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

[marcb]

So, when is the party?

Sunday, nothing like a party at the house as a forcing function for getting stuff done!

 

[marcb]

Sunday, nothing like a party at the house as a forcing function for getting stuff done!

On tap for the party!

 

[bellinmi88]

Tankless is live and generates 185 degree water full throttle! Amazing!

Great thread!

 

[marcb]

Glycol coils arrived today courtesy of Zach at stainlessbrewing.com!

 

[kerklein2]

Those are beautiful.

 

[Boar Beer]

marcb

Nice looking coils they do look hard to clean and might allow unwanted bugs into your brew.
Are you going to use them to make lagers or just to control your fermentation temperature?
Great thread BTW

 

[marcb]

marcb

Nice looking coils they do look hard to clean and might allow unwanted bugs into your brew.
Are you going to use them to make lagers or just to control your fermentation temperature?
Great thread BTW

I had not correctly accounted for the thermal mass of fermenting beer. My last batch of Tripel went from 68 degrees to 80 in 12 hours with the massive starter we pitched. A/C had the garage pretty steady at 60-62 degrees and it did not drop for a good 48 hours until primary fermentation started to slow down. These are an insurance policy for good beer. I would rather scrub these and spend a little extra care on sanitizing them than to drink hot, solvent tasting beer. Originally the fermenters were supposed to be on wheel so that I could roll them into the cold room but that didn't work out.

 

[Boar Beer]

That makes sense. The more variables you control the more repeatable your beer will be.
I am looking at one of these POLI plastic banding cooling wraps. For a 24 in diameter tank you need a 74 in long by 16 in wide band. The problem is the $450 dollar price.

http://www.pacificwinemaking.com/catalogue/c56/c97/p319

But I must say the service area does look like it would work.

In any case I am following your thread to see how your system works out

 

[marcb]

Lot's of hoses out there, Goodyear brewing hoses, Noreprene®, etc.
Search for brewing hoses or go to US plastic.
Most of my hoses are Noreprene® A-60-F, NSF-51 tubing, max. temp 275° F.





Cheers,
Claudius

Hi Claudius, thanks for the tip on the hoses - I ended up going with the norprene! Did you build or buy the hose hanger? If you wouldn't mind I'd like a pic or two and any details you can share as I need to get a hose rack built.

 

[Grandpasbrewery]

This is a pretty intense build. I'm curious of the size of the stir plate you were using for that 8gallon starter, if you used one at all.

Im still trying to wrap my head around the scope of this build, what sort of power/gas bills are you expecting with this setup?

 

[marcb]

This is a pretty intense build. I'm curious of the size of the stir plate you were using for that 8gallon starter, if you used one at all.

Im still trying to wrap my head around the scope of this build, what sort of power/gas bills are you expecting with this setup?

I have a thermolyne commercial stirplate and a 4.5" stir bar but have only successfully used that on ~3 gallon starters. For this one I had intended on using a fermenter as a brink but ended up using a sanitary 10G stout dish bottom kettle that I had on hand as all my other fermenters were full. So no stir plate, just good old fashioned O2 upfront and a ton of DME, this thing went nuts for fermentation though and raised the temperature of the beer a full 11-12 degrees (50g volume) and was blowing out of a 60g fermenter.

My gas bill hasn't been noticeable. With all the water/boil/cleaning tests last month my electric/water bill was ~$100 higher. I'll give it a couple of months to normalize and see where I'm at.

 

[marcb]

Settled on a 125' 1/3 HP two pump setup from Beverage factory, should be in early next week. I will be testing out the temp control next weekend on a batch of PTE. Need to source some heating pads and map out the glycol circuit. Currently planning to mount it on a shelf above the fermenters to keep it from overflowing but am also considering putting it above the ceiling so I won't have to listen to it. Will post pics of the coil and lid assembly once they are back from the welders.

 

[marcb]

Brain is too tired for math right now! I will tally up a list and prices. I'm guessing that for the brewery with fermenters and control panel total was about 10k. Really stoked on being able to do two different beers in one brew day!

So total in on this go around with fermenters and everything (except the garage remodel piece) is about 13k. I would definitely say that the kettles/stands/control panel pieces that constitute the heart of the brewery ran about 5k

 

[marcb]

CIP system worked great on ferm 2 today, no scrubbing at all! Clean and ready to go for next weekend!

 

[Jaybird]

Marc
What CIP pump are you using?

Cheers
Jay

 

[marcb]

Marc
What CIP pump are you using?

Cheers
Jay

MARCH AC-5B-MD BEER PUMP
http://amzn.com/B00BMA134O

You can find these from tesco pumps pretty cheap although you are probably reselling them so hopefully it will be a little cheaper ; )

This is actually the pump from my keg washer, it's not bolted to the cart so I only need to take off two TC fittings and its ready for CIP action on the fermenters.

 

[marcb]

Glycol system is in! Just in time for a weekend brew day!

 

[MooMooBrew]

Ooo shiny. Off topic, how we'll does the garage door insulation work?

 

[marcb]

Ooo shiny. Off topic, how we'll does the garage door insulation work?

Pretty well actually! There is significant cooling from the souther exposure wall having been furred out to about 7" thick to match the concrete curb and fully insulated. The Home Depot kits for the garage door were quick and easy to install (double door required two kits) and gave me some reasonable insulation on a cheap, single wall metal door. The garage temp on >90 degree days doesn't usually get over 75 and if I run the AC unit the garage goes from 75-65 in less than an hour.

 

[marcb]

What was the basis for the position of your whirlpool port? I was looking for recommendations on placement and didn't find anything too specific. I was thinking about a quarter of the way up the tank and an inch in from the edge.

Hey, for those of you looking at adding a whirlpool port, higher is better for the recirc. I had intended these to be used for recirculating while initially cooling as well as whirlpool but they ended up creating two thermal layers in the kettle. The bottom third would cool rapidly down to ~120 while the top 2/3 would remain near boiling. We ended up recirculating over the top this last brew day and it worked out very well. BTW, I don't really need a whirlpool as I use a hop filter in the boil and have a filter on the outlet of the kettle to catch break material prior to entering my heat exchanger.

 

[Carlscan26]

How fast does that pre chiller filter clog?

 

[marcb]

How fast does that pre chiller filter clog?

Hasn't yet! It's the one from brewers hardware with no extra screen. It's a pita to clean but works well.

 

[mxstar21]

Hasn't yet! It's the one from brewers hardware with no extra screen. It's a pita to clean but works well.

Flip the other way so the side with 3 in fitting is on the bottom. Much easier to clean IMO. I have used mine twice; no problems either way, other than cleaning being easier with hops on the outside of strainer rather than inside. I have only used whole hops with mine, but would assume results would be the same filtering wise.

It was definitely a pain the ass to get all of the hops cleaned out of inside the strainer. Had to use a skewer to get them all out.

 

[marcb]

Flip the other way so the side with 3 in fitting is on the bottom. Much easier to clean IMO. I have used mine twice; no problems either way, other than cleaning being easier with hops on the outside of strainer rather than inside. I have only used whole hops with mine, but would assume results would be the same filtering wise.

It was definitely a pain the ass to get all of the hops cleaned out of inside the strainer. Had to use a skewer to get them all out.

Nice! Hadn't thought of that, any issues with flow with it reversed?

 

[mxstar21]

Nice! Hadn't thought of that, any issues with flow with it reversed?

I didn't notice any, but I am only doing 5 and 10 gallon batches.

 

[marcb]

Happy IPA day everyone! We celebrated last weekend by cranking out a batch of PTE on half the system while simultaneously cranking out a batch of Saison on the other half. Both are fermenting nicely, PTE at 68 and the Saison de Casper at 90! WOOOHOOO!

 

[mkakunda]

epic post guys. Evan just told me about your system at work and hoping to join you guys for a brewday! Loved the SANKE cleaner as well. One day i'll ditch corny's and go 1/6th sanke as well..... until then i'll just drool over your system

 

[fastev]

Glad you liked it Mike!

We all should get together one of these days and talk about building a yeast bank.

 

[mkakunda]

absolutely. I've been wanting to bank yeast for a while and with my background in the lab it will be very easy. Let's all meet, chat, and grab beers

 

[marcb]

absolutely. I've been wanting to bank yeast for a while and with my background in the lab it will be very easy. Let's all meet, chat, and grab beers

Let me know when your free next week, we'll give you a brewery tour and have a few beers!