BCS 2 Vessel No Sparge Garage Brewery Build

[poptarts]

Yeah with 5500W it usually heats up faster than I can measure and mill grain, water additions.

I generally prep water and grains the night before since I have to pick up RO from the store and what not. But that's awesome to know it can heat up that fast.

 

[TrickyDick]

Use the Electronics Salon board and don't look back!

link?

 

[poptarts]

link?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/201224692713?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

 

[TrickyDick]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/201224692713?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

Pricey relay.. But it works is the important part! So you are using a BCS, and an Arduino, plus that Relay board? What is the arduino controlling? I was trying to use some relays with my arduino for a dry cure chamber project and I could never get it working. Could be the same issue, even though says it works with arduino.... http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E0NSORY?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage

By the way, I cannot find that link you sent about the float switches for the life of me. Can you resend please!

So when do you think you'll be able to fire it up? My setup is coming along still but had to order some last minute fittings I hadn't thought about. I don't think that my first brew session I'll be able to take advantage of the remote fill and pre heat capability.

More importantly, what the first beer you're planning to brew?

TD

 

[poptarts]

Pricey relay.. But it works is the important part! So you are using a BCS, and an Arduino, plus that Relay board? What is the arduino controlling? I was trying to use some relays with my arduino for a dry cure chamber project and I could never get it working. Could be the same issue, even though says it works with arduino.... http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E0NSORY?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage

By the way, I cannot find that link you sent about the float switches for the life of me. Can you resend please!

So when do you think you'll be able to fire it up? My setup is coming along still but had to order some last minute fittings I hadn't thought about. I don't think that my first brew session I'll be able to take advantage of the remote fill and pre heat capability.

More importantly, what the first beer you're planning to brew?

TD

Not using an arduino for this project. I had originally planned on the cheap relay board but jumped onto the new one instead. It is pricy but the quality is definitely there. Here are the float switches I will be using. I actually have all day tomorrow set aside to hopefully get everything out to the garage and assembled fully and begin doing water testing and setting up processes etc with the BCS. If all goes to plan over christmas / new years I plan to run a few batches through it.

 

[Namako]

link?

Those relay boards are also available through Amazon in 2-, 4-, 8- and 16-relay editions, with and without DIN rail mounts. They ship from Hong Kong, but it doesn't take very long - less than a week, as I recall.

Here is a link to the 5VDC version I bought for the BCS (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M1MC3ZU)

 

[BrunDog]

Pricey relay.. But it works is the important part! So you are using a BCS, and an Arduino, plus that Relay board? What is the arduino controlling? I was trying to use some relays with my arduino for a dry cure chamber project and I could never get it working. Could be the same issue, even though says it works with arduino.... http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E0NSORY/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20



By the way, I cannot find that link you sent about the float switches for the life of me. Can you resend please!



So when do you think you'll be able to fire it up? My setup is coming along still but had to order some last minute fittings I hadn't thought about. I don't think that my first brew session I'll be able to take advantage of the remote fill and pre heat capability.



More importantly, what the first beer you're planning to brew?



TD

Most boards are active low trigger, BCS requires an active high trigger. You can do either with Arduino but low will be on the the relay. There are boards that are switchable but not as common.

 

[poptarts]

Needs a little more work. 1 float switch isnt appearing to work but outside of that everything seems solid. Going to give it a deep clean tomorrow.

 

[TrickyDick]

Those the floats you linked for me? I bought two. Hope mine both work. That is what I've read about the mechanical floats. They tend to fail. If they give you problems, can you implement the capacitative type sensors? Would need more relays and DIY "fun".

TD

 

[poptarts]

Those the floats you linked for me? I bought two. Hope mine both work. That is what I've read about the mechanical floats. They tend to fail. If they give you problems, can you implement the capacitative type sensors? Would need more relays and DIY "fun".

TD

Not fully sure yet, Im about to head outside and do some debugging.

 

[BrunDog]

Capacitive sensors don't work through metal like a keg. Would need to use liquid tight capacitive sensors.

 

[poptarts]

I mounted the float swtich sideways like a dope. Everything is working fine. still have a couple minor leakes I noticed when running cleaning cycles but everything is clean and working as intended.

 

[BrunDog]

Nice!

 

[poptarts]

The API is pretty solid on this thing. Writing a custom beersmith import tool.

 

[TrickyDick]

Let us know how that works! You got the 460 or 462?

 

[poptarts]

462

 

[TrickyDick]

462

Cool, so when you get it all working you can share
I assume that it is to bring your mash set points and steps for your recipe into the BCS without having to manually reprocess the appropriate process each time?

 

[thekraken]

The API is pretty solid on this thing. Writing a custom beersmith import tool.

This inspired me to take a look at beersmith's xml file, 500 lines just for one friggin recipe! Not difficult, just tedious. What language are you using? I'd be curious to see your code if you are willing to share.

 

[poptarts]

Its just going to be a .net application. I will probably weave it into my brew vision site at some point.

 

[BrunDog]

Maybe you can work with JonW and have his application do recipe imports?

 

[JonW]

Maybe you can work with JonW and have his application do recipe imports?

BCS Desktop will be doing both the variable substitution like the web utility and importing from BeerSmith/BeerXML, but it is still quite a distance out.

 

[poptarts]

yea I mean if its open source I would be down for helping out @JonW
For now though, this thing was stupid fast to slap together. Can load a beer xml file, allow you to change anything you need and then update the BCS with the new info. Totally un mappable atm so only good for me but not bad for like 1 hr of code

 

[thekraken]

Nice. Are you going to support importing mash steps? What about strike and sparge volumes for auto fill? Maybe I'm getting ahead of my self, I don't know the BCS.

 

[poptarts]

Nice. Are you going to support importing mash steps? What about strike and sparge volumes for auto fill? Maybe I'm getting ahead of my self, I don't know the BCS.

Not at the moment, this is just a personal tool for my system and I have no plumbing out in the garage so none of that is happening until I move or something and I dont really plan on that happening any time soon. As far as mash steps, I just do single rest at 1 temp them mashout and this tool allows for that.

 

[poptarts]

Finished system today. Will brew tomorrow. Have a big starter of conan going. My initial plan was to make starter wort but I started gathering supplies and realized I still have 10 quarts of the stuff so I can hold off awhile before I make another 5 gallon batch. So now the plan is to brew up a giant nasty pseudosue clone. Going to double crush and aim for 70% I figure that should get me in the ballpark, since my mill on my old system was getting me 75 on single crush doing batch sparge. Lots of pics to come from brew day tomorrow, happy holidays guys.

 

[RocketBrewer]

Good luck with the brew, looking forward to hearing how it goes!

 

[poptarts]

So overall not a bad brew day. System is stupid fast, pretty sure once I figure out all my stuff a brew day under 3 hrs will be no issue at all. Biggest issue is my PID is not in tune at all so my mash temps were swinging about 4 on either side of set point. So I will have to figure out how to tune those and do that before next brew day. It was bloody cold today. I believe the high is 9 and I have no idea what it was this morning but it took a big fire a decent amount of time before I could stop seeing my breath in the garage. Anyway my pumps were frozen so those were annoying to thaw but got it done. Missed volume by about .5 gallons but did hit target OG so not too bad. I dont have marking in my keggle so I dont know if the .5 was from boil off or losses or probably a combination of both. Anyway here are some pictures.
Right after mash in

System Mashing away

Love watching the sight glass, you can see conversion take place as it goes from cloudy to clear.
Right after mash in

about the 20 minute mark

at mash out

had some natural cooling today, there is a sump pump in there I use to run "hose" water in the winter.

Wort boiling away with PWM set to 55%

Phase 2 of this build is defiantly hooking up some duct, it was nuts today though. Ive never had this much steam, probably because its so cold and dry. Plans are already made and I should be installing it some time right after the new year.

my homemade snorkel worked like a champ with the 8oz of hops.

The bottom drains made clean up a joke, I cant even imagine how cake it would be if I had running water. Even in the summer with a hose and spray head its going to be a dream. Overall super stoked, minor tweaks needed, main one being PID and a few process tweaks but overall im super happy with it. Beer is sitting in the fermenter happy at 63 so hopefully we have an epic IPA on the way.

 

[iijakii]

Looking great. Jealous of the bottom drain! And yeah losses on these are an efficiency killer. You'll quickly learn to get a bucket and be careful disconnecting hoses and everything in the right order so you don't lose a drop.

 

[poptarts]

I'm fine with loss Just needed to know what it is and where it comes from. Gonna go with the 8oz hops didn't help haha.. And yea bottom drain is sick

 

[JonW]

Great job! Pretty sure I would have lost motivation to brew right about the time I saw 9 degrees and realized the pumps were frozen.