Yuri's Brew Yurt (Hut)

[CPTHOOK]

great job on the oven and brew stands looks great. I have worked in a powder coating facility for 12 years and you do not wan to cook in a oven that has been used for powder. I can make you very sick. be aware some powder will not stand up to direct heat.

 

[Yuri_Rage]

CPT, I had a feeling it wouldn't be advisable to cook in a powder oven. Now I know. I didn't have any plans to use it for anything other than shop work, anyway.

I made my chiller today. It's patterned after the one about halfway through this thread. It's not quite as neat and clean as that one, but my attempt at making a plexiglass daisywheel looking separator failed spectacularly (shattered...twice!). There's plenty of room between the lines - it'll be fine. It's made from eight 2' lengths of 1/2" rigid copper pipe, and 2' of 4" PVC. I bought a high flow submersible pump to recirculate ice water through the chiller. I haven't given it a test run yet.

 

[Cede]

With those kind of chillers, I'm afraid of leaving precious wort inside !

But that looks cool. I want one, I want one

 

[shadowmage36]

Dude...you built your own shell-and-tube heat exchanger?!?! :cross:

As a practicing chemical engineer, I am humbled and impressed.

I bow before your superior awesomeness.

 

[Boerderij_Kabouter]

Paint that PVC Yuri!

Looking great. That PC kettle is awesome :rockin:

To empty the heat exchanger you can just blow it out with some compressed air O2 or CO2.

 

[CPTHOOK]

as always yuri great job!:rockin:

 

[LazyPBar]

looks awesome. question- when building a heat exchanger like that does the ice water get pumped through the copper pipe or through the PVC? does it matter?

 

[Yuri_Rage]

Ice water goes through the PVC, and wort goes through the copper. I wouldn't want hot wort to come in contact with PVC.

 

[LazyPBar]

good point!

 

[user 40839]

I friggin' hate this!!

My "dream" was to at some point have a standard ol' brew sculpture with keggles to do 10 gallon batches, along with a kegerator with 2-3 taps.

Then I see this.

Gaaah!

 

[Yuri_Rage]

Brew day is rapidly approaching!

 

[Rushis]

Yuri

I hate you on very special level. You are the reason I feel inadequate as man.

Fantastic job. Keep up the good work and thank you for allowing many of us to live vicariously through your sheer awesomeness.

 

[CenCalWorthog]

What is the coating on the kegs?

 

[LazyPBar]

wow yuri that copper powder coat turned out nice! that is awesome! prost!

 

[dudasaj]

With a shell-and-tube type heat exchanger, counter flow is the best design. Not saying this won't work, but not the best thermodynamics.

 

[AN_TKE]

A couple of suggestions on the heat exchanger:
I made mine out of 4" clear PVC with copper tubing coiled inside from one end to the other. Because it is clear PVC I was able to see the huge air bubble that formed in the counterflow space, making the chiller much less efficient until the bubble could be purged out. I suggest you mount the chiller with the discharge at the high point so that air can escape from the outlet, or install a vent hole with a valve on it at the high point. Also, I find the process of sanatizing the tubing a drag. It appears as though you have larger tubing (1/2" ID?) than I do, which will hopefully prevent hop clogs, but that has happened to me too.

I am planning an immersion chiller build now and hope to simplify this part of my process. It kind of kills me because the chiller looks so damn cool on the side of my brewery frame, but it is just not worth it for me anymore.

 

[Yuri_Rage]

I just might brew tomorrow. I have a lot of odds and ends to finish. If I don't brew tomorrow, it'll be next weekend for sure.

The brew hut is now connected!

 

[Kauai_Kahuna]

Go Yuri, Go Yuri.
You can do it, just do it.
You can always make a list of improvements and expand that to do list another mile. But you can sleep at night having a fully functional brew hut/Yurt!

 

[bendavanza]

I think we all want to see that new brew stand in action.

 

[thorongil]

The brew hut is now connected!

Linux and Mac living happily together... I LOVE IT!!! And BEER!

 

[Yuri_Rage]

I'm brewing!!! 15 gallons of my sweet stout. Strike water is nearly up to temp. Things are going fine so far. The control system is VERY rough, but it works well enough to brew today.

 

[Yuri_Rage]

I'm stoked...I can sit here at my desk in the house and monitor the temp via a remote desktop connection. Here's a pic while I wait to dough in:

 

[jtd_1]

I'm brewing!!! 15 gallons of my sweet stout. Strike water is nearly up to temp. Things are going fine so far. The control system is VERY rough, but it works well enough to brew today.

Very cool yuri. Are you going to video document and post to youtube?


Joe

 

[Yuri_Rage]

No video today. Once I get it dialed in, I may fire up the camera again.

 

[jtd_1]

No video today. Once I get it dialed in, I may fire up the camera again.

That would be sweet. You really have done some fantastic work.

 

[the_bird]

Yuri, you may have talked about this before, but why'd you go with the copper-in-PVC chiller design instead of a traditional counterflow chiller, a plate chiller, or even a Chilzilla-type? Any comparison in terms of its effectiveness versus the other chiller options?

 

[Brew-ta-sauraus]

Nope...hydraulics are way too complicated. I want 30" of travel at a minimum, meaning either a really big cylinder, or a really big lever. The winch and a single pulley should work just fine. I can easily do pullups on any single rafter (tested), and my weight is roughly equivalent to a full fermenter. So far, this project screams $15 hand winch...

EDIT:
Fingers...ever use a "come along?" You can move a surprising amount of weight using only the mechanical advantage supplied by the gears in a hand winch. I've moved thousands of pounds of car/boat/tractor/etc onto trailers that way. A single fermenter will be child's play in comparison.

Check HArbor Freight for an inexpensive electric winch

 

[Yuri_Rage]

the_bird - I went with the PVC chiller design because I've seen it in action, and it works nicely. I HATE the cheap CFC that I bought a few years ago (it's put together pretty poorly), so this was my attempt at an upgrade. I like how compact it is. I'll let you know how it works soon!

As for the beer transfer from the fermenter...solved! I'm going to use a modified Sanke keg for my fermenter (not quite done yet), and I'll just do a pressure transfer. No need for hoists, winches, etc.

Today's brew: so far, so good! It's very much a pilot brew. My good scale's batteries went dead, so I measured the base grain on the bathroom scale (rather than weighing it a pound at a time on my smaller scale). So, efficiency is a bit of a WAG. However, it appears that I'm slightly ahead of the planned 75%. Conversion was complete after about 20 minutes, and I started the sparge around 30 minutes. You'll get a kick out of my solution to not having plumbing (pic below). I did about a 60 minute fly sparge, using steam to instantaneously heat the cold sparge water contained in the Corny keg. I thought it was just going to be a workaround until I bought an RV hose long enough to reach the hut, but it worked so well, I'm not sure I'm going to change a thing! ...unless I decide to plumb the hut someday...

The sparge setup:

Steamy goodness:

 

[GreenMonti]

So, I just joined the boards tonight.

Yuri,

Your one of the reasons I joined. I have been lurking around for about 2 weeks and just couldn't stand not being able to post. I showed your brew hut and new brew setup to the misses tonight. To my supprise she said, you can do something like that here. :rockin:

Anyways, very nicely done. Very clean, and a true DIY right to the bone. I can't think of anyone who powder coats thier own parts. My knowledge of polyurethanes doesn't quite help me. Not too much in this hobbie.

I think you have a really sweet setup going on. I like the tippy dump. I think the steam is a bit too far for me, just don't trust the pressure thing. I know that I have more pressure in my kegs when they carb, but they aren't hot. Never the less I will continue to follow along. I am sure the thread is about done though. I hope not, but the hut is complete.




Is there any interferance(sp) with the tippy dump and the hard plumbing to the kettle?

 

[Yuri_Rage]

I have to remove the hard plumbing to dump the mash tun. It's a very simple process. In fact, cleanup went very smoothly.

The chiller was less efficient than I was hoping, but it's adequate. With only 20 lbs of ice (oops...meant to get another bag), the wort was chilled to 100 degrees F, and the reservoir wound up quite hot. So, I'll pitch in the morning.

Assuming my grain bill was accurate, I got about 85% efficiency (per BeerSmith). I'll run some numbers through Kai's spreadsheet to see how I'm doing at each step.

All things considered, it was a pretty fun first run!