Brewery Build - Single Tier HERMS

[mplutodh1]

Update April 17, 2010:

After a day of electrical work we finally got to turn the brewhouse power on! Switches appear to be working, we can open up the solenoid in the gas valve at the flip of a switch, Love TS controllers are reading temps! Major milestone! The next build day will include fixing the lamp in the power switch and attaching the pilot light - we'll be ready for our first water test!

We have some work to do on cleaning up our wire routing once it exits the control panel. Ordered some XLR panel mount connectors that we're hoping will work to make our temperature probes quick disconnect so we don't run the risk of busting anything.

 

[GreenMonti]

Its looking sweet man. I can't wait for the wet run. I want to see what it will do.

Prost.

 

[Snake10]

Are you gonna give it some color/ rust protection? That is an awesome build!
snake10

 

[passedpawn]

oh man, i lost my breath for a minute there.

 

[Snake10]

Passedpawn,
That was funny. I built my brutus then took it completely apart again in order to give it a finish. Guess I already know the answer to my proposed question.
Snake10

 

[EarthBound]

Amazing build, man. You are really good.

Update: April 10, 2010

Why does it split on the top like that?

 

[mplutodh1]

Amazing build, man. You are really good.


Why does it split on the top like that?

You're talking about the barbs? Those are the inlet bleeders for priming the pumps.

Snake - yup we'll be painting it but figured we keep drilling and messing around with things and it'd be easier to paint after it's together. (Yes we'll have to tear it apart but shouldn't be too bad).

 

[justcopen]

Sorry I know I am a newbee. But I have 1 question Did you have to drill out your burners to work with the low pressure lp gas? I have been reading all the forums and now im lost.

 

[mplutodh1]

Sorry I know I am a newbee. But I have 1 question Did you have to drill out your burners to work with the low pressure lp gas? I have been reading all the forums and now im lost.

Not yet - we plan to eventually but want to fire it up first and adjust accordingly.

There is a guide on the forum floating around - Kladue has posted it a few times.

 

[Bigscience]

Can you put up a picture of the inside of the panel? How much room is between the end of the controlers and the box?

 

[mplutodh1]

Can you put up a picture of the inside of the panel? How much room is between the end of the controlers and the box?

I'll see what I can do - although I'll caveat it with - opinionated electrical engineers - look away . Our wire color matching went to hell because we ran out of wire and weren't going to go get a spool - we know what goes where so we're happy with it.

There was plenty of room between the back of the Love controllers & Auber timer and the back of the panel - well over an inch. We also opted to keep the transformer lower in the box so we have room for everything up top - we might eventually add a brewing schematic with LEDs on the lower section of the panel so those don't need much room.

 

[jvino]

Do you have any diagrams as to where the fittings are on the kegs and the purpose?? I finally sourced some kegs and plan to get started on my HERMS system soon. It would be helpful to know measurements as it seems to work well for you. Thanks!!

 

[mplutodh1]

Do you have any diagrams as to where the fittings are on the kegs and the purpose?? I finally sourced some kegs and plan to get started on my HERMS system soon. It would be helpful to know measurements as it seems to work well for you. Thanks!!

No diagrams. We just took into account Greenmonti's requirements - leaving about an inch or so of room for him to use the puller tool. I can get you an idea of where they are on the keg but we found each keg is slightly different (where the welds are, where the ribs are, etc).

Honestly there was no real science/math to it.

 

[CrowbarKarl]

Matt,
I'm loving your system. I've looked at plenty of various HERMS setup and components, but I love your design: not too complex and utilized a good design with smart components. My future setup will be pretty close to yours.

A few questions. How exactly did you wire the timer? I've used the Love controllers on my kegerator but have never used a timer. Your wiring diagram was great but didn't show the timer.

On your cam-lock connections (brilliant by the way), do they have any internal rubber rings? Just curious if everything is good for high temp.

Lastly, I'm going to be using the furnace solenoid valve, thermocoupling, and pilot light direction. Where did you get your 2-stage regulator? Do you have a make and model? What size inlet and outlet did you get? I figure your pipe supply for the burner would need to be a little larger than the size to each burner. The two-stage regulator does everything for you correct? You won't need a regulator on the BBQ tank right?

Anywho, It is a lot to digest. I think you guys have developed a brilliant rig. Thanks for the great documentation too.

 

[mplutodh1]

Matt,
I'm loving your system. I've looked at plenty of various HERMS setup and components, but I love your design: not too complex and utilized a good design with smart components. My future setup will be pretty close to yours.

Thanks! It's been fun. We've learned quite a bit and I'll highlight a few of our latest tweaks in a follow-up thread to this. Also plan to finish our write-up so our details, part #s, diagrams, etc are all up to date with our final build as it stands now.

A few questions. How exactly did you wire the timer? I've used the Love controllers on my kegerator but have never used a timer. Your wiring diagram was great but didn't show the timer.

The timer is completely independent from the Love Controllers and the actual brew circuit. We only added it so we'd have a quick panel mount timer to help us with our hop additions, etc during boil. In all honesty we're not super impressed with the timer we picked up. It's got a lot of functionality we'll never utilize and we knew that but it also doesn't easily give us the quick timer capabilities we had hoped to find in a panel mount. Live and learn! We'll probably play around with it more and figure something out but we're not too hung up on it right now. Finding a panel mount timer that gives us easy pause/start/stop/reset/buzzer just doesn't seem to exist - the Love unit was along the same lines as this one and was a bit more $ so either way we weren't finding exactly what we were looking for.

On your cam-lock connections (brilliant by the way), do they have any internal rubber rings? Just curious if everything is good for high temp.

Yes they do have a BUNA seal on the inside of the female side of the cam lock sets from Pro Flow Dynamics. There are several threads on here discussing these camlocks - we lucked out and got in on them before the craze hit and demand went up so not sure they are available or not, I heard they've had problems keeping them in stock. In that thread though your concerns around hot liquid has come up. I can tell you in our water tests recently we've been pushing hot water (not boiling yet) around 180 degrees F through them and haven't seen any issues.

Lastly, I'm going to be using the furnace solenoid valve, thermocoupling, and pilot light direction. Where did you get your 2-stage regulator? Do you have a make and model?

Marshall 290 was the regulator we picked up. Found it on eBay at a decent price.

What size inlet and outlet did you get?

They are 1/4" inlet/outlet on the regulator. Finding a 1/4" hose was kind of a pain in the rear. Most everything you'll find either already has a regulator attached (which you don't need) or is the wrong thread/size. So we pieced something together with parts from eBay (1/4" x 1/4" hose and then a QCC1 BBQ tank nut).

I figure your pipe supply for the burner would need to be a little larger than the size to each burner. The two-stage regulator does everything for you correct? You won't need a regulator on the BBQ tank right?

Not sure I understand what you're getting at with the different sizes. As you'll see in our photos we grabbed a few elbows and adapters to get our yellow flex line down to our valves and black pipe. We used 1/2" black pipe throughout which was easy to find parts for and wasn't a huge difference to step down or up if we needed to for parts.

Anywho, It is a lot to digest. I think you guys have developed a brilliant rig. Thanks for the great documentation too.

No problem and I totally know what you are saying about a lot to digest. Like I said we've learned a lot but we don't claim to know all of the answers either. We're trying to do our best to consolidate everything we've learned in a format that is helpful rather than having to dig through all kinds of threads on here like we've had to do. Not saying our way is the best or right way, just know some don't want to go digging!

I'll follow this up later tonight with some lessons learned from our latest water tests and modifications to the whole setup. Nothing HUGE but things we're catching as we fire it up and start running things.

The electrical diagram is incorrect and I'll post our latest as well.

 

[Nerdie]

war machine!

 

[mplutodh1]

Some details on the tweaks we've made recently.

1) Moved the Honeywell valve (shorter black pipe) so it's not directly under the HLT. Not because of heat issues as it didn't get too terribly warm down there. However the condensation forming on the under side of the keggle during the heat up process dripping on the valve caused us to move it out from under.

2) Added 1/8" triangles into the corners of the kettle trays. There was a small gap (photos to follow later) where flames were creeping out when we cranked the burners up and drilled them out to get back to the appropriate BTUs. The triangles act as shields and block the flames from creeping up the side of the kettles.

3) Adjusted our electrical again - as we realized there were a few things we didn't have quite right.

4) We're finding out that our HLT burner isn't getting enough oxygen while it's lit and many burner orifices do not stay lit - if we lift he kettle up just slightly and allow more air in - they all light back up. We got around this by just sticking a bolt head in to prop the tray/hlt up slightly during our recent water test but now we're scratching our heads on ways to increase airflow without losing the benefits of the wind screen. Got more work here to resolve this.

5) Put together our new sparge arm with an acrylic lid for the HLT. Have to snap updated photos with everything connected. But here are a few after soldering.

Updated Electrical Diagram:

 

[cdbrown]

That looks great. Am currently in the process of designing a single tier HERMS setup. Electric HLT controlled by Auberins PID, separate HERMS pot with element and Auberins PID with ramp soak. Continuous recirc of the mash.

I like how you've used camlocks so you can easily switch the lines around, helpful to underlet a bit with a stuck sparge

Did you ever consider getting the dual head march pump instead of two separate pumps? If so why did you go the way you did?

Cheers
-cdbrown

 

[AlchemyBrewing]

I am curious about the pump head orientation. I have only seen them with the "OUT" pointing up or horizontal. Have you had any problems with this losing prime or starting prime with it? Thanks!

 

[mplutodh1]

No significant problems with priming it this way - and as you'll see from all sorts of posts on HBT there is a long debate on that topic and everyone has their own thoughts. We do have some pump issues with trying to keep air out of our lines/pump - think it's more just practice than anything that'll fix that.

 

[The Mad Hatter]

Very nice build. How long till you get her broke in?

 

[mplutodh1]

Unless there are any unforeseen issues, we'll be running our first batch through it this weekend.

 

[TriangleIL]

Matt,

What was the reasoning for only using 1 or 2 tri clovers? Was there a benefit gained? I also noticed (it appears) they are on the drain on your HLT and on the HERMS output?

Thanks,

 

[mplutodh1]

Rather than setting up another style inline thermowell we opted to go with the tri-clover thermowells from Brewers Hardware - so we could easily disassemble, etc.

Rather than going all Tri we opted to go with the cam's - less $ and smaller profile which allows us to still tip the kegs without jamming anything which we feared might happen with tri's in our design.

 

[mplutodh1]

Update: June 4, 2010

Been meaning to update for a few days now just been so busy. After months of work we finally got around to brewing our first batch on the new brewery last Sunday.

Overall everything went pretty darn well for our first run on it. We did run into a few problems we've been trying to work through.

1) Our Love Controllers don't seem to be reading correct temps - consistently off by several degrees - we'll probably just have to end up adjusting our settings to accommodate this. Additionally they don't seem to be turning our gas valve off / on as we'd expect (actually at all) - luckily we wired in an override so we can turn the burner on and off via a switch - which allowed us to continue brewing but will need to troubleshoot.

2) Our BK and HLT seem to be suffocated when the kettles are resting on the frame. If we prop them up just slightly (a bolt head) they gain enough oxygen to breath and burn appropriately. We're going to play around with options to raise up our kettles and leave a little breathing room between the frame and the tip tray. We'll post updates when we get to that point. The bolt head works for now though - just have to be careful not to go grabbing a piping hot bolt! Guess our wind screens/design to prevent the wind and heat issues was too efficient!

We ended up turning our pump heads around so the outlet is on top - this did end up helping with our air issues during priming and made things go much smoother than when we had done our water tests.

Overall though - enjoyed getting to use it and looking forward to making some tweaks and getting it to a point where we're 'happy' with it.

Brewed a 10 gallon batch of a blonde style ale. Separated between our two conicals and fermenting away with two different yeast varieties to see which one we prefer.

We're working on a full guide/writeup on the brewery build with most everything we did/learned during our build. We'll include all of our diagrams, measurements, parts list, etc.

Here are a few pics of our brewday:

Starting our recirculating mash

Getting ready to sparge

Dad after adding hops to the BK

Fermenting away:

 

[AlchemyBrewing]

Any problems with your sparge arm staying put? I have a similar set up but have not developed a means to hold it at the height I want. That means I end up sitting there holding the damn thing with a hot pad! Super Fun and inefficient!

 

[mplutodh1]

Any problems with your sparge arm staying put? I have a similar set up but have not developed a means to hold it at the height I want. That means I end up sitting there holding the damn thing with a hot pad! Super Fun and inefficient!

We've just been using a 1" spring clamp with the rubber tips pulled off. $0.99 from harbor freight.

http://www.harborfreight.com/1-inch-capacity-steel-spring-clamp-39569.html

Works pretty well.

 

[diatonic]

Update: June 4, 20102) Our BK and HLT seem to be suffocated when the kettles are resting on the frame. If we prop them up just slightly (a bolt head) they gain enough oxygen to breath and burn appropriately. We're going to play around with options to raise up our kettles and leave a little breathing room between the frame and the tip tray. We'll post updates when we get to that point. The bolt head works for now though - just have to be careful not to go grabbing a piping hot bolt! Guess our wind screens/design to prevent the wind and heat issues was too efficient!

I ran in to that same problem, and rather than raising the kegs up, I cut 2 6"x1" vents in the skirt on each keg. It worked great, and was easy. (Especially if you know someone with a plasma cutter.)

 

[mplutodh1]

I ran in to that same problem, and rather than raising the kegs up, I cut 2 6"x1" vents in the skirt on each keg. It worked great, and was easy. (Especially if you know someone with a plasma cutter.)

Not a bad idea. Glad to hear we aren't the only ones who ran into that!

 

[CrowbarKarl]

I remember seeing your post Diatonic and was about to suggest the same thing.

Matt - Where did you get your Marshall 290 regulator? I've seen plenty of Marshall 290 two-stage regulators but not one rated for 350k BTU. I've looked for other brands with that rating without a ton of luck. I found one.

I'm curious to see what the resolution of your Love controllers is. Looks like a slick setup.

Again, appreciate the detail and future diagrams.