Kinda nervous!

Dcpcooks · May 24, 2017

Listed the house for sale today. We don't really have a plan for the next house. Wife is sad the kids are gone and wants a fresh start in a new smaller place. I don't want to sell. I have a great brew space right now. 12' ceilings in a heated garage. Plenty of space for toys and beers, plus great neighbors.

I'm thinking I'm going to have to change out the brewhouse and go inside in the new place. Currently running a gas fired 1/2 bbl set up. Now I'm looking at elements and hoods. I should be happy right? Get to build a new space after 5 years of brewing with a good grasp of what I want. Good wife credibility for giving her what she wants, so I should have some latitude in the build out.

So what should I build? I have blichmann kettles now so the cheap option is to go boil coil and their controller. I could sell the hot side and buy a new spike set up? I think Ss is going to release a new electric set up soon?

So what brewhouse should I build for a new place? Half barrel batch size.

mredge73 · May 25, 2017

It all depends on how much space you will have but I like what you are thinking.
When I bought my house I was specifically looking for a brewing space for a 3 vessel electric brewery.
Hit the jackpot with a partitioned garage, half the garage was made into a room and the other half was used to store motorcycles.
The motorcycle side had a drain and water from where the washing machine used to be; perfect for a large SS cleaning station.
The breaker box was in this room too, 240vac power for the brewery needed only a 5' run. Being a garage I put the BK by the garage door, so no need of a vent hood with the door open.
Concrete floors so cleaning involves a water hose.

So what should you build?
Top of the list should be a cleaning station, hit up restaurant equipment auctions and try to land a large SS 2-3 section sink.
Build a controlled fermentation chamber of your choosing, I used a stand up frost free freezer with a custom controller.
Kegerator if you don't have one.
Shelving, you need good shelving to the ceiling to make the most use of any space. I am packed to the ceiling and still need more space due to taking on wine in addition to beer.
Finally an electric brewery, the spike setup is very attractive. Depending on your DIY skills and budget you will need to decide what is right for you. I built my own system using components that I already had; in the end it cost me about $600-$700 to take my 2 keggle RIMS propane system to a 3 vessel electric HERMS system powered by a BCS controller. Round it up to $1000 when I added the SS table, tablet, and cork mats.

plazola86 · May 25, 2017

I would get the turn key electric Spike set up. Quality product and comes with everything you need. Electric is definitely the way to go though!

Dcpcooks · May 27, 2017

mredge73 said:
It all depends on how much space you will have but I like what you are thinking.
When I bought my house I was specifically looking for a brewing space for a 3 vessel electric brewery.
Hit the jackpot with a partitioned garage, half the garage was made into a room and the other half was used to store motorcycles.
The motorcycle side had a drain and water from where the washing machine used to be; perfect for a large SS cleaning station.
The breaker box was in this room too, 240vac power for the brewery needed only a 5' run. Being a garage I put the BK by the garage door, so no need of a vent hood with the door open.
Concrete floors so cleaning involves a water hose.

So what should you build?
Top of the list should be a cleaning station, hit up restaurant equipment auctions and try to land a large SS 2-3 section sink.
Build a controlled fermentation chamber of your choosing, I used a stand up frost free freezer with a custom controller.
Kegerator if you don't have one.
Shelving, you need good shelving to the ceiling to make the most use of any space. I am packed to the ceiling and still need more space due to taking on wine in addition to beer.
Finally an electric brewery, the spike setup is very attractive. Depending on your DIY skills and budget you will need to decide what is right for you. I built my own system using components that I already had; in the end it cost me about $600-$700 to take my 2 keggle RIMS propane system to a 3 vessel electric HERMS system powered by a BCS controller. Round it up to $1000 when I added the SS table, tablet, and cork mats.

I'm pretty well set on the cold side. I've got two commercial fridges. One is a kegerator and one is a fermentation chamber. I found a used two basin Ss sink a year ago, sadly it was at a homebrew store that went out of business.

My concern is ventilation and going from propane to electric. I'll either have to sell my hot side or look at retro fitting my boilmakers. Im not confident playing with electrical stuff, but I'll probably have to dive in or pay retail. I try not to pay retail with stuff for the brewery.

I'll definitely need a 50 amp unit so I can drive a boil kettle and a hlt. I'm curious to see if people are heating the mash tun and then switching out the power supply for the boil kettle during the process. I currently have burners under all three kettles. I usually do 1/2 bbl batches so it saves a big chunk of time to heat both the mash strike water and the hlt/herms coil simultaneously. I used to heat my mash strike water in the boil kettle and pump it to the mash tun. That's a slower process than just heating the mash tun on its own.

Dcpcooks · May 27, 2017

plazola86 said:
I would get the turn key electric Spike set up. Quality product and comes with everything you need. Electric is definitely the way to go though!

It looks like a decent system. I'm not a fan of those quick connects but I already have enough camlocks to make it work. Have you had a chance to use that system?

mredge73 · May 28, 2017

The 5500w electric immersion elements heat pretty quickly as you have no wasted heat when compared to a propane burner.
The only difficult thing about the electric setups are the controllers.
Companies like ebrewsupply.com are making it easier with their pre-wired controllers. The auber EZ boil system is perfect for beginners on a single element system and it is super simple to put together.
If you are in an enclosed room you defiantly want a vent hood, you will be burning off 1-2 gallons per hour. Get one bigger than you think you need.

I have a 2 element 50A system with a single pump; I heat my strike water in my BK while simultaneously heating my HLT,
I transfer the strike water by pump to the mash tun then run the mash water through the HERMs to keep it on temp.
After this step I never run 2 elements at the same time again.
For smaller batches I think you could easily get away with a single EZ boil controller with elements in the HLT and BK.

Dcpcooks · May 31, 2017

Bought a house Monday. It's got an unfinished basement which is pretty cool from a blank slate standpoint. It only has 100 amp service. So I'll need to get that upgraded to 200 amps.

JONNYROTTEN · May 31, 2017

Holy cow!

You listed your house on the 24th and bought a new house on the 29th....Talk about getting things done...That's got to be some sort of record

Dcpcooks · May 31, 2017

JONNYROTTEN said:
Holy cow!

You listed your house on the 24th and bought a new house on the 29th....Talk about getting things done...That's got to be some sort of record

Haha! I still have to sell the current house. I'm either brave or really dumb!

We've been looking for a while. We found a great little ranch at the low end of our price range. It's completely redone by a really good local custom builder. The guys amazing with finish carpentry.

Some lady bought it a year ago, gutted it and had the builder go to town. She didn't like it and listed it a few days ago. We had to beat other offers.

It's got a two car detached garage. I full unfinished brewery oops I mean basement. Plus a nice spot for hops and veggies. Since the upstairs is done the wife is happy and I can work on the basement!

Inspection tomorrow, I'm bringing my contractor over to look at the basement, electrical and plumbing.

Dcpcooks · Jun 15, 2017

Ok so I've got a closing date on the new house of 7/23. I made up a few cad drawings to start to get a feel for the new basement build out. Take a look and give me some feedback. It's a blank open space at 1200 sq ft.

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jmark · Jun 15, 2017

That's a nice amount of space... The second option looks pretty solid since that provides an extra bedroom, although if this is a walkout basement and there's a possibility for a full window, try and get the bedroom next to a window and add a closet... at least in my neck of the woods that allows you to specify it as a bedroom at resale... otherwise it's just another room.

I don't know how much you play pool, but I had a Pro 8' (the 'Pro' just indicates 8-1/2 ft) pool table in my basement and it ended up just taking up way too much room and after the initial novelty where I was playing almost every night, it just sat there unused, so we got rid of it. Now we have a big space for parties and a big-a** tv.

For the wet bar, is it possible to put that so that it backs up to the brewery space... that way you could put a big ol' freezer on the other side and have taps on the wet bar side with fairly short lines through that wall.

Anyway... looks awesome... you'll love having a dedicated brewery space regardless!

Turkeyshot · Jun 15, 2017

Dcpcooks said:
Ok so I've got a closing date on the new house of 7/23. I made up a few cad drawings to start to get a feel for the new basement build out. Take a look and give me some feedback. It's a blank open space at 1200 sq ft.

What program did you use for the drawings?

Dcpcooks · Jun 15, 2017

jmark said:
That's a nice amount of space... The second option looks pretty solid since that provides an extra bedroom, although if this is a walkout basement and there's a possibility for a full window, try and get the bedroom next to a window and add a closet... at least in my neck of the woods that allows you to specify it as a bedroom at resale... otherwise it's just another room.

I don't know how much you play pool, but I had a Pro 8' (the 'Pro' just indicates 8-1/2 ft) pool table in my basement and it ended up just taking up way too much room and after the initial novelty where I was playing almost every night, it just sat there unused, so we got rid of it. Now we have a big space for parties and a big-a** tv.

For the wet bar, is it possible to put that so that it backs up to the brewery space... that way you could put a big ol' freezer on the other side and have taps on the wet bar side with fairly short lines through that wall.

Anyway... looks awesome... you'll love having a dedicated brewery space regardless!

I don't have the walkout. If we built I was gonna do it but we found a great house at a good price so it is what it is.

I have a drain clean out where I've put the bar. So that's kinda why the bar is in that space.. I'll have to break out the floor for the bathroom regardless so I'll have the tools on site and the mess to deal with so it's possible to move the bar toward the brewery. I do like Kal's set up.

I can't decide on the pool table, I've always wanted one but they do suck up space. Maybe a shuffle board table and darts would suffice. Gotta kick that one around some more.

Dcpcooks · Jun 15, 2017

Turkeyshot said:
What program did you use for the drawings?

PadCAD lite for iPad. It's limited but it was cheap.

Turkeyshot · Jun 15, 2017

Dcpcooks said:
PadCAD lite for iPad. It's limited but it was cheap.

Thanks

jmark · Jun 15, 2017

One other thing... have a floor drain put in your brewery - you'll thank me later! Looking at your diagrams that shouldn't require much more than a line over to the bathroom hooking in there. You have to clean it out so often - I do that once every six months or so just by running water into it for 2-3 minutes. It's saved the floor outside of my brewery once when I had a big leak from my sink after emptying about 10 gallons of dirty water.

Dcpcooks · Jun 16, 2017

Yes to the floor drain idea! There is a drain by the sink. I'll see if I can cut it out for a 24' drain

Dcpcooks · Jul 6, 2017

So we close next month on the new house. We haven't sold the old one. I'll need my liquid cash to close on the new house. Which means I can't start the build out on the new basement until I sell the old one.

I have two choices. I can leave the brewery in the old house but I can brew as needed and get by.

Or
I can move it and bring the cold side inside and move it as needed and brew outside for the summer.

What say you? Am I just going through BSA. (Brewery separation anxiety!) should I just keep making beer?

chris0879 · Jul 7, 2017

Keep making beer and start fresh. Cheers

Dcpcooks · Jul 8, 2017

Spoke with my neighbor last night. He lives two doors away. We agreed in principle to a sale, so I should be getting an offer in writing today!

Dcpcooks · Aug 16, 2017

Closed and moved in the new house last week. My neighbor ended up making and offer on the old house and got an offer on his house last weekend.

Short story is he's set to close on our home the first week of October. I'm going to tighten up the plans for the brewery buildout. If everything closes we start construction mid October.

My main focus will be on installing another 100 amp panel with 2 30 gfci plugs. Digging out an ejector pit and installing a bathroom with an attached floor drain for the brew space. Installing a hood and fan with make up air. Building out the brew space to contain noise and moisture and temperature.
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