Our Brew Rig - 2 Tier system!

[dutchb]

A good friend of mine and I took on this project a few months ago. Built the entire thing out of 1.5" steel square tubing. This thing could probably hold a car if we needed it to...Made it so we can disassemble the top tier from the bottom as well.
We used 3 banjo burners and plumbed all 3 together with black iron and have individual ball valves per burner , and we can also feed all the burners by 1 gas line...for now (shooting to hook it up to natural gas in the future)
Running a sweet 20 PSI Regulator so we can have an overkill of heat when needed. We also used laminate flooring that I had laying around for the shelves since laminate is an easy clean up. Still have some little things that we want to do (polish the kegs, heat resistant paint on certain areas etc; mainly cosmetic), but for the most part, its officially functional!

We did our first AG batch this weekend and (tried) to make a Terrapin Rye Pa, its in the fermenter now and justa' cookin'! Had a few hiccups in the process but hopefully they were not show stoppers, we shall find out in a few weeks!

 

[user 84304]

It looks pretty good, but one question. Why did you make it two tiered if you have a pump? Just curious the reasoning on that.

 

[dutchb]

So we can pump from the Hot water tank to the Mash Tun - it also works well for doing the fly sparge.

 

[evandena]

Looks good, but man is it tall

 

[Bobby_M]

That was my only criticism when I first saw it. With a pump, you don't need to gravity drain out of the boil kettle. I'd cut the legs off at minimum, but it would be nice to lower the whole thing by a full 12". It's awesome work though and it will work fine, but doughing in on a ladder is going to get old.

 

[OneHoppyGuy]

Booby is dead-on (as usual). Waaaaay to high. Put the boil kettle height just above the pump. You have a pump, you might as well use it to pump out the BK to the fermenter.
Having the HLT high and the MT low like the BK makes more sense. There's no need to access the HLT (especially with a BrewHardware sight gauge).

(I get $31.50 for every sight gauge Bobby sells)

 

[dutchb]

Well I definitely appreciate the feedback, (other than the height issue in general) how is this any different than the Sabco 2 tier system - with the HLT, MT being on the same level and the BK down a level?

 

[OneHoppyGuy]

Oh, that's easy... you did a better job for less money...