Electric Brewing on a PLC - Wiring Diagram

[copyright1997]

Things are nearly complete. All I'm waiting on now is a new Herms Coil and I totally destroyed the one I coiled myself. The coiling went fine, but the installation not so much. I have a new one on order directly from Kal's site.

In the mean time, I started putting together the HMI. I'm using the freeware Advanced HMI package, which works great!

Here is a screen shot of the main display that I Started putting together. Last night I was doing some testing by recirculating water with the Wort Pump. It works great.

1000 degree mash temperature? I'd say the result will be on the malty side.

 

[wubears71]

1000 degree mash temperature? I'd say the result will be on the malty side.

Haha. What can i say My heating elements are massive and im running under pressure

Actually, I was testing the scaling on the HLT before copying the code to the other two tanks.

 

[Maltose]

I love the interface, very simple compared to others out there (BCS).

I've got no experience with PLC's. We run our fermentation hall with a PLC to turn glycol on and off, but I've got no idea how it really works. I know that it's a logic based controller.

You've got an amazingly detailed wiring diagram. Thanks for that. As a beginner with PLC's, how difficult would it be to assemble for an electric HERMS system? I'd imagine there is alot of programming and coding involved.

Currently working on a Brewtroller controller EHERMS.

 

[bdjohns1]

Very nice looking! Wouldn't be too far out of place at an HMI station at my plant!

 

[wubears71]

The final piece arrived today - the SS Herms Coil. I think I may be brewing by this weekend.

 

[joenads]

Damn that's pretty. Much better looking than my own coiled coil...

 

[wubears71]

I finally had a chance to make beer with my new home brewery. I chose to make a Blue Moon Clone mainly because I wanted something easy and also something that would be liked by a wide variety of beer drinkers.

It was a long day and I should have done a better job prepping as I screwed up a few things along the way like forgetting to ground the correander until 2 minutes before the addition and waiting too long to assemble the fermentor, thus boiling too long while sanitizing it.

I really missed my gravity - 1.029 Actual versus a 1.052 Target. I know it was due to the grain crush as I didn't think it was good enough, but instead of adjusting the grain mill, I went ahead anyway. Also I had some issues with the grain bed and kept loosing flow and temperature until I added another .5 gallons of water to the Mash Tun. Once I did that, Recirculation through the HERMs coil took off. Unfortunately, the 45 minutes I spent fighting it also screwed up the Mash. O well. I'll try again in a few weeks.

Here are a bunch of pics:

The Single Tier Setup:

The Hot Liquor Tank

The Mash Tun

The Boil Kettle

A shot of the HMI:

Milling the Grains:

The Assistant Brew Master:

Sparging:

Filling the Fermentor:

An Empty Boil Kettle:

 

[wubears71]

The Fermentation Chamber set at 65 Deg:

Here is a link to the album with all the pics:
http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j209/wubears71/First All Grain Attempt/

 

[treed1968]

This is awesome. Would you be willing to post the code you used for your brewery?

 

[wubears71]

This is awesome. Would you be willing to post the code you used for your brewery?

Here is the HMI --
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B9wrZ3zTfL0ESWNUaFB6Y01XZzA

Here is the PLC Code exported to a text file --
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B9wrZ3zTfL0EdnhsdzZ0WTMzX0k

 

[BrewGeek_Ohio]

I love the interface, very simple compared to others out there (BCS).

I've got no experience with PLC's. We run our fermentation hall with a PLC to turn glycol on and off, but I've got no idea how it really works. I know that it's a logic based controller.

You've got an amazingly detailed wiring diagram. Thanks for that. As a beginner with PLC's, how difficult would it be to assemble for an electric HERMS system? I'd imagine there is alot of programming and coding involved.

Currently working on a Brewtroller controller EHERMS.

In this above mentioned "Fermentation Hall" are the fermentors jacketed or do they have coils inside with direct contact to the liquid?

 

[Trillium]

This is an awesome project. I love the idea of using plc to control the brewing process. It would be great to see a video of this in action.

 

[yttriummelt]

Thanks so much for posting. I know this is an old thread, but I am now trying my own version of this setup. Is there someone I can contact for more information on the hardware and any updates on the design?