Hunter's Basement E-Brewery Build

[Matthewjscott]

I am sorry for all of the questions. Thank you all for the advice. I cannot wait to get started.

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[hunter306]

The Conical has Landed!

Running another batch this weekend, likely a SMASH batch this time to improve some skills rather than muddy things with too many ingredients. Going for more technical understanding of the process side so that we can better predict final production volumes. The fermenter should help us harvest yeast later on down the road too, I hope!

 

[Roadie]

Very nice! Do you have a way to heat/cool it?


Almost Famous Brewing Company

 

[hunter306]

Very nice! Do you have a way to heat/cool it?


Almost Famous Brewing Company

Tentatively, going to look at a True GDM unit tomorrow evening. Plan is to do a temperature controlled chamber with the True unit, and an electronic heat wrap for the heating needs. Still looking at 'heat' options... but I think the unit should provide a nice fermentation cave.

 

[Ttownbrewer]

Tentatively, going to look at a True GDM unit tomorrow evening. Plan is to do a temperature controlled chamber with the True unit, and an electronic heat wrap for the heating needs. Still looking at 'heat' options... but I think the unit should provide a nice fermentation cave.

I like those GDM coolers. What size are you looking at? They look to be pricey, so hopefully you found a sweet deal somewhere!


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[hunter306]

I'm looking at the TRUE GDM-35SL, which is a two door, slim model. It's going to be really tight for the fermenter, so I need to confirm before hand that it will fit. Price is still TBD.

 

[BadNewsBrewery]

Still looking at 'heat' options... .

I use reptile tank heat mat from http://www.reptilebasics.com/ - it works great. I wrapped it around my entire carboy and use a thermowell with a temp controller to take the temp from the center of the wort. It works great and provides steady heating to the vessle. The site I provided was the cheapest I could find a year and a half ago, but maybe it can be found cheaper elsewhere.

-Kevin

 

[Itsott]

Are you talking flex watt heat tape?


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[BadNewsBrewery]

Are you talking flex watt heat tape?

Specifically, I used this - http://www.reptilebasics.com/12-heat-tape

I got about 3.5-4' per carboy, no big deal if you wrap it over itself. I got it with the wires pre-mounted, which they'll do for you if you order both the tape and the wires from them. Plug it into a Johnson A419 wired for heating, drop the temp probe into the thermowell inside the carboy, and we're off to the races.

 

[Itsott]

I have several feet(30-40) of the 3 or 4 in. I use it for reptiles.


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[glenn514]

What kind of reptiles do you wrap it around??? Inquiring minds want to know.

glenn514

 

[hunter306]

Quick update on the first brew from the system.

Yesterday night I took the first gravity reading since pitching (brew bucket is awesome for gravity readings!) and this is what I got (FG 1.011):

Figuring 1.053 OG and 1.011 FG (Wyeast 1056), I'm looking at about 5.25%. It may still clean up a little more sugar over the next couple of days, since I raised the temps a bit. I tossed in the dryhops, which were about .8oz Amarillo, 1oz Citra, 1oz Simcoe and I'm excited to see how it turned out.

Drank the gravity sample to get a feel for where the flavor was headed and I was impressed. I may have used a HAIR to much bittering hop for the body of the beer, but I'm hoping with the Carb, it'll cut that a bit.

EDIT: Also wanted to mention that Wyeast 1056 is a terrible clearing yeast. First time using this straing (used the WLP vial of compareable and didn't have nearly as much haze at this point). I'm suspecting I'll need a fining agent in this one to get any clarity. (See sample picture.) Really hesitant to add gelatin for fear of stripping out hop aroma, been considering biofine clear as an alternative.

More updates to come!

 

[glugglug]

I've used 1056. I like it. It'll clear with time. Besides, it's homebrew. I've never used gelatin. But I do have some on hand.

Nice new brewery you've built. I've been following for a while. Congrats!

 

[Itsott]

@glen514 which ever ones hold still enough.


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[hio3791]

I've been using gelatin for over a year and love it. I haven't noticed any effects on the hop aroma.

BTW, thanks again for the QMax info. I got mine within a couple of weeks of ordering and used it to punch the hole on the element enclosure. Hole came out perfect. I am hoping to finish my control box today and if I have a successful test, I'll punch the hole on the kettle. With any luck, I'll be brewing with my new electric setup soon!

 

[glenn514]

@glen514 which ever ones hold still enough.

OK. Gotcha!

glenn514

 

[pannell77]

I love reading through this thread. Lots of good work and ideas in here. I am house shopping currently and will be converting my 3-tier, propane keggle, cooler system into a full single tier 1/2bbl electric brewery in the basement of the new house. A buddy of mine is a progammer and we have lots of ideas on automation, I am an electrical engineer by trade so it should be a fun project over the next year or so.

 

[hunter306]

Running another batch tomorrow, going into the new conical. Making a more simple recipe, originally planned on a pure SMASH batch, but I'm going to add a little corner and lean it more toward a pilsner (lawn mower beer!).

Tentatively it looks like I'm running with:

17lbs German Pilsner Malt (2-row)
.75lbs Corn Maize

1.5oz Mt. Hood (60m)
1.0oz Mt. Hood (20m)
1.0oz Mt. Hood (15m)
2.0oz Mt. Hood (5m)

No dry hops in this one, fermenting it with WLP810 (California Lager Yeast) as I couldn't get the Cry Havoc that I really wanted. (Bummer)

Updates to come!

 

[hunter306]

Good brew-day on Satudrday 3/8:

We used the same recipe as I posted above, but got a little crazy at the end and threw 2oz of 5min hops in to increase the nose a bit (we hope). This batch came out extremely light with the all-pilsner malts and I'm curious what the cleared color will look like.

We modified the boil a bit and added a 6x14" 300micron hop screen to keep the boil filter a little cleaner. While that screen did a nice job with the hop sediment, we still didn't have much success with the Hop-Stopper filter in the boil kettle. At this point, I'm seriously considering opening an email chain with the guy who builds them and investigating returning it. Will probably give it one more batch to try and master getting my wort out with it. Even running the pump at 1/4 speed, and scraping the filter, I was not able to get a good clean transfer of the wort. Ended up using the auto-siphon to move the last gallon over.

A couple of other thoughts on this. We found that our boil-off rate was significantly higher this time around. I'm not certain the exact measurement, but we boiled off about half a gallon more than my previous batch. We also found that (likely a result of the boil off) our OG (Starting) was 1.055, which was .003 above our target of 1.052. We considered diluting with water to hit the gravity reading, but opted instead to let it chew on the wort as is. In the future, we may need to zero in on the boil rate a bit more closely.

With that being said, the conical was a dream to pitch into. Easy to aerate due to the large opening and very nice that I don't have to divide yeast and dry-hops between two vessels. The WLP810 has taken off and the fermenter is maintaining about 60 degrees F right now in the basement.

One picture with the beer fermenting away:

 

[2Kegger]

I ran into very similar clearance issues as well, but was able to squeeze the 6 inch ducting into the joist space after removing some bracing for a gas line and then reinstalling the supports. I had a b*tch of a time trying to fit the 6 inch vortex (440 cfm, almost identical to your's) into the joist space, so I had to cut the 6 inch intake hole into the top of my vent hood and set the vortex fan on top of the vent hood vertically instead of horizontally in the joist space. I then used a 6 inch 90 degree elbow off of the top of the exhaust end of the fan into my 6 inch ducting, which travels straight out the side of the bond of my house (about 25 ft.). I wasn't thrilled about cutting a 6 hole into the bond of my house, but with that long of a run, I didn't want Bernoulli's Principle to haunt me for the rest of my brewing days. All I can say is that after a few batches through my new brewery, the vent has worked fantastic. There's no doubt that the performance of your 440 cfm fan is going to be hindered, but by how much can only be determined by trial and error. As long as your run isn't excessively long and the fact that you used flexible ducting to create a gradual turn to the fan instead of a rigid 90 may work in your favor. I'll be curious to see how it works. Good luck!!!

Hoppopotomus,

I have the same fan and did the same setup as you. I did a test boil yesterday, and it worked great! Except the fan itself leaked. I had water drip out of the fan housing with it mounted that way. Have you experienced this, too? It wasn't a lot, but the concrete floor had a wet spot and small drips were visible on the bottom edge of the fan. Of course it's still cold here, so it could be the hot air hitting the cold outside air.

 

[brewman !]

Hoppopotomus,

I have the same fan and did the same setup as you. I did a test boil yesterday, and it worked great! Except the fan itself leaked. I had water drip out of the fan housing with it mounted that way. Have you experienced this, too? It wasn't a lot, but the concrete floor had a wet spot and small drips were visible on the bottom edge of the fan. Of course it's still cold here, so it could be the hot air hitting the cold outside air.

Condensate only exists as steam as long as its hot. As soon as it contacts a cool surface like a pipe or fan housing, its going to condense. Most fan housings have a drip hole on them to which you could connect a piece of hose to route the condensate to where you want to collect or dispose of it.

Its very necessary to rid the system of the condensed condensate lest it rust things or worse yet pool and become a place for mold and such to grow.

FWIW, I had a similar space issue with supplying ventilation in the kitchen of our house when we renovated it. To get around this problem, and to decrease the fan noise in the kitchen, I went with externally mounted fans like this one.

http://www.continentalfan.com/ecatalog.php?fantype=residential&fid=65&s=In-Line+Duct+Fans

I used insulated flexible duct inside the house to minimize the condensation in the ducting.

 

[hunter306]

So, a few cool things happening over the next few weeks. First, we did up a logo, because really, whats a home-brewery, without a name? I present to you:

The Angry Fox Brewing Company!

Second, I got an opportunity to lend a hand at the local Microbrewery last week and help him diagnose and then repair his BrewMation control panel. Ended up finding some blown contactors, which I replaced so that they're back up and running at full capacity:

Diagnosing the panel with the Fluke, and pulling the bad equipment from the 3bbl system.

Third, With the hot summer months coming up, I've been looking at an economical way to chill the conical. I've got another project that I'm hatching which will include a cool liquid recirculation system, similar to a glycol chiller. I'm still debating the specifics, but I found a perfectly sized 25ft coil to build into the conical.

304stainless, 25ft 3/8" chilling coil.

And last! The Session APA we brewed on the first brew day is nearly ready! I'm going to be hooking it up to the taps shortly to see how it turned out, stay tuned for more on how that tastes and cleared out with a little time in the keg.

As always, if you wanna see whats going on, check out the twitter link and follow!

 

[Trippel-A]

if you wanna see whats going on, check out the twitter link and follow!

I looked back and couldn't find your twitter handle. What is it again?

 

[hunter306]

I looked back and couldn't find your twitter handle. What is it again?

Whoop, it's in my signature! @AngryFoxBrewing

https://twitter.com/AngryFoxBrewing

 

[Trippel-A]

Not sure if you are aware, but if you are using a carbon filter in that housing for chlorine removal, about the maximum flow rate you can achieve with that size of filter (9.75" x 2.5" ish) is 1 GPM. Stepping up to a 9.75" x 4.5" ish filter housing, you can achieve 3 GPM with some filters.

Question for Hunter or Brewman... I saw a water filter at the LHBS (not the same as this one--more for the "grow" side of Brew-n-Grow), and they told me that for every 1 gallon of filtered water, 2 gallons go down the drain. Is that the case for this kind of housing and carbon filter?

 

[brewman !]

Question for Hunter or Brewman... I saw a water filter at the LHBS (not the same as this one--more for the "grow" side of Brew-n-Grow), and they told me that for every 1 gallon of filtered water, 2 gallons go down the drain. Is that the case for this kind of housing and carbon filter?

With a carbon filter like Hunter is using, there is 0% watre wastage. 100% of the water that goes through it is usable.

Your LHBS was probably showing you a Reverse Osmosis treatment system, some of which do put a lot of water down the drain. Especially the "home" type RO systems, which do not have a booster pump on the input. Though all RO systems do put condensate down the drain.

 

[Trippel-A]

With a carbon filter like Hunter is using, there is 0% watre wastage. 100% of the water that goes through it is usable.

Your LHBS was probably showing you a Reverse Osmosis treatment system, some of which do put a lot of water down the drain. Especially the "home" type RO systems, which do not have a booster pump on the input. Though all RO systems do put condensate down the drain.

Thank you for the clarification! All I'm looking for is carbon filtration. Chicago water is quite good.

 

[Luther]

Hunter - Great thread, there's tons of helpful info here to get me going on my electric brewing build! One question, from the photos of your control panel it looks like you "back fed" the circuit breakers (line in connected on top of breaker, load out the bottom). From reading specs of breakers similar to the Electric Brewing Supply ones, it seems like this is OK. Have you seen any problems with wiring them this way?

Thanks.

 

[hunter306]

Nope, no issues running them in that orientation, I don't see an actual in or out side as noted on these ebrewsupply breakers, although I may have completely overlooked them!

We've now brewed 40 gallons on this system with 0 electrical or mechanical problems.

Biggest complaint is the hop stopper filter, it's just not a great solution.

 

[hunter306]

A quick update on my last complaint about the brewing setup:

We removed the hopstopper last time, and simply bagged hops. Easily got the additional pickup using the standard dip tube and the beer has cleared just fine in the primary.

Jury's out on that filter, just too easy to clog it up and loose your prime on the pumps.

 

[kawadank]

Hunter - Great thread & build. I'm in the process of sourcing the parts for my build and was wondering if you had updated schematics that you described in post 62 (page 7)? Thanks for all the great info!

 

[hunter306]

@Kawadank - Sorry bud, I never put those together after I finished building. I believe ebrewsupply has updated their schematic and a number of people are using that without trouble. I detailed the changes when I was building in a post, but mainly I disagreed with a few specific things happening in the original schematics e-stop loop.

Good luck with the build, it was exhausting, but since we've finished the quality of beer we're making has improved significantly! Temperature control is everything, it seems!

 

[Itsott]

Hunter have you had any troubles with your breaker for your elements tripping? Mine seems to overheat and trip. Makes for a pia.

 

[hunter306]

Nope, No problems on my end. Sounds like the GFCI is detecting some sort of current leak to ground causing it to trip.

I'd double check all your wiring (especially at the element connections) to make sure you haven't got some water intrusion causing that.

 

[brewman !]

So now that you've used your system/setup for a while, what, if anything, would you change or do differently ?

 

[Itsott]

I had a bad breaker in the panel. Replaced it no problems since.

 

[hunter306]

So now that you've used your system/setup for a while, what, if anything, would you change or do differently ?

A couple of things stand out:
1) I'd go with 20G Kettles foremost.
2) likely have dropped my vapor hood down about 12-18" as it sits a bit too high to be fully effective.
3) Gotten a cleanup sink with a drainboard... Would have made cleaning the kettles and cashed-kegs a whole lot easier
4) Gone with the thicker hose material (I got the standard walls, the thicker ones help hold temperature when in the mash/herms step). Right now I have to set my HLT pid 2 degrees higher than mash temp to maintain a good temperature gradient through the grain bed.
5) Bigger Kegerator!! You can make beer so easily, 2 taps isn't enough. I'd recommend 4 minimum.


Cheers!

 

[30Bones]

3) Gotten a cleanup sink with a drainboard... Would have made cleaning the kettles and cashed-kegs a whole lot easier

I think some sinks can have a drain board added to it. Might want to look into that based on your manufacturer. Might be a simple and relatively cheap solution.

 

[brewman !]

A couple of things stand out:

Its always interesting when you ask people what they would do differently. Thanks for answering this.

1) I'd go with 20G Kettles foremost.

Hmmm... are you drinking that much beer, are you doing a lot of brewing with your friends and giving away wort or ????

The reason I ask is that I bought 11 gallon and 20 gallon vessels (for batch sizes between 5 and 15 gallons) and I'm about to start drilling holes in the 11 gallon vessels so I can install some fittings. Maybe I should skip straight to the 20 gallon vessels ?

I've got a number of friends watching my build very closely, either wanting beer (of course), wort they can ferment themselves or to co brew on my sessions. I never know if these guys follow through though.

2) likely have dropped my vapor hood down about 12-18" as it sits a bit too high to be fully effective.

I was wondering about how well some of these home made hoods would work. I've got a residential hood that was over a big gas stove. In addition to the hood itself, there is a sheet plate inside between the fan and the hood opening that serves as a plenum so that the fan draws air evenly from under the whole hood area. Its built by Braun. I'm wondering if your hood is going to need something similar.

3) Gotten a cleanup sink with a drainboard... Would have made cleaning the kettles and cashed-kegs a whole lot easier

You mean an area beside your single tub sink whereby you can set stuff to dry ? I'm using a double tub sink and I've got an area (SS) 22" x 42" for drying and such. Does the drying area need to be sloped ? Would one of the residential plastic dish drying board work ?

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Cookpro-309-Chrome-Dish-Rack-2-tier-Stand-Plastic-Drain/41439432

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Rubbermaid-4-Piece-Antimicrobial-Sink-Set-Red/12521795

4) Gone with the thicker hose material (I got the standard walls, the thicker ones help hold temperature when in the mash/herms step). Right now I have to set my HLT pid 2 degrees higher than mash temp to maintain a good temperature gradient through the grain bed.

I don't think your hoses are the problem. You need a temp differential between the HLT and the mash so that there is heat transfer across the heat exchanger. 2F is really good. I had a HERMS with an undersized HX and the temp differential was more like 10F ! The other thing is that the water needs to be circulating in the HLT. Faster circulation over the coil means better heat transfer and a lower delta T needed.

5) Bigger Kegerator!! You can make beer so easily, 2 taps isn't enough. I'd recommend 4 minimum.

Your kegerator is in the basement. Do you find that convenient or are you thinking of moving it to the main floor ? Like you my brewery will be in the basement. I'm not sure if making a trip downstairs to the brewery for a beer is a good thing or a bad thing. Would be more convenient if it was on the main floor though.

 

[brewman !]

Do you ever wish that your brewery area had a dishwasher in it or close by, ie on the same floor ?