Small Batch Automated System

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Paulaner

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2016
Messages
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Location
Cottage Grove, Wi
I wanted a fully automated system that would rival what you find in a professional brewery or what other members here have done with theirs. I typically brew 2.5 gallon batches so that I can brew every week, but I also wanted the option to brew 5 gallons for certain circumstances. I've messed with cooler mashing, and PID control mashing, but both of these were too much manual work and didn't provide the results I was looking for. After working with Stout for about 5-6 months I finally designed and received the kettles I wanted, of course @Die_Beerery did all the leg work with Stout I just customized what he did to suit my needs. Here's what I received which I was very happy with.
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Next step was getting these beauties up and running on an automated system. For that BruControl was the only option as I want a professional brewery and what Pete offers is exactly that. Everything I read said to get the biggest project box you can find and you'll grow into it. I went with a 24x24x16 thinking that I would be good. Well I didn't even get my box completed before I grew out of it and had to add another 16x16x8 enclosure which I also filled up during the build. Here's the initial layout prior to realizing I needed to add so much more and fine tune the layout.
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Here's the 2 heater elements and pump sockets.
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Here's the initial ball valve cannon plug, don't worry it's all protected in the final version to prevent arcing. It's an 18 pin connector, Ideally I would have went with 1, hundred or so pin connector for everything, but then I would have had to buy too many specialized tools.
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This is the layout with the wiring enclosures put on, I thought I was nearing completion so I got ahead of myself by putting these on, what a mistake.

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Then I decided I didn't have enough crammed into my box, and I needed more to truly make this a professional brewery so I added this.
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And then my smaller box wasn't quite filled so I added this to it.
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Then before I even got the kettles set up I started upgrading my PH transmitters.
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After this I had to get the courage to drill into my brand new boil kettle, I tried to convince Stout to do this for me, but they didn't have any interest in doing this for me for a multitude of reasons, luckily I have somewhat of a clue to be dangerous with tools.
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Now I got it all hard piped up, for now I have 12 motorized valves, 2 mass flow sensors, 2 DO sensors, 2 PH sensors, 1 conductivity sensor, 4 solenoid valves for pressurizing and pulling a vacuum on the kettles, 1 head space o2 sensor, and 5 flow meters. I just finished up my brew day script and will be fine tuning that along with my CIP script. Then I have quite the list for upgrades already. Now onto the brewery, my concern with this system is the RIMS tube. I went this route for space concerns, and the hope that I could get it to turn out the beer that I'm looking for. I'm not going to lie, but I think that I may swap it out for a HERMS system later as I can definitely taste the difference in the final product in the ones that I've tried. Of course, I like to take on a challenge, and I've done a lot of research on this, I plan on giving it at least a year of testing before I make my final decision of RIMS vs HERMS for this setup.
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I really like this thread. I just do!!

On the RIMs... what are your concerns? I see the QZ is being used. I want to make sure we shut @Die_Beerery up on the HERMs vs. RIMs topic, so let's make sure you are getting the result you want.

My biggest concern is the thermal stress on the wort since it's being directly heated. Now I have faith in your quadzilla to overcome this as long as everything is set up correctly. Currently, I have two of the elements connected, I also have the max PID output capped at 50%, I'm temp averaging between the RIMS tube out and the MFM. I also have the proportional valve to go full open during the temp ramps which gets right at 12.75l/min, then during the mash rests I throttle it down to 9.5l/min. This is what I'm planning on starting out with till I get a few batches in, then I'll start to make adjustments from there.
 
I think a high flow rate and the turbulence in the tube from the baffles will help. Also it is best to keep your SSR duty cycle fast... maybe on the order of 1 second? Better even would be proportional control, but I think the heaters have enough mass to prevent significant temp swings.

At the end of the day, heat is heat. What we want to avoid is local heating, where some wort is super heated and blended with non-heated wort to get a temperature increase. With that in mind, I do think you are much better off running all four heaters and limiting the net power in software. If you really want a guaranteed limit, switch the QZ's power down to 120 VAC!

We won't settle until @Die_Beerery begs for RIMs in his brewery.
 
I think a high flow rate and the turbulence in the tube from the baffles will help. Also it is best to keep your SSR duty cycle fast... maybe on the order of 1 second? Better even would be proportional control, but I think the heaters have enough mass to prevent significant temp swings.

At the end of the day, heat is heat. What we want to avoid is local heating, where some wort is super heated and blended with non-heated wort to get a temperature increase. With that in mind, I do think you are much better off running all four heaters and limiting the net power in software. If you really want a guaranteed limit, switch the QZ's power down to 120 VAC!

We won't settle until @Die_Beerery begs for RIMs in his brewery.


Then you are now dealing with extra sheer stress. So you have thermal and sheer now.

[emoji2957]

I’ll stop thread jacking. Dan, looking great. Can’t wait to see some action shots.
 
I use a modified HERMS. I have a small 9 gal Electric Stout BK that I use for the Hot Water Bath. I use a Convalutus Counterflow Chiller. You. Have to have two pumps but you can control the mash temp very well. I also saw an increased effiency. SS Brewtech also sells a 10 g Stainless cooler style Mash tun that holds the heat extreamly well. You can also get a heating pad that fits on the bottom but we found it was not needed. we do 2 batches sometimes and use it for the smaller batch.
 
Super interested in this RIMS vs HERMS. What kind of temp ramp rates are you seeing with your setup?
I'm attempting to take it as gentle as possible, I'm about two water batches and one brew batch in and am averaging around 1°F rise per 90 seconds. Ideally this would be 1°F per 60 seconds, but like I had said in previous posts I'm attempting to get this in line with a HERMS system so I'm going above and beyond for gentle heat treatment to the wort. I'm thinking around a year of testing till I can make a definitive consensus as too if RIMS can be as gentle as HERMS on wort.
 
I'm attempting to take it as gentle as possible, I'm about two water batches and one brew batch in and am averaging around 1°F rise per 90 seconds. Ideally this would be 1°F per 60 seconds, but like I had said in previous posts I'm attempting to get this in line with a HERMS system so I'm going above and beyond for gentle heat treatment to the wort. I'm thinking around a year of testing till I can make a definitive consensus as too if RIMS can be as gentle as HERMS on wort.

Is that 1F/90s on the OUT of your RIMS?
 
I use a cascade PID algorithm I wrote to dynamically set the temperature of my RIMS set point based on my mash target. The aggressiveness can be tuned, and I am brewing in my garage so cold days get a greater delta than warm days as it adjusts for thermal loss, recirc speed, etc. I'm sure something like that could be implemented with bru control if you have general purpose PID functionality (I use Node-RED personally)... just need to chain two PIDs together. I combine this with output limiting on the RIMS during the mashing process. Pretty comfortable with the wort impact.

I previously used a counterflow HERMS design, which is great, really, but as a no-sparge brewer now it makes less sense.
 
I'm attempting to take it as gentle as possible, I'm about two water batches and one brew batch in and am averaging around 1°F rise per 90 seconds. Ideally this would be 1°F per 60 seconds, but like I had said in previous posts I'm attempting to get this in line with a HERMS system so I'm going above and beyond for gentle heat treatment to the wort. I'm thinking around a year of testing till I can make a definitive consensus as too if RIMS can be as gentle as HERMS on wort.
I'm holding my breath for your conclusion. I really don't understand the hatred towards HERMS. The claim that RIMS can heat faster only creates more thermal stress, so slowing it down to avoid thermal stress takes that advantage away from RIMS. The claim that you are unnecessarily heating up extra water is fine with me. That is sparge and cleaning water that needs to get up to that temp anyway. Finally, I do like to do silly things on occasion, like say a protein rest. I was never able to rise out of a protein rest with my RIMS setup without having the coagulated proteins stick to the heating element and scorch. Smokey kolsch anyone? Not me.

If you need to use cartridge elements over the more traditionally used water heater elements, add turbulence for even heating, and limit power, then it seems that RIMS is more finicky to setup and dial in to get the same results as throwing a coil in a hot water bath.

And I'll step off my soapbox now and continue to let my RIMS tube collect dust.
 
If you need to use cartridge elements over the more traditionally used water heater elements, add turbulence for even heating, and limit power, then it seems that RIMS is more finicky to setup and dial in to get the same results as throwing a coil in a hot water bath.
I'm holding my breath for your conclusion. I really don't understand the hatred towards HERMS. The claim that RIMS can heat faster only creates more thermal stress, so slowing it down to avoid thermal stress takes that advantage away from RIMS. The claim that you are unnecessarily heating up extra water is fine with me. That is sparge and cleaning water that needs to get up to that temp anyway. Finally, I do like to do silly things on occasion, like say a protein rest. I was never able to rise out of a protein rest with my RIMS setup without having the coagulated proteins stick to the heating element and scorch. Smokey kolsch anyone? Not me.

If you need to use cartridge elements over the more traditionally used water heater elements, add turbulence for even heating, and limit power, then it seems that RIMS is more finicky to setup and dial in to get the same results as throwing a coil in a hot water bath.

And I'll step off my soapbox now and continue to let my RIMS tube collect dust.

The QZ was purpose built to be very low density. It is the same HD as a 5500W ripple element. So run at, say 1/8 power to hold a mash temp, means very little heat. In my experience, it has always been clean following a brew. But I do sell them, so my credibility is limited. So let's let @Paulaner tell us his experience once he tests it. I'm all about honest feedback.
 
I'm loving this new setup more each time that I brew with it. For todays brew I went with a Kolsch, 100% Kolsch Malt and 2575 yeast, I've found that 100% gets the closest malt flavor to what you experience in Cologne, and 2575 gives the fruitiness that I love about this beer. I set everything up the night before and had is set to start at 5 in the morning, so that when I got up a little after 6 I would be ready to mash in. I woke up, turned on my phone, remoted into my brew computer to verify everything was good and it was ready for mash in. I walked down stairs, milled the grain, purged the MLT and hit continue. Once I get my DO meters up and running I'll do this the night before, and add to the script to monitor o2 levels over night in the mash tun so that my brew will be into the mash before I even get out of bed. Anyways, my script is almost perfect, of course I'll always be tweaking it. A few mistakes like forgetting to turn off the boil kettle purge pump during transferring into the boil kettle, and forgetting to change the name back on my boil start, other than them two everything went perfect. Now, I got my electric hoist to install tomorrow for my grain bag, changing out my pumps ssr, and finishing up my CIP script. Once the slow boat from China shows up I'll have everything I need to complete my DO meters, CIP and purge/flushing. I am truly amazed with how versatile this system is. I also got all my numbers dialed in perfectly for 2.5 gallon batches, next will be figuring out 5 gallon batches.
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Do you have latches on your kettles? I have Blichmann kettles and I was curious if I could put pressure in them like you state. I guess I would have to silver solder some on or something. Awesome setup though! Do you find low oxygen changes the beer a lot and is worth the extra expense?
 
Do you have latches on your kettles? I have Blichmann kettles and I was curious if I could put pressure in them like you state. I guess I would have to silver solder some on or something. Awesome setup though! Do you find low oxygen changes the beer a lot and is worth the extra expense?

Yes, and you don't need this type of system to brew beers with low oxygen (even though it is awesome and I am jealous and I want one). You can likely do it on your current system with minimal to no upgrades.
 
Nice! Glad to hear you are making some sugar water you like!

Got any Workspace screen shots? Yes, I'm greedy.
Well the brew page was thrown together to get brewing, once I get everything finalized I'm going to learn myself up on paint 3d and make it respectable, but in the mean time this is what I got. At least my spunding page is nice, I just need double it up now since I got another spund valve to use for when I do 5 gallon batches as I'll still use 2 2.5gallon kegs.

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Do you have latches on your kettles? I have Blichmann kettles and I was curious if I could put pressure in them like you state. I guess I would have to silver solder some on or something. Awesome setup though! Do you find low oxygen changes the beer a lot and is worth the extra expense?
I've been brewing that way since the first paper was wrote, which pretty much lines up with about 1 year after I picked up brewing. I was living in Germany and knew that I needed to learn how to brew since I would eventually be moving back to the U.S. The first few batches that I brewed were decent but no where near my favorite beers which were Pils and Kolsch, then I read the first paper about eliminating o2 and knew these guys were onto something, so I re-modeled my brew setup and have been tweaking everything sense. And now I got this setup which I continue to tweak.
 
Since this work from home thing has started I’ve been working non-stop in the brewery. I got my electric winch mounted now, I completely re-did my piping, I’ve completed both the mash tun and boil kettle CIP scripts, I built and wired up another auto-spund setup, I got a three way valve setup for the boil kettle CIP, I used up my second relay board for adding a hop dropper, since 99% of my beer is a single small hop addition, I realized that the hop dropper would be a waste for me so I went with a 1” ball valve with a step up spool on top, and flush valves, I added another flow meter for my RO system to auto fill my home water jugs and finally got my boil kettle PH meter dialed in perfectly in BruControl. Now I’m finally learning paint 3D for making my setup look semi professional.
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Just out of interest (after seeing so many "kill" switch buttons in a gui) do any of you e-brewing BruControllers still have physical "disconnect everything NOW!" kill switches on your rigs?

Cheers!
 
Just out of interest (after seeing so many "kill" switch buttons in a gui) do any of you e-brewing BruControllers still have physical "disconnect everything NOW!" kill switches on your rigs?

Cheers!
I got a kill switch, but that kills power to all of my components except the Arduino so I can't troubleshoot the problem first, plus it's hard to reach lol.
 
hahahah! I get the debug piece - no problem having belts and suspenders in guis for that - but you should probably do something about the hard to reach physical kill switch thing, lest your epitaph read "So Close Yet Too Far"...

Cheers! :D
 
After playing around with my setup for a little while now, I've been a little disappointed with the ability of PBW to clean out everything without having to put elbow grease into it. I knew there had to be a better product. Since I live in the Dairyland and all farmers use stainless steal, I had to take advantage of this. First thing I had to do was re-read chapter 6 of Kunze to see how the big boys do this. Then I headed to Fleet Farm because if I looked at brewing cleaners there would probably be a 200+ percent markup. There were multiple options if I needed bulk cleaner to last my lifetime, but I wanted to get a smaller option so that if I wasn't happy with it I could move on while limiting any sunk costs. I opted for the chlorinated pipeline detergent. The instructions for this were very detailed to include mixing percentages for the grains of hardness in my water, and then following with a post acid rinse. This is another time where BruControl has shined, I took the instructions for using these two products, wrote a script with all the parameters, and used my monitoring of PH/conductivity to ensure rinsing is complete. After 3 batches I had a few areas with small build-up of hop material, and a slight beer brewing smell in my kettles after only using PBW. I tested out my new procedures and all build-up was removed, no smell whatsoever was left in the kettles, and the best part no elbow grease required.
 
While I prefer the elimination of dedicated controls (Death to Controls?!?) I do think a physical E-Stop is prudent. Like above, I think having the E-Stop interrupt the high voltage feed makes good sense. Keep the LV stuff and controls powered so you can recover if needed. This does require two physical switches: one for main power and the E-Stop. This can be easily handled through a main contactor and contactors for elements and HV stuff (pumps, etc.). This is included in the example schematics we posted.
 
Just out of interest (after seeing so many "kill" switch buttons in a gui) do any of you e-brewing BruControllers still have physical "disconnect everything NOW!" kill switches on your rigs?

Cheers!

That is one of the few things on the front of my control panel that still works. However, my control panel is in a hard to reach area. I do plan to make a small auxilary panel mounted by my touch screen that would have a hardware E-stop switch.

For now I would have to go outside the garage to kill it from the spa panel if such a need were to arise.
 
Good point. Nothing requires that E-Stop (or disconnect or whatever you choose to call it) be in/on your main panel. Our posted design in fact has the E-Stop, power, and optional LED's in a separate enclosure.
 
So its been a minute since I posted anything here, I've been slowly upgrading and adding to the setup over time. I added another spunding setup so I can spund two kegs at once along with dynamic pressure alarms so that if the average pressure shoots up or drops for whatever reason I'll get an alarm email. I then decided I needed another DO probe in the top of my MLT and what better reason to upgrade my transmitter while I was at it. Since I open the kettle to stir the mash after mash in, this has helped so that once I close everything back up I can automaticallypurge the headspace to keep the MLT o2 free.
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I then finalized my CIP scripts with automatic kettle filling and draining with more ball valves. I also added a 3" sight glass to my MLT because why not. One item that has been on my list since I first saw Bryan's setup was auto sauergut dosing. All my components finally showed up so I finished my setup with scripting to automatically adjust and dose mash and boil PH. I've also almost finished with all of my scripts to automate everything and monitor everything to be notified if any problems present themselves I will now be notified of the problem.
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My other project has been maximizing my RIMS setup. I will have to say that I'm truly impressed with the quadzilla element because it allows so much flexibility. I currently run all 4 elements which totals 5500watts at 25% so during the mash each element is capped at 344 watts each. There's currently 2 baffles in the tube and my mash is contained in a bag to prevent husk material on the element. I tried a few other percentages and wiring setups for the element but found some build-up on the element. Currently with how it's ran the element is almost pristine after the mash. I'd be willing to bet that some peoples HERMS systems have more build-up in the coil after the mash than what I'm seeing. Then when I run my CIP the element runs at 80% to heat up quickly. As for my final verdict on RIMS vs HERMS I'm still testing and experimenting with temps, flows, and percentages of power.
 
Sweet rig, no doubt... no doubt. Glad to see you taking it to the next level!

But, I GOTTA SMASH THE LIKE BUTTON (is there a love button?) to hear your comments about the QuadZilla. I definitely don't yammer on about it because I don't want to come off like a shill, but I have been seeking at least the smallest shred of validation that RIMs can be properly implemented and be superior to HERMs. We aren't there, but this is a step. By the way... totally agree that using all elements at minimal power is the way to roll. Keep up the great work!

You hearing me, @Die_Beerery!?!
 
After talking with Pete about the Quadzilla performance, I couldn't shake the idea of using a proportional ssr to lower the thermal stress on the wort even further. My goal through this endeavor is to keep the two vessel setup, while enjoying the low stress on the wort you can achieve with using three vessels. So far I'm quite satisfied, but I'm always trying to improve my end product. As of now, I would say that I'm pretty much there with the low stress that I'm shooting for as my wort srm's is quite low even with heavy Munich and caramalt grain bills, and the fresh grain flavors just pop out now. Hopefully, I'm getting closer to my end goal, but I still have a list of changes to try out, this is a long process as I only change one parameter per brew. Also, I gotta say thanks again to Pete for the help, I cannot recommend BruControl enough. I'm still amazed by how powerful this system is, if you can imagine something you want it to do, the system will do it. Here's my very expensive dimmer switch I had to get lol.
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Burst is nicer on the electronics and will produce less noise but it limits resolution. It would have been nice if they included the half waves. If you don’t have any noise with PA, that’s probably the better route.
 
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Great Thread. I am still planning on using a modified HERMS using a RIMS tube with the output connected to the Input of the outer tube of a Copper Counter flow chiller. I am planning on using a Quadzilla to initially heat the HERMS bath to a few degrees below the desired Mash and use the Quadzilla connected to a PWM Proportional Output and Controller (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/sensata-crydom/PMP4850W/6827349)
I will control all 4 tubes.
Did you complete the Phase Angle or Burst Tests?
 
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