11 Gallon eBIAB build w/ boil condenser

[cegan09]

Finally, finally i'm ditching my 8.5 gallon kettle. the biggest mistake I made when starting was not going with a large enough kettle. The 11 gallon bayou classic went on sale for $40 earlier this summer and I jumped on it. I've slowly been collecting the fittings and parts to build this out. It's going to be the same as my old setup, RIMS for mash, two 1500W elements in the kettle so I can run on 120V single phase, Wilsner bag, and now a boil condensor so I can brew indoors.

I went with Brew Hardware's pull through fittings for this kettle. I was temped to weld them, but I wasn't confident enough that I wouldn't just burn holes in the kettle. Instead some silver solder works just fine.
Here's the valve and thermometer ports on the front. my only mistake was putting the thermometer too high, it's right at about 4.5 gallons. I should have gone lower. Oh well. If I need to put in a lower port later I can.


For the elements I used 1.5" TC fittings. I The normal procedure for these is to pull them with the dimple inside the kettle, but I wanted them to match the rest of the fittings, so I went with the more risky two step install. First you pull the dimple with the fitting inside the kettle. Then you remount the pull tool backwards and pull the fitting into the pre-formed dimple. It was scary doing this and hoping I wouldn't ruin the kettle by destroying the dimple, but it worked out fine on both.


A few examples of the solder setup and results on the lid. The parts were cleaned before pulling through, and then liquid flux was added in the grooves. A single ring of solder was laid over the joint and then the kettle was heated slowly until it reached melting temp for the solder. It looks messy when done from the burned flux, but some bar keepers friend cleans it right up.


More to come.

 

[cegan09]

A few more pictures of the solder on the kettle.


Now a picture of it all put together to do a water run and test everything out. Zip ties are markers on the sight glass since the stickers weren't really sticking. Tails have already been trimmed.


I'll post a few more pictures when the run is over to show how I'm doing mash recirc and a few other details.

 

[cegan09]

First brew day on the new system today. So i'll add details as I go along.

Inside the kettle. Two 1500W elements and the dip tube/pull through bulkhead combo from Brew Hardware. No false bottom at the moment. If I notice the bag trying to suck into the dip tube on this brew I'll make something to protect that area.


The lid has a 1/2" NPT bulkhead. For mashing I have a LocLine ring threaded in. I'm going to add a camlock to this in the future to make attaching quicker.


RIMS setup. I'm using a cheap 12V pump that's been flawless for over a year now. Hoses are trimmed to length because I cannot stand long messy hoses. Using an EZBoil controller. Since I'm stuck on 120V single phase I built my controller to accept two separate circuits and inside is wired as two separate circuits. The only link between them is the key actuating both contractors (double circuit key), and the EZBoil triggers both SSRs together. For reaching strike temp I power the RIMS and a single kettle element. RIMS keeps the water moving and at an even temp. Once I reach strike I'll turn off the kettle element and run only the RIMS.

 

[cegan09]

So, make sure you're checking your element wiring often. It was taking forever to heat to strike temp, so I opened up the plug on the RIMS element, and the ground and neutral line had pulled out of the screw terminals. So I was heating up with only 1500W.

I'll be inspecting every electrical connection after today to make sure nothing else is loose.