Grossy's Garage Brew Pub Build

[Grossy]

The brick work is "rising" about 4 score a day.

Here are some pics of the water distribution manifold, this build is also discussed in it's own thread: 5-Tap copper water manifold, with swivel pot filler

A simple way to fill all my kettles with any type of water.
I hate hooking up and disconnecting hoses, why not just bring the right type of water to where you need it.

From left to right the manifold can deliver:

Tap 1: Tap water
Tap 2: Filtered water
Tap 3: RO Water
Tap 4: Hot tap Water
Tap 5: Sparge water from the HLT.​

 

[Grossy]

A few more pictures, a brass swivel joint in the middle allows me to fill up any of the three kettles.

 

[Grossy]

A few more pictures:

 

[Calfj60]

Awesome!!

 

[Grossy]

After 3 months (working every week end), the brick work is finally complete. Here are some pictures of the finale product.

Next up will be:

The burners under the brew stand.
The oak vent soffit above the brick (which will hide the vent duct work).
Completion of the fermentation chamber to the right.
The Grain Chute.
​

That will complete the brewery, as for the rest of the garage:

Venetian plaster the walls
Oak wainscoting on the walls.
Clean In Place system for the fermentor,
Plumbing run to the evaporative cooler.​

 

[stef57]

Man this looks amazing!!!

 

[SnakeRidge]

Looking good Grossy!

 

[MNSmitty]

Awesome build! Where did you find that swivel joint you have on your water piping? Thats pretty much what I am looking for to do something very similar!

 

[Bobcatbrewing42]

Grossy: Nice build. Please tell us what your wife thinks about all this. If I did that build, it would cost 100 grand in new clothes.

 

[Grossy]

Awesome build! Where did you find that swivel joint you have on your water piping? Thats pretty much what I am looking for to do something very similar!

This is the one I bought:
http://www.steambrite.com/karcher-degree-brass-swivel-4000psi-87124620-p-14762.html

I also found these other ones:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/90-Hose-Ree...I-Priority-2-3-Busines-Day-Ship-/271602386173

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200381400_200381400

They are not cheap: $50 bucks for one elbow fitting!!!

 

[Grossy]

Grossy: Nice build. Please tell us what your wife thinks about all this. If I did that build, it would cost 100 grand in new clothes.

I have said many times the only way you can get away with this is if your wife like your beer as much as you do.

She is fully on board with this, of course I have not quite divulged the full dollar value that this has cost so far, I'm not stupid.

I just finished the RO water system hook up, and that should complete all my plumbing. 2 years of plumbing!!! Hated every minute of it.

With that out of the way, now I get to make the rest of the garage pretty, lots more oak and wood working, I'll love every minute of that.

There is a whole lot more to come. Pictures coming soon.

 

[MNSmitty]

This is the one I bought:
http://www.steambrite.com/karcher-degree-brass-swivel-4000psi-87124620-p-14762.html

I also found these other ones:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/90-Hose-Ree...I-Priority-2-3-Busines-Day-Ship-/271602386173

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200381400_200381400

They are not cheap: $50 bucks for one elbow fitting!!!

Thanks!
Northern Tool is close by. Too bad its not in stock in stores. I guess its expensive, but it sure fills a need nicely. So its worth it to me anyway!

 

[Grossy]

I was not a 100% certain of the brass in the brass swivel. I switched this out to 1/2" stainless steel.

https://www.kleen-ritecorp.com/p-224...-f-swivel.aspx
"This product has been certified by a third party to be compliant with the “Safe Drinking Water Act” requirements for low lead in potable (human consumption - drinking and cooking) and non-potable water applications (non-human consumption)."

This product by Mosmatic, is 100% stainless steel.
http://www.powerwashstore.com/P/2341...lSwivelFPTXMPT

 

[Grossy]

This project has taken a whole lot longer than I originally thought, and a few things went terribly wrong.

The chest freezer in the keezer died, this meant completely rebuilding the keezer from the ground up.

The wort chiller/fermentation chamber did not work well. This required a step back, and a reevaluation of how to accomplish both chilling the wort, and a chamber to chill the fermentation.

The result: a lot of loss time and money.

As a consequence of this 2/3 of the brewery was rebuilt. And now I am back on track.

I’ll be posting the new progress on the build going forward.

 

[Grossy]

Lets start with the New and Improved “Grossy Wort Chiller/Fermentation Chamber 3000” (patent pending)
Which now features the amazing ability to cool fermentation all year round. The previous model only worked in winter.

Ok. Seriously. The original design had a fatal flaw, it could not handle the summer heat. It could barely handle winter here in Tucson, Arizona.

The reason was that the chest freezer could not keep up with the heat generated by the fermentation. The 33 degree water in the chest freezer heated up to about 49 degrees.

After a lot of trial and error I finally said to myself “make ice, lots of ice”. I left the chest freezer on for a week and made 20 gallons of solid ice in the chest freezer, leaving 80 gallons of 33 degree water. This worked perfectly, except for one thing.

All the pipes are located right next to the edge of the freezer, they were frozen solid. Once I thawed them out the chest freezer only increased 1 degree.

So I rebuilt the whole thing to put the pipes in the middle where the water was not frozen. That was the ticket, everything works perfectly

As of this writing I fermenting 20 gallons of IPA in the summer (125 degrees in the garage) and the chest freezer is actually making too much ice. I have to turn it off every now and then.

 

[Grossy]

Here are some pictures:

The picture with the green float, shows all the pipes in the middle and the 20 gallon "Ice Torus" that forms around the top of the freezer. This acts a thermal mass that can absorb a lot of heat. (The phase change from ice-to-water requires a lot of energy)

The last picture show the temperature in the fermentation chamber (left), the temperature in the wort (right)

I'll be adding the bottom doors soon. and everything will be covered up.

 

[cubalz]

Sub'd

 

[GParkins]

I built a fermentation chamber around a donor fridge. Not nearly as finished as your project, but I had the same problem when the donor unit crapped out. Turns out, fridges that are the same size, aren't. A lot of custom-fit woodwork became irrelevant in a hurry. Time passed, and I was given a 1hp glycol chiller.

A light bulb went off in my head when I figured out that I could use that chilled glycol in a heat exchanger to both cool the carcase of the fermentation chamber, and I could also drop a chiller coil directly into a conical.

Right now I am using carboys, which are a bit of a bitch to chill with a coil. Over time, I am going to upgrade to s.s. conicals, which lend themselves to immersion cooling.

I'm not at all sure how far along you are in your planning, but a glycol chiller with a nice big reservoir might reduce your dependence on an exact dimension for a replacement chest freezer.

You might also think about filling your chest freezer with glycol. It can get to a much lower temperature without freezing, and may alleviate some of your Tucson summer problems.

 

[Senormac]

After 3 months (working every week end), the brick work is finally complete. Here are some pictures of the finale product.

Next up will be:

The burners under the brew stand.
The oak vent soffit above the brick (which will hide the vent duct work).
Completion of the fermentation chamber to the right.
The Grain Chute.
​

That will complete the brewery, as for the rest of the garage:

Venetian plaster the walls
Oak wainscoting on the walls.
Clean In Place system for the fermentor,
Plumbing run to the evaporative cooler.​

That's amazing !! And awesome..... And waaay more work that I would do to brew beer. You are not far off from a local pub I think

 

[Grossy]

That's amazing !! And awesome..... And waaay more work that I would do to brew beer. You are not far off from a local pub I think

Thanks Senormac.

While I will not be opening a brew pub for business, I really wanted a brew pub in my garage.

I can tell you that this project has gone way past my initial expectations on work. R&D is expensive and time consuming, and quite a lot of the things that I have done are all original. But my last few brew days have been amazing, so much work that I used to do manually is now done by the system.

Grossy

 

[Gonefishing]

Beautiful. But now, when I finally get my "brewpub" done in my garage I'll always know that it couldn't hold a candle to 1/10th of yours!

 

[jcav]

Awesome job and great thread! Enjoyed following your progress. Great job documenting and full of nice pics! Congrats!

John

 

[Grossy]

Beautiful. But now, when I finally get my "brewpub" done in my garage I'll always know that it couldn't hold a candle to 1/10th of yours!

Thanks,

Today I plan on finishing up the second fermentation chamber, its done, I just need to hook up the fans over the "cooling" radiator. About three hours of work. Ill need lots of breaks because it is about 90 degrees in the garage right now and 90% humidity.

Once that's done, I can brew next weekend, the first fermentation chamber is in use right now, chilling 20 gallons of IPA.

And then that's it. Its two damn hot. Ill start back up at the end of September.
It will still be 90 degrees but at least the humidity will be down to something reasonable.

 

[Grossy]

Well everyone it has been a long while (and I am sorry for that), but I thought that I should share where I am at with the North Farthing Brewery.

The two fermentation chambers are two the right of the kettles. 20-gallon batches each.

 

[Grossy]

So many things were done, then redone, and then redone again.
Just this winter I had a change that needed to be done, that required that the whole bar top, and everything associated with it all had to be lowered 2 inches.

Here is $40 gallons, and some mead.

 

[bmc1313]

very cool. love seeing the updates over the years!