Muddy Creek Brewing Co. Brewery Build- Start to Finish Thread

[MuddyCreek]

So, I just finished a couple pilot batches of Skinny Cow I.P.A. I had to do two batches because my efficiency is crap. In fact I've struggled with efficiency throughout with the pilot system and I've had to "fix" every batch except one. (Muddy Creek turned out darn near perfect, everything else has been really low.)

Well, the culprit is getting fixed. I have always kept my thermoprobe right in the wort return on the MLT so that I know the temperature of the returning wort. On the Pilot system the decision was made to recreate as closely as possible what we have with the pro system. That meant putting the thermoprobe down lower in the mash.

Another annoying little detail is that my pump is not connected directly to an electronic heat gauge to automatically monitor the pump through the HLT temperature. Rather the pump is controlled through the Mash temperature. This "sounds" fine in theory but here's where the problem is at.

Since my HLT is not connected to the control panel the way I want it, it is not being shut off when it reaches a temperature I want it to maintain (say 3 or 4 degrees above my mash temp...) Then when the mash gets low and the pump turns on overheated HLT water which should have stopped heating when it got to a few degrees above the mash temp now gets the mash liquid a bit too warm. This over-heated wort is then added to the top of the mash which is too high above the thermoprobe to adequately register the temp soon enough so what is essentially happening is that about the top 1/3 to 1/2 of my mash is being "mashed out" entirely too soon and I'm losing more of my efficiency than I want.

Heavy sigh... Had I just built the damn pilot system exactly as my home system was done I would never have had the problem. Instead I had to spend hours "fixing" low efficiency batches. But now the problem has been identified and can be resolved before we move to the big system. So there you go. ANOTHER **** I didn't think about. When you have something that works - don't fix it.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, we have just about all the kegs we need in the cooler for our next two festivals. I'll be transferring to cold-crash tonight and that should just about put us in position to wrap it up. This weekend I'll brew some more stout and keg the last of the stuff for festivals. That will put is in position to enjoy some face-time with folks.

The next few batches will allow us to build stock to entice potential accounts. Our next major move is to finish up the large-scale brewhaus and get it running so we can move into full production. Almost all our equipment is here. We're waiting on a tankless hot water heater and some thermo-probes and heating elements.

After that all gets in, we'll get the plumber in to install everything and then we'll fire up the monster tanks. After that - well, it's mayhem.

 

[opiate82]

I was listening to a podcast last night that had an interview with Vinnie from Russian River. He was talking about his PTE recipe and how it needed a lot of tweaking when they opened up their production brewery. He said that if you put the recipe for PTE from the brewpub next to the recipe from the production brewery you probably wouldn't realize they were the same beer.

This kind of echos what I have read about scaling recipes and that especially hop schedules do not scale linearly as you increase batch sizes. Outside of the efficiency issues have you had any issues scaling your recipes up to your pilot system? Would also be curious to hear about how your recipes scale when you jump up to your full production brewery.

Thanks again for all the sharing. It has been fun to watch your journey and very insightful.

 

[MuddyCreek]

From what I've found the hops don't scale the same at all. Malt you can do pretty well in efficiency. Not in ratios, but in efficiency. Once you figure out what your system efficiency is doing - generate your recipes on THAT and you get consistent results when you scale.

(Course, when you make improvements to your process like I'm about to do your efficiency is going to change and you have to recalculate based on that...)

Hops on the other hand has to do with math. Lots and lots of math. You have to look at that alpha acid, the isomerization potential based on what your particular hops has in AA, and go from there. You have to check your freshness, add up all your numbers, calculate how long your boil time and specific volume will be (include your planned boil-off,) and then come up with your hops addition.

After THAT, you taste your beer - take notes and here's the really sneaky part... you get a bunch of tasters together. (different people can taste different things. It's not a knock on you - the brewer - that you simply can't taste every single nuance of every aspect of your products. So you get together a group of different people who CAN taste different off-flavors and such and you have THEM check your products for consistency and off-flavors and reliably fill out forms for you so you can (over time,) get a process down that gives you a consistent, reproducible batch.

With hops you can't go with ratios because you have to do the math with each batch's AA levels and the specific boil-volume to match your final IBUs. That's the short answer.

 

[bobeer]

Thanks for sharing your journey! It's been awesome to read through the thread.

Out of curiosity, do you have any experience with using a big brewhaus system like you are setting up? I, like most homebrewers, would love to start a brewery but I know the bigger system you have the more money you can make which means you're more likely to "make it." My issue is I have zero experience with using big brew systems. Being a home brewer I've brewed up to 15 gallon batches but it's always done the same way... with a cooler MLT and a propane burner. If you don't have any experience using a big bbl system how did you learn how to use it?

Good luck with getting your place opened. If I ever fine myself in your neck of the woods I'll be sure to stop in and try out your beer!

 

[MuddyCreek]

bobeer,

I have brewed on 5 gallon, 10 gallon, keggle and now 1bbl systems personally and I have had the opportunity to peer over the shoulder while a brewer went through the entire process on a 15 bbl gas-fired system. I have not personally brewed on a full 10 bbl system. It is for that reason that I have pretty much custom recreated my personal home-brew system (with extensive advice from the manufacturer.)

There were some modifications. (I did the pilot system in a manner very close to the pro system and as you can see we've had some growing pains.) I've missed my efficiency several times. It has been fixable and the problem has been identified. That's why we do the test batches and all the pilot batches. I am confident that our 1 bbl system would have worked perfectly had it been done exactly as my home system was. However this isn't the case so I'm the one who needs to evolve.

Over the last year of brewing on my personal system, I stopped using my MLT input thermoprobe for a couple reasons. (Well, really for one reason.) It was damaged during a brew session and I didn't "really" need it because the process was so well refined from the HLT onward that it was truly redundant.

The way my home system actually worked was as follows: (It was overly redundant...) I have a control panel (which I still use for the pilot system,) that controls the temperature in the HLT and the pump for the MLT. Since the system is a automated HERM system, what happens is the HLT is controlled to a specific temperature. In fact, 3 degrees above what the MLT needs to be depending on season. (It gets cold in MT and I brewed outdoors so in the cooler months, obviously the HLT temp varied due to heat loss during transfer of the wort in the tubing between vessels.) So ONE PID controller and heating element maintained the HLT at a precise temperature just above the mash temp.

The second PID controller ran the pump. It had a temp probe right at the wort inlet near the top of the MLT that gauged the wort coming in. That of course was set to the mash temp. That ran your pump so that the mash was always set to the proper temperature. As long as you had set the strike temperature properly when you started, mashed in efficiently and got started and fired up the pump you got excellent efficiency because your temps were held within about 1/2 of a degree throughout your mash.

Doing the mashout was as easy as raising the HLT and MLT temps on the controller appropriately and letting the pump do it's job. If you have the spray valve set up at the top of the MLT properly you have built in fly sparging that kind of runs throughout the mash. It's kind of a win-win.

However, if your HLT temp is dead on and you have your probes calibrated properly in your MLT, the input probe isn't really necessary. It ultimately becomes redundant. What you need is a probe in the middle of the mash that ensures that the grain bed is at the right temperature, not necessarily the wort coming in.

The problem with my current pilot system is that it's only 'half' hooked up. The HLT PID controls are not plugged in so that the HLT temp is not being well enough monitored. When the hot liquor monitoring the wort going through the HERMS coil isn't carefully controlled, then my returning wort going to the top of the grain bed was too hot and I was killing the enzymatic processes of the top 1/4 or so of my grain bed too early. That was what was killing my efficiency.

So the issue there was just fixing the HLT temp monitoring process on the pilot system as it should have been done in the first place and saving myself some time and trouble fixing the gravity of the batches. Anyway, the pro-system hasn't been fired up yet and those issues were never going to be "overlooked". We wanted to get some kegs brewed for festivals so we could represent and therefore we got the pilot system up and running. Admittedly we should have done a better job plugging in the HLT to the control panel. Here you have it, Me admitting a clear mistake I made in my eagerness to get some kegs out and ready.

Fortunately none of the gravity issues were bad enough to be unfixable. I had to add DME to get to the proper gravity for 3 different products. One of them turned out well because it was our first and frankly we took our time and the HLT never got too hot. (Actually it was due to a misunderstanding with the electrician so we were without our heating elements so we were dependant entirely on gas and therefore we had less heat to work with. That kept us from over-heating the HLT.)

Anyway, I am confident in our ability to use the 10bbl system. It's very close to the system I've used for the last 5 years or so and after the issues I've had with the pilot system, (and I'm sure the new ones we'll have with the 10bbl system as we're learning it,) we'll figure it out and get our beers out the door with the same quality. I do expect it will take some time tinkering with the new system though. It generally does. At least that's what I've heard from other brewers and that's what I've read everywhere.

 

[bobeer]

Thanks for the in-depth write up! I've never used a system that has a control panel but I hope to in the future. I don't even have pumps in my home brewery!
So you're saying, as far as the button pushing goes, it's pretty much the same on a 1 bbl system as it would be on a 10 bbl system? The only difference is how you have the peripherals setup? I guess a control panel is a control panel whether on a 1 bbl system or 100 bbl system. Very cool.

 

[MuddyCreek]

So in other news,

We are filling out the Food and Health department forms so we can legally make Root Beer, Lemonade and Ginger Beer. Ironically this is a 20 page application which is kind of silly because most of it is completely not applicable to us as we are not making any "real food" excepting the soft drinks. However we still need a "commercial kitchen" in the brewery. However should any laws change in the future guess who will have a commercial kitchen in the brewery?

Once we've finished the app and gotten it approved, that will also mean we can bottle or can our soft drinks if we wanted. We'll also be able to sell kegs of those things to the local distillery who uses them in their mixed drinks or to restaurants if they want to sell them on tap. (We carbonate our lemonade which makes it kinda awesome!)

The tasting room is coming along. We've been shooting for "rustic" all along. The business-side partner put in a call on CraigsList for barn-wood and got a response from a woman who owns a closed silver mine out of town. She'll give us all the wood we want for the price of gas to haul it into town. (She'll also give us a classic old door from the mine.) We'll use the wood to front the bar. We have already talked to a friend who works for the railroad and he's secured 25 feet of railroad track for us. We'll use that for the foot-rail. If you've followed the thread you already know we are going to use cable spools from the power company for our tables. They will be coated in that super self-leveling eurathane (sp?) stuff so they are smooth but retain their "rough" look. We have spools of different sizes so we have a couple that will seat 8 people a couple that will seat 6 and about 10 or so that will seat 4. Then there are 5 or 6 that will seat 2 people. All together we have seating for 100 or so with our extra couches that we'll put over by the corner area where the gas-fireplace is going.

The walls have all been primed so as soon as the floor leveling compound arrives (was ordered last week,) we can finish leveling and then finishing the floor and then do the final painting. After that, we do the bar, put in the taps and start on pretty trim everywhere.

We still have to get some chairs ordered. We've looked at them online and found a few options but haven't made a final decision yet.

For flights, we have a pretty cool idea. We want to take some rounds from a friend who does firewood. We'll have him cut 1" rounds for us which we'll cut holes through for our sampler glasses. The round will be soaked in anti-freeze to prevent shrinking and avoid future critter attack and then it will be lacquered nicely. After that we'll put a small finish plate underneath the round to hold the sample glasses in. That will give us a nice round wood-chip for our sample platters that we think will be unique and very cost effective. Just takes us some effort.

We are having the local tin guys come today to look at manufacturing a vent-hood over our Brew Kettle with an exhaust fan and ducting system. After that's done we have all our construction complete so our inspector can come back and do the final walkthrough and give us our final licensure. (Currently we are provisionally licensed.)

This weekend I kick out some stout and hopefully get the rest of my large kettles organized for the heating elements and thermo-probes. I've got to get them installed and the rest of the currently unused ports plugged up so we can get on with the business of getting these things fired up.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, crap!

Just talked to the sprinkler installation guy. It seems the fellow who put in our stub for the fire-line may not have done everything to code as he needed to and we'll have to have him return to the scene of the crime and possibly "re-do" it.

Ya. That's how this kind of stuff goes. Fortunately, we have a lawyer on retainer. ;-)

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, no bobeer. A 10bbl isn't just the same as a 1bbl system. I'm not pretending that. There are a ton of things to take into consideration. You have to deal with getting your grains mashed in properly on that large of a system and ensuring that your mash is evenly heated throughout. (As I have already shown that can be tricky even on a 1bbl system so I'm not going to pretend that's trivial.)

There's also the sheer bulk of the grain, first dry and then wet that you have to deal with. The cleaning which is an entirely different challenge at this level and the overwhelming task of moving that much wort and getting it up to temperature and then chilled at a pace that meets your needs. Getting 5 gallons of wort up to 154 degrees and then up another 10 or 12 for mashout and then down to 75 degrees is nothing compared to doing the same with 300+ gallons of wort.

All the control panel does is manage the heating and cooling systems that you have in place so you can do the physical work that needs to be done to organize for the next step. Basically from the moment you START thinking about brewing until the beer is in the fermenter and pitched you are working your butt of moving something, cleaning something or worrying about something. And no matter what you WILL be exhausted by the end of the day and I'm only working on the pilot system right now. (Course it's made a bit harder by the fact that we aren't using ALL the cool toys yet as we're holding back on the plate chiller and the super awesome transfer pump and the on-demand hot water heater until we fire up the BIG BOYS.)

Nonetheless, brewing on every size system has it's own challenges and rewards. Smaller systems offer greater flexibility and faster brewing turnaround times. Larger systems obviously allow you to maximize your production and get the most out of your time and materials.

In the end it all works out.

 

[bobeer]

Thanks again for the response!

I understand that the materials are a much bigger aspect to tackle for a bigger system. Interesting about the mash-in though. It's easy to get the grains all the same temp on a small homebrew scale. Never thought about a bigger operation in that sense.
I was just talking about actually running the system though... if it's different from a 1 bbl to 10 bbl. Both have control panels so I was wondering if there's any difference in that aspect. Or is it just the same as far as the button pushing goes.
I'm usually tired after a brew day, since I"m 100% manual at this point, so I can only imagine how it is on a big level! It's worth it though to do something you love for a living!!

 

[MuddyCreek]

Control panel wise, it's different in that you'd want more thermoprobes or more accurate temperature readings in your mash. I have three ports, for example in my mash tun so I can read temps at three different levels to see variations on the big scale. (See the problem I am fighting on the pilot system would never have happened on the large scale because I would have immediately seen that I had large temperature variations between the levels in my mash. That would have tipped me off right away about the issue with the HERMS return wort being too hot.)

So, yes, the control panel on larger systems are generally more complex, one way or another. Our 10bbl panel for example controls two heating elements per "hot kettle" and will be able to track up to 3 thermo-probes in the mash tun as well as a probe in the HLT. I have an extra heating element that is "free-style" for the BK in case I need an extra push to get more boil power. This will be an un-modulated element so it will pretty much just be on full boil. (Although I could hook it up to my pilot system control panel and do whatever I want with it in terms of controlling it's power usage, so I could control it if I really wanted to...)

I probably just ought to post my tank drawings for you.

Ah, now I've gone and done it.

 

[bobeer]

Ha, I wouldn't mind taking a look at the tank drawings. It would also be cool to see a pic of the 10 bbl control panel once that's up! All very interesting. I've been trying to volunteer at local breweries here but they always need help when I'm rotting away at work. One of these days I'll say screw it and take pto and go in. Anything to get some time and experience in there.

Thanks for all the explanations man!!

 

[sch21c]

Muddy, I've just read through the twenty pages of this thread and I'm engrossed in your journey so far. Thank you for taking the time to post everything you have! I don't know if opening a brewery is ever going to be a real thing for me, but I'm a beer geek, a homebrewer, and a business geek, so you're kind of hitting all my buttons.

Please keep up the posting. I hope to have a reason to come to Butte sometime in the (near) future and see all your hard work in person!

Thanks again.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Let's see if these come across properly...

I tried to upload the pdf file but that didn't work so I did a bit of crappy conversion in Gimp to throw together some .jpg files. Here you have our custom HLT, MLT, and BK.

We have 4 element ports in the HLT, and 3 in the BK. We'll also be using direct fire under the tanks as necessary to get things up to temp. The MLT has a very nice wedgewire false bottom and we're putting some thermal underwear around all three tanks. We're putting in a tankless hot water heater to serve the HLT and MLT. That should be in by the weekend. Our Apollo mill is also being wired with a shutoff-switch in the next day or two as well.

By the weekend I ought to be able to fill my pilot system with the precise temperature of water I want in my HLT AND in my mash right from the tankless. Then I can just let the control panel feather the heating element in the HLT and run the pump for the mash lightly. Feeling pretty jacked about that.

We've also put in some bids for keg cleaners. We considered going commando style and building our own keg cleaner but ultimately we just want to get the brewery up and running and since all the partners are still working our "day jobs" we have decided it's easier to purchase a cleaner that does the job in 5 or 6 minutes for us rather than bust our ass on a home-built keg cleaning system for 10 or 15 minutes per keg and wonder if the kegs are as clean as we want them to be.

Anway, here are the tanks...

 

[rwgaro]

What he said - can't say it any better! And I'd bet a paycheck that there are dozens more who lurk with no comments, reading your updates for vicarious thrills. Great stuff...

Muddy, I've just read through the twenty pages of this thread and I'm engrossed in your journey so far. Thank you for taking the time to post everything you have! I don't know if opening a brewery is ever going to be a real thing for me, but I'm a beer geek, a homebrewer, and a business geek, so you're kind of hitting all my buttons.

Please keep up the posting. I hope to have a reason to come to Butte sometime in the (near) future and see all your hard work in person!

Thanks again.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, you may have noticed that I've been holding back a bit on our control system. We have just installed a major component of our brewhaus liquor and wort control system and I guess it's time to finally spill the beans. I've said a few times that we are underpowered due to some restrictions placed on us by our electricians. We have had to get around this by making modifications to how we intend to brew. Originally the plan was to be a fully electric HERM system. However given our restrictions this proved impossible. So we planned on augmenting with gas-fired burners to help us out. Nice, but ultimately I want to rely more on the electric re-circulation processes that I am more comfortable with. So we came up with a third hybrid process that we have implemented as well.

I give you the double-HERM.

I'm not sure if other breweries use this. I suppose it's possible. We bought an industrial tankless hot water heater and had if further modified to handle output up to 195 degrees. This guy can pump out water up to 20 gpm depending on the temperature of water coming in, (We'll probably limit output at around 15 GPM.) So here's how we'll use this thing in our brewery operations...

First off, We'll obviously use it to fill the HLT and MLT with water specifically temped to our mash in needs. Then we'll use the HLT elements and direct-fire burners to maintain at the right temperature. The HERMS coil will maintain the MLT at the right temperature while we mash in. This will give us a very quick process for filling our tanks with liqour at the proper temperatures.

Once we're all mashed in and happy, we get to sit for awhile and marvel at what man hath wrought. Then it comes time for mash out. We'll have the tankless water-in and out lines fitted with TC connectors so we can move our lines all around. For example, we'll be able to recirculate the water in the HLT so we can help IT heat up to mash-out temp quickly. Not only will it's elements and direct-fire be heating the liquor, but the tankless will also help heat up the water quickly to mash-out temp when it's time.

Also, if necessary, we can use an extra hose to circulate the mash not only through the HLT herms but through the tankless so we are running a double HERM through both for mash-out to quickly reach strike out temp. (You can imagine how difficult it is to raise the thermal mass of 450 or so gallons of mash anywhere from 10 to 20 some degrees.) Using a double-HERM helps double the speed in which you're recirculating your wort through the mash.

After the mash-out is finished we can further use the tankless to heat the wort. We can go up as high as 195 as we transfer to the BK. Here we'll set up a circulation in the BK running the wort through the tankless so it can heat up to 195 as the elements are also heating it. As soon as we cover the lowest element we can fire up the electric and of course the burners can go on as soon as there is wort in the kettle. Once we've transferred all the first-wort we can either transfer liquor over from the HLT or bring it over directly from the tankless at the proper temperature into the MLT for sparging. We can then do either a batch or fly sparge as we like. If we do a batch sparge we can let the wort sit for a bit and then hook up to the tankless again and once again heat the wort to 195 as we transfer to the BK. Since we run a HERM system, we generally do batch sparges since the grain is pretty much constantly rinsed throughout the process. However, preferences vary.

Once all the wort has been transferred to the BK, we'll use the water in the HLT to wash, sanitize and rinse the tankless and we're good to go for our next brew session.

Unorthodox? Sure. But we've looked at it and can't figure out why it won't work. We do have some concerns about over-heating the wort as we transfer it to the BK. So we'll be watching that very closely. If we see any carmelization in our early tests we'll be sure to dial down the tankless. However if we can get the wort transferred over even at 165 or 175 that would be a tremendous help in reducing the delta for our boil.

We believe we can get our BK boiling in less than 45 minutes with this system which will definitely shave some time off our brew day without killing our electric and gas bill. So we're very excited about it.

There you have it. Our next big secret. The double herm. I wouldn't be surprised if other breweries use something like this to some extent. It can't be THAT unusual.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, I ran the tankless this weekend on our pilot system. It was not without flaws.

It ran our water up to about 120 or 130 but never got much above that. I needed it to get up to 166 for my strike temp and I was a bit disappointed. I'll need our plumber and electrician to look at the unit and do some trouble shooting. It should have easily handled that at the amount of water our pilot system was using. Better to work that all out now than after we fire up the big tanks.

Still, I managed to get 35 gallons of Clementine brewed in better time than I have been for my last 4 brews. I'm happy with that. Also got our house I.P.A. kegged and that makes us officially ready for all our fesitivals, more or less. Our stout is in the fermenter from last week and that will need to be crashed in a few days and kegged later. That will make us ready for the MBA (Montana Brewers Association) festival in October.

With no other major festivals to prepare for, that frees us to focus solely on getting the big tanks up and running so we can brew on a full scale now. As of Wednesday we'll have all our significant components in and there's nothing but us holding us up.

 

[broncosaurs]

MuddyCreek, I'm one that "who lurk with no comments". Love the thread.

Doing some quick math on the tank-less water heater, to get say, 100* temperature rise @ 15 GPM the BTUs needed is in the range of 820000! I don't know what size the tank-less you have but 820000BTU is huge. I have seen the tank-less plumed in a parallel arrangement to get this output but never seen a single unit this large. The largest Takagi is 380000 BTUs and at 15 gpm this unit will only give about a 40* rise in temp. You might be asking more from the water heater then it is capable of.

General equation:
BTU/hr = GPM x Temp Rise (F*) x 545
KW = GPM x Temp Rise (F*) x .16

Brad

 

[Spartan1979]

MuddyCreek, I'm one that "who lurk with no comments". Love the thread.

Doing some quick math on the tank-less water heater, to get say, 100* temperature rise @ 15 GPM the BTUs needed is in the range of 820000! I don't know what size the tank-less you have but 820000BTU is huge. I have seen the tank-less plumed in a parallel arrangement to get this output but never seen a single unit this large. The largest Takagi is 380000 BTUs and at 15 gpm this unit will only give about a 40* rise in temp. You might be asking more from the water heater then it is capable of.

General equation:
BTU/hr = GPM x Temp Rise (F*) x 545
KW = GPM x Temp Rise (F*) x .16

Brad

Wouldn't they have to be plumbed in series to get the temp higher?

 

[MuddyCreek]

You're right Bronco, except that when I'm transferring to the BK, I only ultimately need about a 35 or 40 degree rise and I've got elements and gas-fired heat helping me as well.

The water coming from the tankless into the HLT can come in under the strike temperature (around 160 to 166 depending on amount of grain and mash volume and grain temp, and heat up from there.) I also have elements and direct fire under the HLT to help heat that liquor up as necessary.) Coming IN to the HLT I can afford to take more time filling, I can use up my regular hot-water tank for the first unit and I can 're-use' hot water through the tankless to help things along.

Once I have my mash finished, I heat it up to mash-out by heating the HLT with the elements, tankless and direct-fire so I can heat the mash to the appropriate mash-out temp. Then I transfer the wort to the BK. As soon as the wort hits the BK I turn on the direct-fire and maintain the temp on the wort. As soon as it covers the lower elements I fire them up as well. I begin my sparge with the already heated liquor from my HLT and when I'm done with that I transfer that over as well to my BK. From there, I have all my elements and my direct fire going to heat my BK wort up. I also switch my transfer hose over to my tankless to the BK wort can go through the tankless and up the temp from 160 or 166 to say 190 or the max of 195. I set the flow volume on the tankless down a bit so the wort can heat better and turn on the pump to let the wort flow through the tankless. That allows me to heat wort through the elements, the direct fire and the tankless all at the same time. Now I'm only heating the wort about 35 or 40 degrees which reduces my BTU requirements significantly.

This brings the wort coming out of the tankless up to 190 or 195, which lowers my delta to boil down to around 10 or 15 degrees. (Boiling temp at our altitude is about 204.) When running properly we should be able to pump about 10 or so gpm at that temperature so it should take about 30 minutes. All that time our elements and direct fire are also heating the wort so we should be pretty close by then to boil.

That's the plan anyway. We'll continue to work with it and see how it goes. On the positive end the Clementine I brewed on Saturday came out right on the numbers so that's nice.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Wouldn't they have to be plumbed in series to get the temp higher?

There are two series.

However I am still a little low. I need to have some trouble shooting done.

 

[broncosaurs]

Spartan1979, I think most manufactures want multi-units to be plumed in parallel. The idea would be to reduce the flow rate going thru each heater so there is more time for the heater to heat the water. The units are designed to be most efficient to heat cold water to hot water. Pluming units series the second heater in the line would be taking hot/warm water and try to heat it more. I think the efficiency would be better with them in parallel at 1/2 flow rate. Just a note, I am not in the water heater business so everything I just said might not be worth much.

MuddyCreek, I got it. I thought you were heating the HLT water up to temp when filling.

 

[WilliamSlayer]

I was going to ask if the 'art' and 'creation' part of brewing (which is the exciting part for me) gets lost in the babying of all the machines? Maybe not yet because it is so new?

 

[WilliamSlayer]

Maybe the big shiny machines ARE the fun part for you?

 

[broncosaurs]

I do a lot of smoking of meats. When I tweak ( 'art' and 'creation') a recipe I need the temperature of the smoker to be accurate and stable. When I measure my spices I need the scale to be accurate. Without repeatability of the whole system the small changes made in the spices are lost in the variability of the total system. In commercial brewing I would think being able to consistently repeat temperatures, flows, weights etc. is a must before any "'art' and 'creation'" can take place. When brewing 5 gallons, if the temps were off, and the beer isn't so great I drink it and make another batch. What a disaster if I made 50bbls of sub-par beer. The system muddycreek is installing is there system, not some off-the-shelf system any one can buy and some problems are to be expected. I think it is great they are doing it THERE way to make the beer they created using a smaller system. Early on in the thread I estimated the amount of power to supply all the heaters they had designed into the system, LOTS. Interesting to watch how this shortage of power is being over come. Can we not have "shiny machines" and "'art' and 'creation'" both?


MuddyCreek: A small brewery here in San Diego, Pacific, does use a very large instantaneous water heater for there HLT.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Bronco, we have had some problems and we continually have to work at it to overcome. That's where our PhD has come in handy. Todd has really been a help to us in process management.

Yesterday our CO2 tank was installed. 750 gallons of liquid CO2 at our fingertips ready to be distributed to our kegs and our taplines as necessary. We have our first two festivals over the next two weekends. Very exciting for us. It will be our first real introduction to the world.

We also hope to finish up our control panel and fire up the "real" system by the end of the month. With any luck at all we will be brewing some beer in volume and opening sometime at the end of October. This weekend I'm doing some double-duty brewing a GF lager and installing the heating elements and thermo-probes in the HLT and BK. I need to get some serious bushings though to get my elements to fit. That's going to be a challenge.

But hey, what do we live for?

We have 10 kegs full and aging for our festivals, another 4 kegs worth fermenting as I type. The pilot system is brewing beer at a furious rate. (Based on the breweries around us, we expect to go through 10 bbls a week in the taproom and through local distribution. So 10 kegs is just a tad short of what we need. ;-)

 

[MuddyCreek]

More of the business management side...

Remember early in the thread where somebody mentioned that we should plan for double the money and double the time?

We are just now requesting a second loan which is not quite as much as the first but darn near, (IE double the money.) And we'd hoped to be open months ago, but due to numerous delays we are now just hoping to open by the end of October and even that's going to be a real chore, so we're awful close to double the time.

So that's not just whistlin' dixie for you guys who want to open your own brewery some day. Those are real words of advice. Take it for what it's worth. We've done everything as inexpensively as possible, including that amazingly low lease and we've still had to take a second loan. And of course things always take much longer than you'd like, especially if you're doing things as a "second job".

We'll be at least $300k or more into this thing by the time we start. And we didn't get the uber-pricey brite tanks and fermenters up front. We'll be adding those as we grow. We'd have been $500k into it if we'd have gone that route. So there you have it. Breweries of this size are NOT free. So, when asked why you should support your local brewery...

Well - as long as the beer is decent, there you have it.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Ok, Time to get serious.

The transfer hose arrived yesterday. That gives us 100' of 1.5" ID transfer hose to soft-plumb our tanks. I need the finishing connectors to plug the holes we don't want to use right off the bat and the bushings to get my elements and probes in and we should be ready to at least put the tanks together. Once that's done we'll water test everything and prove out the process flow.

I was planning on doing a small GF lager this weekend to play with it but I've decided to dedicate the entire weekend to working on the tanks and getting them ready. Our control panel should be done by the middle of next week or by the end so hopefully we'll be ready to go with that when the tanks are finished.

The goal is to be brewing by the end of the month and get through our test batches to dial in the system. We'll start with smaller batches to minimize the cost of bad batches. Once we figure everything out and get all the processes worked out we'll start increasing batch sizes slowly until we're doing full 10 bbl batches.

That's the plan. Course, everyone has a plan until he get's punched in the nose.

 

[glenn514]

Course, everyone has a plan until he get's punched in the nose.

Yup. Mankind makes plans. God just laughs.

glenn514