got the parts list for this conversion on their website.

For those that might be interested in the Mini Brew Bucket for both hot side and fermenting with the pico brew here are some initial observations:

1. Water Volume: After some experimenting (the hard way with foam) today it looks like the Zymatic will need about 3.4 gallons when using a mini brew bucket due to the dead space below the racking arm. I'll probably just solve for 3.5 gallons on total water in Beersmith for my recipes and adjust from there. My rough calculations in beersmith say that a batch with a 4 pound grain bill would get ~2.7 gallons out and a 9 pound grain bill would get ~2.2 gallons
2. Beersmith vs. PicoBrew recipe crafter: I think i'm going to use beersmith going forward, I hit my beer smith numbers dead on, but missed the recipe crafter by 6 points.
3. Temperature stability: My initial reaction is that the unjacketed brew bucket was more stable that the jacketed keg particularly during chilling. I also noticed that the brew bucket actually cooled off better than the keg, maybe since it isn't pressure rated to the same level it can be thinner?
4. Chilling: I had a fan blowing on the brew bucket and while I doubt it actually chilled the batch much faster, my assumption is it did shed the heat from the brew bucket more quickly allowing the ice water to work better. After 15 minutes i was at 83 degrees with one bucket of tap water and one bucket of ice water.
5. Foam during chilling: no issues what so ever... Nothing came through the trap at all.

I think i'm going to do a higher gravity beer for the next round to see how the system scales with a larger grain bill.

So I was solving the wrong math problem with my water suggestion above. Need to solve for the grain absorption compared to the the baseline case. I figured why not brew again today, so I kegged a batch of BierMuncher's Centennial Blonde that was cold crashing in one of my fridges. Clean up on the Brew Bucket was way faster than a keg, took me about 5 minutes start to finish and I was ready to go. I get why PicoBrew went down the keg route, it's a hard system to break since everything seals up tight when you disconnect it.

I was looking at the set up and was just about ready to order parts to put post on the second Mini Brew Bucket when I had the epiphany, use the darn barbs that came with the Mini Brew Bucket. It's what PicoBrew suggests for an Immersion chiller so why not on both ends? Hook up was easy. I figured why not stress the system? Let's go big!
Grain Bill: Maxed out, 9 pounds
Water: Had to add a quart of water after starting, but that happened almost immediately on start up since there dead space in the step filter is about that much.
Mods: No posts, just tubing to barbs on the top and outlet valve. Removed the disconnects from the tubing hooked up to the Zymatic.
Temp Control: same as run 1
Chilling: rock steady, 60 minute hop stand at 180 degrees so easy with the Zymatic. Can't say enough about temp control with the Zymatic.
Flow rates: Seems to be about as fast without the poppets, drains from the hop cages in about 4 minutes, and drains from the grain area in about 6 minutes. Again need to measure this more regularly to build a data set.
Adding adjuncts: So much easier to pop the top on the Mini Brew Bucket than to mess with the keg seal. I had the keg seals drop in to the keg twice when putting them back in hot.


So what's next? well I think i have the BOM straightened out for the Mini Brew bucket modifications so Im going to drop a note to SS Brew Tech on Monday to try and order the bits and pieces (3/8" stainless fittings are kinda hard to come by):

1 3/8" barb to 3/8" MPT (same as what came with the Mini Brew Bucket)
1 3/8" NPT locknut (Same as what came with the Mini Brew Bucket)
2 gaskets for this (Same as what came with the Mini Brew Bucket)
Step drill bit and starter drill bit for the second hole in the Mini Brew Bucket lid (and a drill obviously)
File to clean up the new hole

Hope this helps anyone considering going down this route. So far I'm really happy with it. I'll add more data after a few more batches in about a month.

Looks good. I did the same thing, except I use the 7 gallon brew bucket instead of the keg. My hands are too big to fit into a keg opening, so this is so much better. I've got a brew bucket mini I'll be converting too.

You can also add keg posts to the Zymatic with some fittings and be able to take the hoses completely off between brew sessions.

Physics,

Did you have to make any material changes to your recipes with the larger brew bucket? Do you have a feel for the minimum water volume with the larger brew bucket to prevent the Zymatic from ingesting air during mashing?

I'm curious to see what you think between the two sizes of the buckets.

Josh1275 said:

Physics,

Did you have to make any material changes to your recipes with the larger brew bucket? Do you have a feel for the minimum water volume with the larger brew bucket to prevent the Zymatic from ingesting air during mashing?

I'm curious to see what you think between the two sizes of the buckets.

Click to expand...

Nope, no changes at all. I use BeerSmith, but ultimately use the online recipe crafter to determine starting water volume, etc.

I've got batches fermenting in both, and will be converting the mini over to ball lock fittings as soon as I keg this batch.

So i finally got too impatient and started cold crashing a milk stout in one of my two brewpi controlled mini fridges (Danby 4.4 cu ft from costco). I'm trying two different things with the fridges:

Fridge 1: no circulation fan
Fridge 2: full time circulation fan, well full time circulation fan after 3/10 when my system went crazy

I've got to say my first run is now working fairly well. It destabilized for a while and it took me a little bit to get my head wrapped around tuning the PID. Ended up I just had to adjust the integral value on the PID to a very low value (.04) and things stabilized in short order. (screen shot below)

The Mini Brew Bucket is a great fit in the fridge, with space to spare, and the fridge is more than up to the task of a fast cold crash. took out 23 degrees of heat in 6 hours. I'll take it.

Once again I've got to give credit to Elco and the crew and brewpi and FuzzeWuzze for the instructions. They almost make it too easy

So far so good. Next up is rewiring the brewpi controllers and outlet box. I want to clean up how all of that is run and make it more self contained. I have time while brewing for those improvements now.

First brew day with the next round of modifications to the Mini Brew Bucket as described above. It now has the standard ball valve and barb at the outlet, and in the outer hole on the lid it has a barb threaded through the hole.

I think i'm done with modifications on this for now. Hook up was easy enough with silicone tubing and the barb fittings. There were a couple of drops of leakage when swapping in the chiller and when disconnecting everything to put the brew bucket in the fridge.

Additionally the lid barb fitting looks like it's going to work well as a blow off directly, not too sharp of a bend, and fits well in the fridge.

On the actually brewing side things went ok, but had insufficient water in the recipe to account for all the deadspace and grain absorption so the zymatic was ingesting some air during the mash and started foaming. added 16 oz of water and it was fine. Clearly some more tuning needed here.

Pictures below.

-Josh

Resurrecting an old thread I know, but can you provide details on what you did for the conversion using the brewbucket? My google-fu obviously isn't up to snuff as I couldn't find the conversion parts you referenced (I assumed you meant StainlessBrewing, but I tried there and SS brewtech).

jmark,

The part I used was from ssbrewtech, it's the mini brew bucket valve and racking arm replacement kit. So you end up with a spare valve and racking arm.

There were 3 key steps:

1. drill a hole for a bung and the foam trap in the middle of the lid (or where ever you like really), i used a harbor freight bit set.
2. dismantle the replacement set from ssbrewtech
3. Put the barb, gasket and nut from the replacement set in the pre-drilled hole in the lid.
4. Use the hole you just drilled for the bung and foam trap.

I'll post a couple of pictures later today.

Thanks,
Josh

http://www.ssbrewtech.com/collections/accessories/products/miniballvalvewnewrackingarm

There were some questions on the main Zymatic thread:

Water volume is more than the mini brew bucket will hold: There are a couple of things here:

1. once the system starts running it pulls a decent amount of water into the zymatic. That allows you to pull the foam trap and add the balance of your water.
2. Since the system does not drain after the heat water step (drain time in the advanced editor is defaulted to 0 minutes), it goes straight to mashing, the risk of an overflow is low when you have a large water volume (more than about 3.75 gallons).
3. Once you start mashing you have your maximum water volume in the Z, I usually check in on the Z when mashing has started for two reasons, make sure the system isn't sucking air from the mini brew bucket and to make sure i don't have a foam overflow happening in the mash.

How did I connect the system:

1. I think the directions above will answer this question, however let me know if I've left anything out.

Josh1275 said:

There were some questions on the main Zymatic thread:



Water volume is more than the mini brew bucket will hold: There are a couple of things here:



1. once the system starts running it pulls a decent amount of water into the zymatic. That allows you to pull the foam trap and add the balance of your water.

2. Since the system does not drain after the heat water step (drain time in the advanced editor is defaulted to 0 minutes), it goes straight to mashing, the risk of an overflow is low when you have a large water volume (more than about 3.75 gallons).

3. Once you start mashing you have your maximum water volume in the Z, I usually check in on the Z when mashing has started for two reasons, make sure the system isn't sucking air from the mini brew bucket and to make sure i don't have a foam overflow happening in the mash.



How did I connect the system:



1. I think the directions above will answer this question, however let me know if I've left anything out.

Click to expand...

Perfect.
thank you.

i have the 7 gal conical with the ftss. if the lids happen to be interchangeable, a mini may be in the very near future.

it would seem, that unless you racked from the dump valve, too much beer would be wasted using the 7 gal unit. havent tried to solve for that in beersmith.

Hi,

I’m
In the process of adapting my set up generally based on this thread. After a year or so of working with it, are there any other lessons you could share? Anything that you’ve changed on the system?

How about chilling? Have you gone with the FTSS? Or using a immersion/counterflow chiller?

Would be great to hear how the systems been working for you.

P

Need Help.

I purchased a PicoPro and started some brews. I noticed the Pico is loud and each brew is foaming over A LOT. At the end of my last brew it made a loud sucking noise for a few seconds. What could this be?