Spike brewing natural gas 30 gallon hard piped tri clamp

[Drumminguy81]

Might have posted in the wrong section after having a few too many.. but here's a re post..
This has been a project over a year in the making.. I tell everyone its my ever evolving brew system.. I finally feel like im to a point where there isn't much more I want to do. Unfortunately I didn't take a ton of pictures along the way or of the build but the basics-

3 custom spike brewing 30 gallon kettles
custom built 3 burner automated natural gas brew stand
3 chugger pumps
1 ssbrewtech 5.5 gallon kettle(lauter grant)
2 blichmann thermonators
A stout tanks 3 gallon hop back
a blichmann hop rocket
a brewers hardware filter
Custom made oxygenation setup
and tons of tri clamp fittings
I built everything myself including the brew stand and control panel..
this brewhouse is accompanied by 2 brewhemoth conicals with temp control but I wont get into that just yet. The basics of the stand I built it for 3 keggles with burners on natural gas. They all have valves and pilots controlled by my control panel with pid controllers. The kettles are spike brewing 30 gallon with a few extra ports added for fly sparging, vorlauf, and whirlpool as well as the temp probes on the back. I went with threaded fittings and wish I had done tri clamp from the beginning so now I have tri clamp adapters to all my kettles. I just finished hard piping everything. Let me tell you that was an investment even using china fittings.
Im sure it will be asked, I use the hop rocket for smaller ipa's or hoppy pale ales on occasion and the stout hop back for the big ipa's. The reason for the 2 thermonators is one is connected to my glycol system to pre chill the ground water before chilling my wort. Im able to chill an entire 20+ gallon batch in one pass in under 20 minutes.
Anyway here's some pictures. Questions are welcome im sure ill post more.

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[Boydric]

Nice set up how long does that take to put back together with all of the tc piping and fittings?

 

[brick_haus]

I am impressed!

 

[Drumminguy81]

A actually haven't brewed on it yet with the hard piping. But did a water brew just to test for leaks and flow and it took about an hour to empty and clean everything. Shouldn't be much worse than it was with flex tubes I just have to break it one more place.. the beauty of sanitary fittings, they don't have to be broken and cleaned every batch. My brew days are long though. 8+ hours. But for 20 gallons not terrible. My day job is in a major food processing facility so working with tri clamps and cleaning is no big deal.

 

[Ruint]

That is effing B E A utiful!!!! If you don't mind me asking, what burners are you using with the natural gas? and how long does it take to heat to a boil? I have 30 gallon spike kettles as well, and have not used my blichmann floor burner yet to do a batch yet this year. I have natural gas at my residence, but have not piped it as of yet, so I'm still dependent on my propane bbq tanks.

 

[Drumminguy81]

Im just using 3 bg14 banjo burners with natural gas orifices installed. Williamsbrewing sells the orifices. They work great I haven't really timed how long it takes to boil but I would say 24 gallons boils in 30-45 min.. its usually just enough time for me to get my mash tun cleaned out..

 

[Gadjobrinus]

Just came to this, Drumminguy. Magnificent setup and the fact you built it all is mind blowing to this mechanically challenged one. I'm having an issue with my frame, ran into an issue with spacing on the vessel supports. I see in your pics it appears the overall diameter of our vessels about matches the outside spread of your cross supports. I had that, but it didn't work because I'm not using any sort of cross work, gusset or other internal supports - the vessels rests straight on the vessel supports as I'm using the rear-venting method as seen on Brewer's Hardware.com. It looks like you've got them raised some. Do you have any issues with flame creeping, heat buildup or anything like that, with your raised setup (I imagine not)?

Beautiful build, once again. Happy new year everyone.

 

[ITV]

Very impressive system. I like the simplicity of your control panel. Can you provide a close up picture?

 

[Drumminguy81]

I have actually rebuilt my system recently and converted to all electric with a new control panel. As far is the supports, I had some burner stands attached that the kettles sat on basically thin metal cross supports above the burners. My burners were a little too close to the kettles so the flames would creep around the bottom of the kettles up the sides.. but it didn't seem to cause any issues. Here is a closeup of the panel. Pretty straight forward, the pid controllers controlled Honeywell gas valves with pilots to turn flames off and on. It worked great.

 

[ITV]

I have actually rebuilt my system recently and converted to all electric with a new control panel. As far is the supports, I had some burner stands attached that the kettles sat on basically thin metal cross supports above the burners. My burners were a little too close to the kettles so the flames would creep around the bottom of the kettles up the sides.. but it didn't seem to cause any issues. Here is a closeup of the panel. Pretty straight forward, the pid controllers controlled Honeywell gas valves with pilots to turn flames off and on. It worked great. View attachment 552080

Nice simple design, I assume that you use a separate timer since there isn't one on the control panel.

Converting to all electric I would suspect that it will take longer to heat the water. I have an all electric 1.5 BBL system project on the back burner. I need to redo the control panel and I plan on using a gas fired tank less water heater to pre heat the water since it would be cheaper and quicker.

 

[Drumminguy81]

I was using beersmith for my timers. new panel is a little more complex. It's a 60A panel so I can run 2 elements at a time. I have 2 5500w elements in the hlt and boil so it is extremely fast. 30 gallons of strike water from 70-170 in 25 minutes and from 152- boil in about 10. I bought it with the thought of a future 1bbl-2bbl upgrade. Here is my new panel. Unfortunately I can't take credit for the build, I bought it from another member already built.