Countertop Brutus 20

[jkarp]

Many grounding ideas in this thread.

 

[bad coffee]

I'm either going to ground my elements, or run the ground wire up to the eyebolt for the siteglass. It should be less than a foot, and I can tape the wire down to the outside of the insulation.

B

 

[BadKarma]

Talked to my brother last night and I think we're going to have a screw welded to the kettle close to the bulkhead to attach the ground to. That seems the best way I can think of.

 

[jfkriege]

I have a 1/4-20 x 1/2" SS bolt soldered to my kettle. It works great.

 

[dragon99]

Does anyone ever have problems with condensation while brewing indoors? I had planned to set this up in my laundry room until I considered there's no vent hood there.

 

[thorongil]

Does anyone ever have problems with condensation while brewing indoors?

I think you'll need some kind of exhaust system. Even in a very dry climate like mine I have one just to be safe... Though I brew in my office and not a laundry room...

 

[HarkinBanks]

I do 7 or 8 gal boils in my kitchen and I get a fair amount of condensation. Luckily I have a split ac system that also has a dehumidifier setting. Otherwise I get droplets on my ceiling and windows.

 

[BadKarma]

I brew small batches, so this is not an issue with me.

Here's an idea: If your laundry room has a door or window to the outside, a small window fan pointed out would help. If you have a door and can close off from the rest of the house, crack the door open and vent with a fan.

 

[BadKarma]

Well, I ordered the fitting from BarginFittings.com this morning. Gonna go get the element this afternoon along with the 1 1/4" hole saw. I already have a power cable from a PC at the house. Gonna look at the insulation too.

To bad my next brew day is the 19th, I have a flyfishing trip planned for the 12-13th.

 

[keithd]

I grounded mine by soldering the ground lead to the electric element nut. Figure since that contacts the metal BK body with virtually zero ohms resistance, it's as good as attaching a bolt.

And I might post pics in the future if I'm not too embarrassed with my work, but I will say that rubber foam mat is the greatest thing since Reflectix for electric vessel insulation. Possibly WAY better as I needed only one layer vs three Reflectix layers on my keg vessel setup, and it cuts easy. A 3/4-1" thick mat is all you need, and there's other thicknesses available.

Only downer is that it's not as cheap Stateside. Me being stationed in Japan, Reflectix is priced up there with gold or the shroud of Turin or something in square meterage, so rubber foam mat ain't all that bad.

One thing - if you use weldless fittings, it might not be so good as a 1" thick layer can hide leaks. My BK valve and sight gauge are soldered, and my e-element is weldless. But three layers of Reflectix can hide alot as well.

jkarp isn't attempting to do full 5-gallon batches with a 2KW element. I am, and with measured voltage here at 110V vs 120V, I'm willing to chase down thermal leaks more than the average bear. :fro: I've found that with lid off, the 2KW element is struggling, but with lid on, you need to watch out for boil-overs.

 

[doodlevon]

very interested in this setup and need imput on my set up.
- can you build the rig without the counterflow wort chiller. i have a keggle im converting with two 2000 watt elements and a 40 qt polarware as my mlt. since i have a drop in chiller, can i build the system without a bucket chiller and just pump the wort/water between the two vessels.

 

[jkarp]

very interested in this setup and need imput on my set up.
- can you build the rig without the counterflow wort chiller. i have a keggle im converting with two 2000 watt elements and a 40 qt polarware as my mlt. since i have a drop in chiller, can i build the system without a bucket chiller and just pump the wort/water between the two vessels.

Absolutely! I know several CB20 builders who did just that because they prefer immersion chilling.

 

[doodlevon]

fantastic, in reference to the electrical side of the build,
-two ssrs and one pid to control them? help with which ones to buy and where.
-three different 12 guage lines from my box on gfci (one for each element, and on for the pump)?

 

[jkarp]

I like Auber. You can find parts a bit cheaper on eBay but Auber's support is stellar. The SYL-2362 PID can easily source two SSRs. Just wire them in parallel. While the 25A SSRs would be sufficient, I'd suggest going for the 40s - they run cooler. Don't forget heatsinks too.

The March pump doesn't draw much. I'm able to run a 2KW element and the pump off a single 20A circuit easily.

 

[madisoneyes]

Have you had any problems with the PID overshooting the desired temp when the volume in the kettle/HLT is lower....I ran the autotune with 4 gallons and I notice when I have two gallons in the kettle the PID keeps rasing the temp 10...15...even 20 degrees above the set temp...

 

[jkarp]

Have you had any problems with the PID overshooting the desired temp when the volume in the kettle/HLT is lower....I ran the autotune with 4 gallons and I notice when I have two gallons in the kettle the PID keeps rasing the temp 10...15...even 20 degrees above the set temp...

Autotune isn't perfect. You probably need to decrease your I parameter a bit. Coderage did a nice post on manually tuning a PID.

 

[madisoneyes]

I have a couple questions...

1.What is your cleaning/disinfecting protocol?
2. Do you use recirculation to maintain mash temp...if so is a very slow recirculation best?

 

[jkarp]

I have a couple questions...

1.What is your cleaning/disinfecting protocol?
2. Do you use recirculation to maintain mash temp...if so is a very slow recirculation best?

I rinse the kettle, fill with a couple gal of hot water and PBW, and recirculate through the pump/cfc for about 5 minutes. Then I dump it all out and fill the kettle with 5gal of hot water and run it through the pump/cfc to rinse. That's all there is to it.

The cooler MLT does a great job of holding temp, but you certainly can recirc. during the mash. I only do it for raising mash temps and mashout.

 

[timber_road]

my apologies if this has already been covered... but i noticed you are using a 15 amp receptacles in the control box. at max output, the heating element will pull 16.67 amps. seems to me the heating element should be plugged into a 20 amp receptacle and 12 g wire used instead of the 14 g. any thoughts from the more electrically inclined?

 

[jkarp]

my apologies if this has already been covered... but i noticed you are using a 15 amp receptacles in the control box. at max output, the heating element will pull 16.67 amps. seems to me the heating element should be plugged into a 20 amp receptacle and 12 g wire used instead of the 14 g. any thoughts from the more electrically inclined?

You'll probably notice that your kitchen has 15A receptacles on 20A circuits too. It's a weird but allowed quirk of the electrical code. Wiring should still be 12 gauge.

 

[timber_road]

you are absolutely correct about my kitchen (most of the house for that matter)... 15A receptacles on 20A circuits, 12 guage wire. i'm still learning as i go with electricity. i guess the only question came to mind regarding the amps being pulled by the heating element exceeding the rating of the receptacle. if it's an allowed quirk then so be it. an electrician friend told me it would most likely not be an issue.

i am completely fascinated by this setup. i love brewing outside with my scaled down BIAB setup. i brew 2.5 gallon batches in a 6 gallon pot. however, brewing in my basement during the winter months would certainly be comfortable and would take out the element of mother nature. i have a second kitchen down there with plenty of space and 240v. heck, i even have a garden hose attachment down there.

this will be my first DIY homebrewing project. thanks to jkarp and the many others on this site for pointing me down the path!

also... i found a LWD 2000W/120V element here

but i dont understand what "resistored" stainless steel is or if in fact the outer sheath of Incology® 800 (whatever that is) would have an adverse affect on the wort.

 

[timber_road]

here is the correct link to the above heating element

 

[jkarp]

Good find. I'd not seen a 2KW LWD before. I've been using a HWD Rheem resistor copper element with great success. I like that it's all copper exposed to the wort.

 

[timber_road]

yeah the LWD seems a tad pricey compared to the HWD models that are readily available in 2000W/120V... may just go with the HWD copper. if you've never had a scorching issue, thats good enough for me.

i feel the same way copper. from what i've read many heating elements are sheathed in some kind of alloy to resist oxidation in high temp environments as a way of strengthening the element and making it last longer.

 

[dflipse]

I'm a huge fan of this idea, this thread, and others related to it. My preliminary plans are to go all-electric with two 2000W heating elements, but I realized that I'd be able to slightly modify my current system to try out the process.

I've got a 10 gallon brew pot, a 10 gallon cooler with false bottom, and a single pump. I typically do some variety of batch sparge. All I had to do was hook up the hoses in a different order and set my mash tun up on a bucket, and I'd replicated the Countertop Brutus setup (albeit with my heat still my usual combination of 1500W heat stick and gas stove).

I thought it went really well. Dropped my efficiency a little bit from my usual in the low 70s to 67%, but was easy and simple. I ran into one problem. As I started circulating, some grain ended up in the kettle. This wasn't surprising. The problem was that a non-trivial amount of it wanted to just float around, and not get drained out (to get pumped back to the top of the grain bed in the mash tun). I tried to let the water level in the kettle get lower, so the floaters would get sucked into the dip tube, but that just resulted in me losing pump function.

My solution was ultimately to stop the pump, dump the kettle contents onto the top of the grain bed, and then resume business as usual. From then on, we were golden. Really crystal clear wort.

I thought perhaps this was a one time problem, maybe related to the grain bill. (Recipe was a Leffe Blonde clone I found on HBT a while back.) Perhaps one of those grains is just particularly floaty. Going to give the method a few more tries before I commit to my next rig. Thanks again jkarp and everyone else.

 

[jkarp]

Your mash tun have a copper / pvc manifold? I use a stainless braid so there's no way anything but flour-sized bits can get through and they recirculate easily. With a manifold, I'd suggest doing a normal vorlauf before beginning recirculation to get the grain bed set.

 

[Kegcowboy]

I'm a huge fan of this idea, this thread, and others related to it. My preliminary plans are to go all-electric with two 2000W heating elements, but I realized that I'd be able to slightly modify my current system to try out the process.

I've got a 10 gallon brew pot, a 10 gallon cooler with false bottom, and a single pump. I typically do some variety of batch sparge. All I had to do was hook up the hoses in a different order and set my mash tun up on a bucket, and I'd replicated the Countertop Brutus setup (albeit with my heat still my usual combination of 1500W heat stick and gas stove).

I thought it went really well. Dropped my efficiency a little bit from my usual in the low 70s to 67%, but was easy and simple. I ran into one problem. As I started circulating, some grain ended up in the kettle. This wasn't surprising. The problem was that a non-trivial amount of it wanted to just float around, and not get drained out (to get pumped back to the top of the grain bed in the mash tun). I tried to let the water level in the kettle get lower, so the floaters would get sucked into the dip tube, but that just resulted in me losing pump function.

My solution was ultimately to stop the pump, dump the kettle contents onto the top of the grain bed, and then resume business as usual. From then on, we were golden. Really crystal clear wort.

I thought perhaps this was a one time problem, maybe related to the grain bill. (Recipe was a Leffe Blonde clone I found on HBT a while back.) Perhaps one of those grains is just particularly floaty. Going to give the method a few more tries before I commit to my next rig. Thanks again jkarp and everyone else.

We are noticing a big swing in electric brewing based on our element vs. burner sales. We have switched to a combonation element/ induction burner system ourselves.

 

[Lonnie Mac]

I'm a huge fan of this idea, this thread, and others related to it. My preliminary plans are to go all-electric with two 2000W heating elements, but I realized that I'd be able to slightly modify my current system to try out the process.

I've got a 10 gallon brew pot, a 10 gallon cooler with false bottom, and a single pump. I typically do some variety of batch sparge. All I had to do was hook up the hoses in a different order and set my mash tun up on a bucket, and I'd replicated the Countertop Brutus setup (albeit with my heat still my usual combination of 1500W heat stick and gas stove).

I thought it went really well. Dropped my efficiency a little bit from my usual in the low 70s to 67%, but was easy and simple. I ran into one problem. As I started circulating, some grain ended up in the kettle. This wasn't surprising. The problem was that a non-trivial amount of it wanted to just float around, and not get drained out (to get pumped back to the top of the grain bed in the mash tun). I tried to let the water level in the kettle get lower, so the floaters would get sucked into the dip tube, but that just resulted in me losing pump function.

My solution was ultimately to stop the pump, dump the kettle contents onto the top of the grain bed, and then resume business as usual. From then on, we were golden. Really crystal clear wort.

I thought perhaps this was a one time problem, maybe related to the grain bill. (Recipe was a Leffe Blonde clone I found on HBT a while back.) Perhaps one of those grains is just particularly floaty. Going to give the method a few more tries before I commit to my next rig. Thanks again jkarp and everyone else.

In my original Brutus 2.0 design, I recirculate the pots back to themselves. This clears the wort crystal clear. Then I switch the lids when all has cleared.

Kegcowboy, I have been meaning to come see your shop. Several members from my brewclub (Mashtronauts) say it's real nice. I don't need much of nothing, but just to say hi, a beer, and maybe a refill...

Sorry for the

 

[dflipse]

Your mash tun have a copper / pvc manifold? I use a stainless braid so there's no way anything but flour-sized bits can get through and they recirculate easily. With a manifold, I'd suggest doing a normal vorlauf before beginning recirculation to get the grain bed set.

There's the problem. I actually have a full false bottom in my mash tun. I'd hoped the relatively small amount of grain would be able to circulate through the whole system, but my first try showed that doesn't work, at least the way my dip tube/boil kettle is set up. Going forward, then, I'd either switch to a stainless braid or just do a quick initial vorlauf like you said. Appreciate the info.

 

[Kegcowboy]

In my original Brutus 2.0 design, I recirculate the pots back to themselves. This clears the wort crystal clear. Then I switch the lids when all has cleared.

Kegcowboy, I have been meaning to come see your shop. Several members from my brewclub (Mashtronauts) say it's real nice. I don't need much of nothing, but just to say hi, a beer, and maybe a refill...

Sorry for the

Lonnie, It would be an honor to finally meet you in person. If you are able to give us some warning I'll make sure that I am there when you get there. It seems internet Christmas sales have already started with lots of wifes calling in for gift hints so..............don't be surprised if at certain times of the day if it looks more like a distrubition warehouse more than a homebrew equipment shop. -Jeff