Home Super Brewery Build: Hybrid Electric/Gas 3BBL Build

[Carlscan26]

That was the bottle - I didn't know they dipped theirs in wax too.

 

[marcb]

Is it getting ridiculous when you have to do a starter for your starter?

 

[kickflip_mj]

you should try Ovila from Sierra, but then again I was a Chico local for 8 years, so all of it is great.

 

[marcb]

you should try Ovila from Sierra, but then again I was a Chico local for 8 years, so all of it is great.

Had one last night! It's a good beer, St. Bernardus ABT 12 is my goto in the Belgian Dark Strong style.... at least when I can't get my hands on a Westvleteran 12!

 

[marcb]

8 Gallon starter is ready to go, 110 lbs of Pilsner Malt milled. Tomorrow I'm going to see if we can yield 40 gallons of a BIG BEER out of this system!

 

[jhalloran]

Holy hell ... eight gallon starter. That's incredible.

 

[fastev]

Had one last night! It's a good beer, St. Bernardus ABT 12 is my goto in the Belgian Dark Strong style.... at least when I can't get my hands on a Westvleteran 12!

Getting ready for a brew day Sunday but these stupid beers keep letting in the way...

 

[marcb]

Getting ready for a brew day Sunday but these stupid beers keep letting in the way...

Your killing me.... I'll be right over!

 

[fastev]

Who's gonna be there tomorrow morning? I should bring a westy over if a 375 will stretch...

 

[marcb]

Who's gonna be there tomorrow morning? I should bring a westy over if a 375 will stretch...

You, me and the Rickster...

 

[marcb]

You, me and the Rickster...

I'd be stoked with 25ml....

 

[fastev]

Cool. That's all you get then. Rick and I will split the other 300.

 

[marcb]

Cool. That's all you get then. Rick and I will split the other 300.

I will remember this when programming your beer badge on the flow meter......

 

[marcb]

Holy hell ... eight gallon starter. That's incredible.

8.5 to be exact, shooting for 2400 billion yeast cells!

 

[marcb]

Brewing my Belgian Tripel today, first rest 45 min at 140. Then we're going to kick in the heat exchanger and see how well it works....

 

[marcb]

More pics

 

[Carlscan26]

More pics

So did you add a 5th vessel as a HLT/HEX supply?

 

[marcb]

Great hot break!

 

[marcb]

So did you add a 5th vessel as a HLT/HEX supply?

Yes sir. The recirculating line from the tankless had too much pressure so I needed to add a reservoir, since I added the reservoir the hex system works great!

 

[marcb]

Chilling, transferring and aerating!

 

[marcb]

No Rick! Don't fall in!

 

[fastev]

Wtf...?!?

 

[hyperboarder]

You made a koi!

 

[marcb]

All in all a pretty painless brew day! Looks like next month we'll be able to do a full capacity 3BBL brew day!

 

[SteveHeff]

Wow. I just went through this whole thread. Pretty amazing for a guy who wants to make beer out of his house. I wish you the best of luck. Please keep posting on the thread, I would love to see anything new that gets added, or changes that you make.

 

[Carlscan26]

Yes sir. The recirculating line from the tankless had too much pressure so I needed to add a reservoir, since I added the reservoir the hex system works great!

Cool! Can't his handle two HEX coils at the same time so you can still double batch?

 

[marcb]

Cool! Can't his handle two HEX coils at the same time so you can still double batch?

Yep. Although the mash tun only loses about a degree an hour so I doubt I'll need it unless I happen to do two step mash beers at the same time.

 

[marcb]

Wow. I just went through this whole thread. Pretty amazing for a guy who wants to make beer out of his house. I wish you the best of luck. Please keep posting on the thread, I would love to see anything new that gets added, or changes that you make.

Thanks! Pretty crazy. I would have built this off site but I couldn't get approval from SWMBO. She by the way made breakfast and lunch for all in attendance today including an out of this world brewers club sandwich for lunch!

 

[Francus]

I am curious how the HLT/HEX works exactly. Are you pumping wort from the mash tun through the Renai then to the reservoir then back to the mash tun? Or are you recirculating water in the HLT reservoir through the Renai and using a HERMS in the reservoir to stabilize the mash tun temp?

Or something even more exciting and costly and having lots of stainless

 

[marcb]

I am curious how the HLT/HEX works exactly. Are you pumping wort from the mash tun through the Renai then to the reservoir then back to the mash tun? Or are you recirculating water in the HLT reservoir through the Renai and using a HERMS in the reservoir to stabilize the mash tun temp?

Or something even more exciting and costly and having lots of stainless

So the initial plan was to create a recirc loop from the rinnai through the two hex counterflow coils and back. There are a couple of drawbacks with this approach, mostly I did not like leaving the rinnai fired up for the duration of the process as it is already running all the time during the sparge process. Fortunately fastev had a 15G eBiaB system that we wasn't using so he brought it over and it has now joined the brewery as the hex reservoir and my starter/test batch brewery. Given that most of the beers that I make are ales with a single mash temp I don't really need to be using two hexs at the same time so this approach works out well. So the process goes, heat the hex reservoir to 190 (water out of the tankless is about 180-182 full throttle) pump through the water side of the stainless hex coils and then have the wort pump from the mashtun through the wort side of the hex coil and back into the top of the tun. These are the Williams stainless counterflow chillers that we are using and work pretty well, you just need to give it a little time to work as the hotter wort returning take a bit of time to raise the temp given the thermal mass of the mash. The wort pump is of course pid controlled by the BCS.