Electric 1.5 BBL Upgrade

[BigBobsBrews]

U got a steal on those drums, I havnt been able to find them locally for under $400 apiece

 

[cruelkix]

U got a steal on those drums, I havnt been able to find them locally for under $400 apiece

Just keep checking eBay, you'll find some.

 

[klyph]

Ya but they seem to be all on the east coast. At least the cheap ones.

 

[hillhousesawdustco]

What are your plans for fermentation? More 55 gallon drums or conicals or something else?

 

[cruelkix]

What are your plans for fermentation? More 55 gallon drums or conicals or something else?

I think I'm going the inductor tank route. 85 gallon plastic conicals with stands. Double batch each day into 1 of them. 4 of them will run me about $1200 shipped. Pretty damn good price per gallon. I've read a bunch on cooling, and if needed, I'll probably throw a stainless coil down the top of it and run some sort of chilled water through it.

For the price I just cant pass them up.

www.tank-depot.com

 

[cruelkix]

Ya but they seem to be all on the east coast. At least the cheap ones.

Yeah I had mine shipped. It cost a lot to do it, but they were pretty cheap from a guy in cincinnati. Shipping to alaska tho ...... ouch $$

 

[Garak]

Don't forget that most if not all commercial buildings are on 3phase power and thus hot to hot you will only get 208v and not 240volt. This means you will only get about 75% of the rated power out of your heating elements.

I've got a 4700 watt cartridge heater in my kettle but my apartment is on 3phase power so I only get 3600 watts out of it. But that is a good thing as it drops the current down to around 17A and allows me to use a 20A breaker and #12 wire.

Also a 100A 3phase panel can supply 33% more power than 100A single phase panel.

 

[cruelkix]

Don't forget that most if not all commercial buildings are on 3phase power and thus hot to hot you will only get 208v and not 240volt. This means you will only get about 75% of the rated power out of your heating elements.

I've got a 4700 watt cartridge heater in my kettle but my apartment is on 3phase power so I only get 3600 watts out of it. But that is a good thing as it drops the current down to around 17A and allows me to use a 20A breaker and #12 wire.

Also a 100A 3phase panel can supply 33% more power than 100A single phase panel.

Good info. With the way I have things set up it is cheap and very easy to swap out heating elements. again, so much of how I set up the electrical is dependent on how the building is set up. I'll start looking at potential places in the next few weeks, so I'll keep all of this in mind during my search. Thanks!

 

[ScubaSteve]

Right now I'm trying to decide what part of town I want to open up in. Close to home would be nice, but I'm not sure the money is there in my area. Craft beer is a "nice to have", not a must have. I need an area with some money in their pockets so I can charge them $5+ per pint. Unfortuantely that makes rent go up and takes away from my renovation funds.

Getting a Nano running in the Denver area for less than $10k is proving to be very difficult.

I grew up in SE Aurora...went to Smoky Hill HS.....there's plenty of money there....but you really need to decide if you're going the brewpub route or not. In the suburbs, you could have a very successful family establishment that ALSO sells good beer. It's a risk any way you look at it.

OR, you could go the tasting room/distributor route....and just focus on making beer...but it'll be trickier to find affordable commercial space that is easily accessible/pleasing to the average Joe. BUT, you can bring your product to the customer this way, which would overcome the "location" problem.

Either way, thanks for publishing your progress! You're making ME want to go Nano!:rockin:

 

[cruelkix]

I grew up in SE Aurora...went to Smoky Hill HS.....there's plenty of money there....but you really need to decide if you're going the brewpub route or not. In the suburbs, you could have a very successful family establishment that ALSO sells good beer. It's a risk any way you look at it.

OR, you could go the tasting room/distributor route....and just focus on making beer...but it'll be trickier to find affordable commercial space that is easily accessible/pleasing to the average Joe. BUT, you can bring your product to the customer this way, which would overcome the "location" problem.

Either way, thanks for publishing your progress! You're making ME want to go Nano!:rockin:

SE Aurora definitely has money. I live in central/north west Aurora, which is not the nicest area. My neighborhood is nice, but the surronding area is pretty crapy. Dry Dock has a pretty good handle on the south west side. I think your right, if anywhere in Aruroa I would go south east.

Im definitely going the tasting room/distributor. Distributor is more of a late game plan. Tasting room to me makes the most sense to get started up on the cheap.

On a seperate note: I got the drums back from the welder with all the tricolvers on them and they look awesome. I also had him weld 1" nuts onto the kettles for the heating elements. They work damn well.

And I got the frame all primed up. I'll grab some pics at lunch today. Mechanically its almost done. Electrical shouldnt take me more than a day to run (at least to get to a point that I can test) as the panels will be canabilized from the current rig. Time to come up with a good recipe for a test batch. If all goes well I'll crank out a batch this weekend. :rockin:

 

[cruelkix]

So here are the pics of the progress I made that I mentioned in the last post:

Frame Primed:

Close up of some of the welds and fittings and such:
Sight glass and one of the nuts with an element threaded in

The bottom drain with butterfly valve on it. Also the welder made the custom length elbow, turned out nicely. I have ordered some pipe supports to hold the weight of the valve and piping so that the bottom triclover isn't taking all the weight. Working the valve puts lots of force on it.

Close up of a temp prob with M8 connector for easy removal.

Inside shot of the elements i threaded in. Its what I had on hand. 2 x 4500 and a 5500:
I'm really glad I thought ahead about how long the heating elements were before I had the nuts welded on. I had to offset them vertically.

Comment!!

Edit: Oh yeah!! I filled the thing with water and no leaks!!! 2 more to test out.

 

[Mikeystewart]

How did you get rid of the lids? Grinder?

 

[cruelkix]

How did you get rid of the lids? Grinder?

Yup. 4" cutting wheel on a dewalt angle grinder. I thought about building a jig and then said screw it and just free handed it. Cuts turned out pretty darn nice. Even the welder said I did a good job on them. There was a really nice radius where the lids were rolled over the top of the drums that I could follow very easily with the angle grinder. I did all 3 of them in about 45 min- 1 hour. I need to clean them up a bit with a flapper wheel. But I don't have one atm. I'll make a quick Home Depot run today and get them cleaned up so I don't cut myself.

 

[DrawTap88]

Very cool. As far as separating the hops go, have you thought about whirlpooling before chilling and then going out of the side of your whirlpool vessel?

 

[rycov]

thats gonna be a lot of beer? whos all going to be drinking this if your not gonna sell it? i would like to nominate myself.

 

[cruelkix]

Very cool. As far as separating the hops go, have you thought about whirlpooling before chilling and then going out of the side of your whirlpool vessel?

I've definitely thought about it, I would need an extra furrel welded onto the boil kettle for a side drain/whirlpool recirc.

I ended up building a 50' CFC over the weekend. I had the hose lying around so I just bought the copper and threw it together. I think this will work well for chilling with a bunch of trub in the wort. I'll do my best to keep it seperated, but I think I can just dump the majority of it out of the conical fermenter right before active fermentation gets going.

Let's put it this way. If it's a problem down the road, I may have to go the route you are suggesting. Right now, I think it will be easily manageable with either hop bags/hop spider/false bottom/nothing. I use nothing in my 10 gal set up and it works fine.

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[cruelkix]

thats gonna be a lot of beer? whos all going to be drinking this if your not gonna sell it? i would like to nominate myself.

Haha, but I AM selling it. That's the whole point. Regardless I would be happy to have you drink some of it. Come on out to CO and stop by, beers are free until I open up. Even then I'll give HBT members a decent discount.

 

[rycov]

I want all my equipment good to go before I drop the Money on 3 months of rent I'll never see profit from. Damn Government ....

sorry. i misunderstood this to mean your spending all this money and can't make money off the beer.

well good luck! if i'm ever out your way i'll come buy some of your beers!

 

[mcaple1]

Haha, but I AM selling it. That's the whole point. Regardless I would be happy to have you drink some of it. Come on out to CO and stop by, beers are free until I open up. Even then I'll give HBT members a decent discount.

you going to be down in the springs area anytime soon?

 

[wedge421]

Looks awesome man. Do you have a store front or anything yet?

 

[cruelkix]

Looks awesome man. Do you have a store front or anything yet?

Thanks! Not yet. I am currently hunting for a good location. I'd say in about a month I would like to have a place ready to rent.

 

[cruelkix]

you going to be down in the springs area anytime soon?

I can't say I find myself in the springs very often. Got a good reason for me to go down there? It's really not all that far.

 

[hillhousesawdustco]

I don't THINK you've addressed this yet, but my apologies if i missed it. what's your ideal square footage for the buildings you're looking at? I assume you need an area for the actual brewing system and sinks and such, a cold room for fermentation (maybe one for serving vessels/kegs?), room for malt and all sorts of brewing supplies (bottles, kegs, hoses, what have you). How small can you go with all that stuff? Also do you have a hood or vent or something like that for the brewsystem?

 

[cruelkix]

I don't THINK you've addressed this yet, but my apologies if i missed it. what's your ideal square footage for the buildings you're looking at? I assume you need an area for the actual brewing system and sinks and such, a cold room for fermentation (maybe one for serving vessels/kegs?), room for malt and all sorts of brewing supplies (bottles, kegs, hoses, what have you). How small can you go with all that stuff? Also do you have a hood or vent or something like that for the brewsystem?

You are correct. I have not brought this up yet.

I looked at a bunch of industrial zoned places when I had initially thought about just distributing. At that time I saw a lot of 1000 sq ft. places and really that was a TON of space to "just" brew in . I think with the need for room for everything you mentioned, I would want a minimum of 1200 sq ft. Half for brewing stuff half for serving stuff. 600 sq ft. seems small, but sq. ft. = $$. I can always move or expand if I out grow the place. I would ideally find a small place with potential to grow when the need arises. I am def going the cold room for fermentation and serving vessals like you mentioned.

I dont have a hood or vent as it is all electric but I would assume that whatever municipality I end up in will want to get me to install one.

I think I've said a few times that realestate is going to be the most difficult part of this entire venture, both location and cost being so important.

 

[cruelkix]

So the frame is painted and the kettles have all the tri clovers welded on with equipment attached. Not a huge update, but pics say a lot right?

 

[Majikterror]

Looks awesome, I'm jealous

 

[cruelkix]

So at lunch today a truck pulled up and dropped off my fermeneters!

I'm pretty excited! 4 showed up but I had to send one back due to damage.

85 gallons a piece!! 5 kegs worth of beer. Double batch 40 gallons into each one.

Cost me $1700 for 4 shipped. Shipping was stupid expensive and I dont want to talk about it, especailly considering they damaged one. Ridiculous.


On a seperate note:

Looks awesome, I'm jealous

Thanks!

 

[Atl300zx]

dang, i wanna see those fermenters...stupid work blocks so many websites

 

[cruelkix]

Ok, So now that I have these bad boys I need to modify them so I can maintain temperature during active fermentation. My current thinking is as follows.

The lids are approximately 14" across and relatively solid. I plan on placing a stainless steel coil in each tank and running chilled water/glycol through it to maintain temps based off a temperature controller, a pump, and some solenoid valves. I'll figure out how to chill the cooling liquid later. I will prob place a reservoir in my walk in cooler. The hole for the CIP spray ball will also be used as a pressure release with an airlock/blow off valve during fermentation. I'm planning on laying it out like this:

The underside of the Lid:

My questions are:

1) In my head I'm thinking the diameter of the SS coil for chilling barely matters. Fermentation does not produce THAT much heat, so I can get away with 1/4" I.D. S.S. pipe for the coil I would think? Anyone disagree with that? Should I bump it to 3/8" I.D.? Anyone have a good site for cheap stainless steel bendable piping? In the same train of thought, not much heat, I think I can get away with like 20 feet of coil per fermenter if not less. Again, any disagreements?

2) When I punch through the plastic, what can I use to maintain a good airtight seal between the SS coil/CIP pipe and the plastic lid? I was thinking of something similar to all the weldless bulkheads used for temp probes and drain valves on keggles? Any good ideas there?

3) I'm going to go with 20" temperature probes to get from the lid down to the center of the fermenter. Anyone see any reason why this would not be the best place to take the temperature?

4) Anyone have a good place to buy solenoid valves? I'm thinking of just grabbing a standard temp controller unless anyone knows of a cheap one that can handle 4 inputs and 4 outputs?

Thoughts?

Also, I found a 13 1/2" silicone o-ring on mcmaster I am going to use to get a more airtight seal from the lid.

 

[outside92129]

Here's the best deal on SS tubing i found so far, they're have a ebay store where they offer 316 SS as well as different pricing.

http://www.nybrewsupply.com/products/tubing-steel.php