Building a Sculpture

[MirImage]

Hey all,

Not sure if there are good guides for building up a brew sculpture but I'm in the process of making one slowlly. My question is where do I go next? My goal is fulling automated electric HERMS or RIMS.

Currently I do batch sparging and have two turkey fryers. I have a 10g cooler for mash tun but am getting another SS pot soon (making 3). I have 1 pump but haven't used it yet and don't have the connection or hoses for it yet (maybe the next buy).

Due to the costs I will probably have to do propane for a while and maybe build the sculpture and use the turkey fryers for a bit while the sculpture sits. Not sure if getting a proper autopropane set up is worth replacing turkey fryers if I plan to switch to electric.

Sorry if this didn't make sense just looking for sort of a road map.

 

[day_trippr]

I believe it helps a lot to see how other folks built their rigs and why they made certain design decisions.

Pour yourself a tall one and peruse https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/show-us-your-sculpture-or-brew-rig.46578/
Many of the builds shown developed discussion around interest points and if you take the whole thing in you'll have learned a heck of a lot about how and why folks build their brew rigs.

When I built my first 3V/2P single tier it was largely based on rigs I had seen at various "brew days" hosted by my lhbs.
My second one took the experiences of the first, added some stuff to solve a transport concern, and borrowed some ideas I found on HBT.
It's still fully manual but eventually I'll automate the HLT burner - again using ideas I've found here on HBT...

Cheers!

 

[MirImage]

Thanks @day_trippr I forgot about that thread. Been away from HBT a bit. Cheers

 

[CadiBrewer]

What day_trippr said. But I'll give you my opinion on one of your specific questions, as to whether you should go to autoelectric and build your rig if you plan to switch to electric later on. If you do intend to go electric, I would figure out what your setup will look like as electric before you spend money building a rig around propane.

My first 3 vessel build was propane. It was built out of square tube steel like many of the rigs you see. But the beauty of electric is that you can just use a table, wood or stainless. I bought a stainless commercial kitchen prep table on Amazon for about $200. It works perfectly for my situation.

You may decide to go a different route with your setup, but my point is that you may not want to build a propane setup and then convert that later on when you might have had more flexibility if you started off thinking electric.

 

[MirImage]

What day_trippr said. But I'll give you my opinion on one of your specific questions, as to whether you should go to autoelectric and build your rig if you plan to switch to electric later on. If you do intend to go electric, I would figure out what your setup will look like as electric before you spend money building a rig around propane.

My first 3 vessel build was propane. It was built out of square tube steel like many of the rigs you see. But the beauty of electric is that you can just use a table, wood or stainless. I bought a stainless commercial kitchen prep table on Amazon for about $200. It works perfectly for my situation.

You may decide to go a different route with your setup, but my point is that you may not want to build a propane setup and then convert that later on when you might have had more flexibility if you started off thinking electric.

The info I was looking for! Seems like you can go fairly cheaper with electric when. It comes to a table. It might be more worth my time to just worry about converting my kettles for the pumps and just stick to the turkey fryers for a bit.

End goal is to get venting in my basement "fermenting" area from the window and do electric down there OR have it outside in the garage (less need to vent). Both have easy access to a breaker box...garage has it's own box).