AnBrew Garage brewery build (100L single tier eHERMS)

[mrmansfeld]

Hello everyone!

For months I’ve been lurking, and drooling over Kal’s electric brewery instructions. It’s taken me a while to wrap my head around how to adapt it to a European power network (here in Switzerland at least, we usually have fairly low amperage, and compensate with three phases at 230V relative to neutral. I’ll explain more in detail when I get to the control panel / heating element part)

I’m now ready to share the progress of my build for a 100% electric setup, for 3x230V 16A, with three 100L kettles (approx 26gal) and three pumps. I’ve been working on this for several months now, but I was holding back on sharing until I was certain I had passed the point of no return. After digging a trench from the house to the garage to install water pipes and electrical cables and ordering all the components for my control panel, I’m fairly sure I’ve now passed that point. I’ll probably post pics in chronological order, and at some point this thread should catch up with the actual progress of the build.

Anyway, it all starts with a... slightly messy garage

(view from the side door)

(view from the main door)

we emptied it:

and then cleaned

and repainted the floor:

 

[jimmy-blue-eyes]

Subscribing to this thread

 

[Rockn_M]

What difference a pressure washer can make!

 

[mrmansfeld]

Next, I installed a CEE outlet (3 phase, 230/400V, up to 32A). I wired it up temporarily to a 10A outlet in the basement for the duration of the build, but once the trench is finished, I will have an electrician wire it up to its own 16A GFCI breaker on the main panel.

(the sticker was just to remind myself that I don’t have 16A available… )

Next, I made a trip to IKEA to buy some furniture for the prep zone :

putting stuff together:

as a side project, prepared a quick rack for the bikes and skis :

and here’s the prep area assembled and operational :

I have a second set of shelves to assemble, but first I need to make some more space (I’ve since accumulated quite a few more boxes of malt, so it’s becoming desperately needed)

Next step, building a brew stand (I might make a longer post later with more details. I actually made a Solidworks model and took lots of pictures with my DSLR, but my phone pictures are the only ones I have handy at the moment.)

So here’s the short version :
1. Build a frame (there’s an additional centre beam that’s not pictured)

2. Add the top

3. Stain it

Done!

 

[mrmansfeld]

And now, the fun bit! Again, I’ll probably edit this post later to add in some pictures I took with the DSLR, but in the mean time, these still tell the story quite well.

I started by removing the paving stones in a diagonal line between the house and the garage. The grille you can see in the bottom right corner leads to the laundry, from where I’ll be teeing off the hot and cold water pipes and sending the drainage. Electricity (and network cable) will go through the wall of the laundry to the main distribution panel.

Removed the sand and the light gravel to separate piles:

And started digging! (The guy in the picture is my brother, who helped me with all the hard parts)

Here, we’re getting to the end of the first day of digging, and starting to wonder what we’ve gotten ourselves into (luckily we hadn’t even started thinking about how we were going to put the paving stones back)

We’re still feeling pretty motivated, so we decide to carry on after dark (this is because we haven’t yet found the huge rock at the bottom of the trench… not pictured in this series, but it took us most of the next day to break through it with a diamond disc cutter and a hammer drill)

Day 2 (more like three weeks later, but whatever), time for a test fit, and it’s looking good :

made a huge mess of installing the pipes :

but by some miracle, it ends up fitting. :

I’ve now got a hot and cold pipe installed but not connected to anything, two orange conduits, one for electrical and one for Cat5e network cable (for my upcoming BrewPi fermentation chamber build, and probably streaming radio on brewdays), as well as a 50mm diameter waste pipe for the sink.

This is what it looks like inside the garage, ready to be connected up to something :

Then we got a bit lazy (ran out of time actually, since we can only do this over our week-ends) and covered it up.

Which turned out to be quite a good decision :

 

[kcmobrewer]

Looks sick so far


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[mrmansfeld]

While all this was going on, I started to order some components for the build. I ordered three 100L kettles from a German eBay supplier, which used to be very popular on the french-speaking homebrew forums. Unfortunately, they no longer ship outside of Germany because of problems with the French postal service (or at least, that’s the way rumour has it). It’s a shame, because I paid 200€ total for three kettles with shipping to some friends in France.

Just received my first kettle, and it’s bigger in person than I expected!

Here it is, waiting for its siblings on the brewstand.

Underneath the brewstand, I have a 800m^3/h exhaust fan, and too many March 809 pumps. I originally ordered two pumps from tescopumps on eBay, but unfortunately USPS screwed up and sent my package to South Africa… (Swaziland instead of Switzerland, easy mistake I guess? But still the wrong continent). Anyway, tescopumps was awesome, assumed it might have been his mistake, and sent me two new pumps, with express shipping!

About a week after receiving this new package, I found out that instead of returning the “lost” package to the sender, the postal service finally managed to deliver it to the correct continent. At this point, I had a choice between returning two of the pumps and keeping the extra ones. In the end, since I was going to order a spare pump at some point anyway, I decided to keep all four pumps (I paid for all of them, but got a nice discount on the two extras), keep one spare pump in case of failures and build a three pump system. (In case you’re wondering why I decided to go with three pumps instead of the usual two, this is the main reason.)

 

[mrmansfeld]

These past few week-ends, I’ve been busy building the hood. I started with five planks that I cut down to the right lengths :

Adding some bits to attach the ceiling plank to the outer skirt :

Adding some stain (same as the brew stand). This was a bit of a pain since I had to remove the little blocks one by one to get the paint deep enough. I didn’t feel like disassembling it completely to paint the pieces separately, but perhaps I should have.

Hood is stained! (notice that the trench has been closed and the paving stones are back in place)

Added some semi-waterproof, 12V halogen lamps (40W each):

This was my brilliant idea for fixing the hood to the ceiling. I figured I could fix the long pieces to the top of the hood, which would add some rigidity, and fix the short bits to the ceiling. I can then easily remove the hood by pulling out the four 100mm bolts that hold everything together. What I didn’t anticipate is that fixing eight “small bits” to the ceiling would require drilling 16 holes into concrete (and as luck would have it, some of the holes ended up perfectly aligned with the rebar…). Anyway, it works as it is, but if I were to do it again, I wouldn’t do it the same way!

And finally, the current status (as of today) of my brew rig. Brew stand is built, hood is partly installed, and the lighting test is a success.

This week-end, I plan to finish the hood. I already had a 180mm hole drilled in the back of the garage and built a shelf on the outside to place the exhaust fan on. I now need to cut a hole in the back of the hood and build a duct to pull the air out. I’ll also install a speed controller for the fan, and wire the overhead lighting to a proper light switch.

 

[Rockn_M]

Looking good!

 

[mrmansfeld]

I should probably take a minute now to explain what I have planned for the electrical side of things, and the control panel.

My biggest hurdle in building an electric brewery from Kal’s instructions, is that the electrical system is pretty much incompatible. It’s possible to adapt the system to 230V by simply removing the parts that run at 110V and replacing them by 230V, but that’s not how things are usually designed, at least in Switzerland. Even with a 230V system, to run a 5500W element, you’d still need 24 amps. When I was first considering building this system, the main breaker in our house was 16 or 20 amps (if I remember correctly). It has since been upgraded to 25 amps since we installed a heat pump, but anything more would require running thicker wires to the transformer, which is very expensive. On the other hand, instead of a dual phase system, the European grid uses a three phase system, with 120° phase shift between each electrical phase. You get 230V (rms) between each phase and neutral, or 400V between two different phases. For a 16A outlet, the total power available, using all three phases and assuming a resistive load (cosPhi = 1) is 3 * 230V * 16A = 11’040W, which is more than enough to run a 100L brew rig!

From there, I decided to build a system with four heating elements (two in the HLT and two in the BK). The main element of the HLT runs on the first phase (L1), and the main element of the BK runs on L3. The two elements can run at the same time completely independently. However, that’s only 3680W max per phase! Since I want a bit more “oomph”, I will be adding a secondary element to each vessel, running on L2. When I need more power (for ramping up the temperature of strike water or ramping the BK up to a boil), I can add this element to whichever vessel needs it, just like the standard Kal system (with the element select switch). The advantage of this system is that I should be able to brew back-to-back batches, with 3500W to maintain temperatures/keep a rolling boil, and 7000W for ramping.

I just recently finished my wiring diagram:

and sent out the panel design to Ponoko to get laser cut and engraved :

For fun, I also made a mockup of what the finished panel should look like, using the elements from the laser file :

It seems I’ve actually managed to catch up with the current build status in one evening, but I’ve most certainly left out lots of information. I’m open to any questions or suggestions if you have any!

 

[stevehaun]

Incredibly sexy!

 

[Yaason]

Looks great so far.

 

[jimmy-blue-eyes]

Totally sick man!

 

[NathPowe]

Amazing work man. As someone who recently finished digging / filling in a trench for brewing water/power I commend you on running one where there were paving stones involved. Mine was quite a task and it just went through the backyard.

This is going to be a really great brewery.

Cheers.

 

[mrmansfeld]

Amazing work man. As someone who recently finished digging / filling in a trench for brewing water/power I commend you on running one where there were paving stones involved. Mine was quite a task and it just went through the backyard.

This is going to be a really great brewery.

Cheers.

Thanks! I did find the trench digging to be rather deceptive. Everyone I talked to before hand said it would be a lot of work, but I still thought I could get it done pretty quickly...

Removing the paving stones took me about an hour, digging the first half took a couple of hours with my brother ("Ha, this is easier than I thought!") and then it seemed to get progressively harder as we went further down... then we ran into some old (possibly decommissioned, but didn't want to risk it) water pipes and having to saw through a large stone to get the pipes to fit at the bottom of the trench.

In the end, it also took about three attempts to put the stones back, removing everything and starting again twice, because they don't fit unless the ground is really flat :/ I was so relieved when we got the last stones back in!

 

[mrmansfeld]

This week-end, I decided to finish up the hood. I used a router with a straight bit to cut a nice circle, approximately 200mm in diameter.

After removing the centrepiece, the hole ended up quite clean.

After this, I removed the existing light switch / outlet combo :

and replaced it with a speed controller and dual switch + outlet :

here it is wired and closed up. The top dial allows me to control the speed of the extractor fan, and the left switch turns the hood lights on and off. If I add spot lighting above the sink and prep area, I’ll connect it to that switch as well. The other switch goes to the main garage light.

The hood lights are actually on a switched outlet, since I plan to need to take down the hood in the future, this makes it a little easier :

----------


This week, I also received my control panel (and noticed that the hinges will interfere with the laser cut acrylic I was planning to stick on the front )

I added some DIN rails and some conduit to help me route the cables cleanly.

The prep area has now become my workshop while I build the panel (I’ll probably change the component layout a little when I get the missing components, but I wanted to get a feel for how it works first, so I know what I need to change)

And here’s the first part of the panel. Next week-end, I’ll wire the safe start interlock and main power light, and run the first power-up test. Then I’ll add in the breakers and see how far I get!

 

[Stealthcruiser]

Nice work!

 

[mrmansfeld]

This week-end, I got some new goodies! The laser-cut acrylic panel from Formulor arrived (again, sorry for the potato quality of some of the pics… I was in a hurry to build this and didn’t take time for better photos):

I tried a test fit before assembling everything, and noticed a few things, besides the fact that I would have to cut out a piece of the panel to fit the door locking mechanism which I noticed last week after I’d sent out my design for production…

For one thing, the dimensions listed in the datasheet for the Sestos PID aren’t quite accurate. The panel cutouts are exactly 45mm x 45mm, but the PIDs are actually slightly bigger, so I had to file down all four holes. As for the voltage/current meters, it came out too narrow and too high (so I have a little gap between the meters and the panel, and I broke a piece of acrylic trying to force one of the meters in.) Lesson learned : if I do this again, I’ll measure every component carefully first instead of blindly trusting the datasheet…

Next, I prepared the panel door for the cutouts. I simply drew lines and then cut away some windows with an angle grinder :

Quick fit check :

Drilled some holes on the side to mount the power in port :

Drilled some mounting holes for the SSRs and their heatsinks, and put some masking tape over them. I’m assuming the heat will transfer okay through the paint, but I might end up sanding the areas between the heatsinks and the SSRs if I find that it gets too hot :

Next step, more masking tape!

Paint it Black

And glued the acrylic panel onto the metal door :

I got a bit carried away with the cabling process after that, so I didn’t really have time to take many pictures. Here’s wiring up the power in port :

And here’s the panel after connecting up the main contactor and the safe start interlock chain… will it work?

Success!!

It’s sunday evening now, so I’m going to have to leave it like this for a few weeks until I have more time to work on it. Here’s an overview of the current status of the control panel:

I basically have everything connected up, except the connectors on the bottom (3 outputs for the pumps, 4 heating element outputs, and three temperature probe connectors). As you can see on the next picture though, all the wires are in place. White phone cables for the sensors, and wago connector blocks for the relays and pumps, bottom right and middle right.

Don’t mind the middle PID by the way, he’s just a little bit special… I’m getting a third Sestos PID in the mail soon, I just used a spare to fill the gap in the mean time, but the cables are cut to the right length for the definitive one.

And to finish off, bonus power-up picture!

 

[Junkster]

WOW! Looking really good so far..... Nice workmanship!

 

[mrmansfeld]

Easter week-end (2014-04-21)

No updates last week-end, since I was busy drinking homebrew with some friends. Had just tapped five new kegs on my five-tap keezer… got drunk, danced and sprained my ankle. So this week-end has been pretty slow since I’m still recovering. Not as much progress as I would have liked from a four-day week-end, but progress nevertheless.

Friday morning, I connected up the water pipes between the garage and the laundry. I now have hot and cold water available in the brewery, but I still have to install faucets and a sink.

A few weeks ago, I discovered these Neutrik Powercon connectors (from someone else’s blog). They can carry 20A, they’re rated for 250V and they take up about ¼ of the space of a 230V CEE connector. I decided to use these for my pumps and elements. So Friday afternoon, I made a bunch of cables

Here we have four cables with 1.5mm^2 conductors (10A, for the pumps, or my current brewing vessels with 2000W elements) and four with 2.5mm^2 (for the 16A heating elements)

I bought a 24mm hole saw, and did a quick test in a piece of wood to see if they were easily accessible when surrounded by other cables.

The test was deemed a success, so I reproduced the same template in Illustrator, and used that to mark the metal piece for the panel.

Here’s the panel all drilled out :

And another final test fit before painting :

After paint, with the whole panel assembled. Unfortunately, I didn’t sand the existing paint down, so it’s already getting chipped on the sides. I’ll probably get around to re-painting at some point, when I’ve got less things going on.

Another shot of the control panel from the corner :

I was planning on connecting up the Neutrik connectors to the panel, and wiring the Volt/Amp meters and SSRs, but I didn’t have the right crimp bits and couldn’t find any thermal paste… So until I have time to order those parts, I decided to work on the pumps instead.

Cut up some sheet metal for protection

Screwed the pumps to a wooden base, and wired them up to the cables I just made :

All closed up and neat(ish)... Pine sucks for making clean holes

Front view with the pumps fixed to their base :

And sitting in their new home, waiting for some paint (I’ve got a bunch of things to stain soon, I’ll build things first then paint everything at once)

 

[modobrew]

Badass build and very clean. Can wait to see it in action. I'm currently modeling a build after Kal's system. Can't wait to get it finished.

 

[natasatan]

Beautiful work. Can you come to America and build mine too?

 

[mrmansfeld]

Long time with no updates, and quite a few things have happened since.
I received my Monster Mill. Prepared a base for it to put it over a bucket.

Cutting out the hole for crushed grain:

Base ready to accomodate the mill :

Unfortunately, I had to stop there, as it appears that one of the rollers is out of true and won’t turn (one of the little axles is bent). Fred from Monster Mills has assured me that it isn’t normal and he’ll be replacing the bad roller, which is great!

So since that’s one more thing on hold until another week-end, I decided to kill some time by turning some new tap handles for my keezer. Not so easy to do on a metal lathe! (or maybe my coordination sucks)

About a week or two later, I received a replacement roller, assembled the mill, and it seems to work fine, so I assembled it and hacked together a removable hopper

which stores away nicely onto a shelf :

I’ll give it a coat of food-safe wood oil once it’s finished and I’m satisfied with the design.

Received the missing PID and wired it in to the panel, looks a little neater now:

Aaand punched my first holes in the kettles!

HLT valve installed :

Leak testing with 80 litres of water :

Phase 1 of the kettle plumbing complete (I’m waiting for the stainless steel coil before adding the herms valves, since I don’t know where the holes will go yet)

 

[mrmansfeld]

By this time I was running really low on beer, so I modified my old brew kettles to run with my new equipment, and gave it a test run :

After I’d brewed a couple of batches to fill up the kegerator again, I plumbed in hot and cold water taps, that end up just above the HLT. The valves at the bottom are reserved for connecting up a sink later on in the left hand corner of the brewery:

I also gave the brewstand a new coat of stain, I think it looks a lot better now (potatophone picture doesn’t really do justice to the colour)

Later realised that those taps were crappy (they both had a very slight leak even when “closed”, and when I tried to force them closed, the thread gave…). They were also a bit loose since I didn’t fix them solidly to the wall. Admittedly, they were just the cheapest I could find and not really adapted to this application. So I took them apart

And installed a more robust version. These ones are a joy to use. Don’t move at all since they’re screwed in to the wall, super smooth, and pretty easy to adjust (and also quite cheap)

Next, I took apart the pump stand, made a longer version to accommodate three pumps, and stained it.

Added wiring for the third pump:

I also added some holes underneath. I’ll put some pegs in there and drill a couple of holes in the brewstand, to stop the pump stand from moving around (it’s still easily removable though)

Took down the shelves, painted them and attached them solidly to the wall:

Reorganised my collection of malts

And made some more permanent-looking labels.

 

[mrmansfeld]

Last week, I finally ordered (and received!) the 50’ stainless steel tube for my herms coil.

I was expecting it to be difficult after reading Kal’s guide, but I wasn’t really expecting it to be that bad! It took me most of an afternoon to coil it, and I finished it the next day because I had no energy left to bend the ends of the tubing to fit into the HLT.

I spent a while trying to tighten the coil inside the HLT (it kept leaking), and then figured it would be much easier to remove the coil, crimp the compression fittings on, and then install the whole thing back into the HLT

It fits, and it’s watertight!

Here’s the setup with the coil installed (don’t have a good shot of the whole brewstand with the three pumps yet. I decided to move the coil down a bit after drilling the first hole, so I’ll plug that later on when I get the next shipment from brewhardware.

I also built a little housing for the extractor fan. Probably a little overkill, but I think it's cute. I might have to add a net in front of it in case birds decide they want to make it their new home -.-

Test fit :

Stained and added some leftover roofing :

Installed around the vent hole:

And with the fan installed, with my attempt at reducing the vibration noise :

And finally, while I’m waiting to be able to brew (only a few weeks from now, hopefully), I’m testing my brewpi setup with a Cider. If it turns out okay, I’ll clean it up a littleand make a neater box for the electronics:

Electrician is coming next week to add a 16 or 20A breaker to the main panel and connect it up to the brewery, and I’ve ordered the housings for the heating elements, so I should be able to fire up the elements within two to three weeks! It’s been a huge project, but I can really feel like I’m getting to the point where I’ll be able to brew on it very soon!

 

[NoH20]

Does your MLT PID control the pump through the herms coil?

Todd

 

[mrmansfeld]

Does your MLT PID control the pump through the herms coil?

Todd

No, I opted for the same process as Kal's setup, pretty much : first PID controls the HLT temp, recirculation rate is controlled by the ball valve at the pump, and second PID is only used to display the temperature at the output of the MLT

 

[NickTheGreat]

Fantastic build. Thanks for documenting it for us

 

[NoH20]

Ahhh, right. In theory they should (eventually) be equal. Thanks!

Todd

 

[mrmansfeld]

This week-end I finally got around to preparing the housings for the heating elements. I’d been putting it off for two reasons : first, it’s really hard to find full metal junction boxes in Switzerland at a half decent price. I wanted metal boxes because I want to make sure the kettles are properly grounded and I don’t feel like soldering ground lugs onto the kettles. I ended up ordering some boxes from Amazon similar to the ones used in Kal’s build. Second, I’m still waiting for 16A service to the garage. Hopefully that’ll be done this week, but until then there wasn’t really any point in having the heating elements connected up.

Step 1 : gather parts (boxes from Amazon, Powercon receptacles from eBay, the rest from a local hardware store)

Drilled the holes in the bottom of the boxes for the heating elements

Punch the 1¼” hole for the element in the back panel

Test fit with PowerCon receptable and heating element installed :

After spending all morning sanding the parts, they’re ready to be painted

And here’s all four element housings, painted. Waiting for JB Weld and food grade silicone to arrive this week so that I can put them together and install them in the kettles next Saturday. If all goes well, I should be able to run the first test with water through the whole system next week-end. I’m getting pretty excited by now