I have acquired bought and built a herms brewery over the course of the last six months.
Its still to do a maiden brew in its entirety but safe to say all the integral parts have been tested and all seems to work smoothly
Before i go any further i need to thank a couple of people - Kevin(AT)your knowledge was so helpful without which instead of a brewery i would have had a very big bin full of botched attempts :thumb: :
Also some of the lads here particularly Aleman and Vossy without them i may have been electrocuted from botched PID wiring on a couple of occasions
:
Anyway here are the main parts
100l Boiler
85 litre Mash tun
Pump
Deep fat fryer Herms
Extraction Chmney off freecycle
Quick Disconnects
Plate Chiller
27 Burco for heating sparge water
and here are the pics
Overview of system l-r
control Panel,Heat exchanger,MT ,27 litre hlt, 100l Boiler, tap for water feed. Pump is pictured below counter, Chimney is overhead - Felt this was important considering the space i am working in and the fact that the shed is wooden - i dont want to rot the timber in the shed or have nasty bits of saw dust appearing in my wort wher its drippingback down into the boiler from the wooden roof !
This is the control panel
There is 3 temp controllers one for the herms , one for a fermentation chiller and also measuring temp in the Tun, one not for anything other than maybe measuring temp in the hlt for strike or sparge water.
There is also a switch for the pump here as well - found this was lacking on the totton pump i had - switching on and off would mean plugging out at the socket which would be annoying
I have fitted the outlets for each pid with a socket rather than wiring into each of the applicanes this gives a little freedom if i want to switch around or use it for a differnt purpose. i have also a separate plugs for each temp comtroller and pump which means its
completely mobile
This is the herms , basically its a deep fat fryer from argos with a copper coil in it in which the wort will pass. A thermocouple is on the out connection part of the coil measurung the temp after it has pass through the herms
I will be using water rather than oil in this . Have tested it on my biab system i used before and works very well
I cant take praise for th design someone here built this, outline the spec - which i duly copied :thumb:
Here is the sparge arm on top of the mash tun . Dont know if i will ever use this as i prefer the idea of vorlaufing which will reduce hours in my brew day - i have a little one so my time fills up like a bath
Heres the sparge arm itself , compression fittings used -with the top conection loose enough to spin on its axis which allows it to rotate pretty well.I drilled pinholes in the two arms for th water to trickle down on the mash bed
Boiler fitted with 2 tesco elements at the back to get a rolling boil , i will disconnect one once this reached .Incidentally i used teh strainer from the deep fat fryer as a hop strainer . Its coverred with fine mesh also
Thsi is the pump which will be used to pump water to the mashtun , circulate through herms , sparge to tun , wort to boiler and then through to chiller . You may notice its sitting on a beer chiller which i procured on ebay for 40 gbp . Havent used it yet for chilling beer - i have a 3 tap kegerator which i find excellent, so i am thinking of using it to maintain fv temp using the water bath in it. The pump is a totton . This is a very powerful pump and you realy need to have valves on it to reduce the speed of liquid flow though it particulalry for recirculation sparge and chilling
Here is the chiller , its 10 plate chiller , works well on a 23 litre brew i have done on my previous biab system
Oh yeah and here is the teh false bottom for the tun , i have set up the tun so its a bottom drain, therefore relatively no wasted wort , Unfortunately i used normal steel mesh on this and it failed miserably on a water test (fortunately rather that than wasted wort :) ). I checked it the day after to find a previously shiny FB had turned into this reddish chunk of wire :evil: - lesson learned dont listen to anyone in woodies/atlantic when you ask about the corrosiveness of metals
I will use an extendable sieve strainer upside down which will fit over the majority of the MTs floor temporaly . I am thinking of looking into getting a local metal fabricator to do one up (from what i gather he is suggesting it aint going to be 2 expensive)
I will post more pics once i have maiden brew completed etc.
Anyway hope you like the brew porn :
Its still to do a maiden brew in its entirety but safe to say all the integral parts have been tested and all seems to work smoothly
Before i go any further i need to thank a couple of people - Kevin(AT)your knowledge was so helpful without which instead of a brewery i would have had a very big bin full of botched attempts :thumb: :
Also some of the lads here particularly Aleman and Vossy without them i may have been electrocuted from botched PID wiring on a couple of occasions
: Anyway here are the main parts
100l Boiler
85 litre Mash tun
Pump
Deep fat fryer Herms
Extraction Chmney off freecycle
Quick Disconnects
Plate Chiller
27 Burco for heating sparge water
and here are the pics
Overview of system l-r
control Panel,Heat exchanger,MT ,27 litre hlt, 100l Boiler, tap for water feed. Pump is pictured below counter, Chimney is overhead - Felt this was important considering the space i am working in and the fact that the shed is wooden - i dont want to rot the timber in the shed or have nasty bits of saw dust appearing in my wort wher its drippingback down into the boiler from the wooden roof !
This is the control panel
There is 3 temp controllers one for the herms , one for a fermentation chiller and also measuring temp in the Tun, one not for anything other than maybe measuring temp in the hlt for strike or sparge water.
There is also a switch for the pump here as well - found this was lacking on the totton pump i had - switching on and off would mean plugging out at the socket which would be annoying
I have fitted the outlets for each pid with a socket rather than wiring into each of the applicanes this gives a little freedom if i want to switch around or use it for a differnt purpose. i have also a separate plugs for each temp comtroller and pump which means its
completely mobile
This is the herms , basically its a deep fat fryer from argos with a copper coil in it in which the wort will pass. A thermocouple is on the out connection part of the coil measurung the temp after it has pass through the herms
I will be using water rather than oil in this . Have tested it on my biab system i used before and works very well
I cant take praise for th design someone here built this, outline the spec - which i duly copied
:thumb:
Here is the sparge arm on top of the mash tun . Dont know if i will ever use this as i prefer the idea of vorlaufing which will reduce hours in my brew day - i have a little one so my time fills up like a bath
Heres the sparge arm itself , compression fittings used -with the top conection loose enough to spin on its axis which allows it to rotate pretty well.I drilled pinholes in the two arms for th water to trickle down on the mash bed
Boiler fitted with 2 tesco elements at the back to get a rolling boil , i will disconnect one once this reached .Incidentally i used teh strainer from the deep fat fryer as a hop strainer . Its coverred with fine mesh also
Thsi is the pump which will be used to pump water to the mashtun , circulate through herms , sparge to tun , wort to boiler and then through to chiller . You may notice its sitting on a beer chiller which i procured on ebay for 40 gbp . Havent used it yet for chilling beer - i have a 3 tap kegerator which i find excellent, so i am thinking of using it to maintain fv temp using the water bath in it. The pump is a totton . This is a very powerful pump and you realy need to have valves on it to reduce the speed of liquid flow though it particulalry for recirculation sparge and chilling
Here is the chiller , its 10 plate chiller , works well on a 23 litre brew i have done on my previous biab system
Oh yeah and here is the teh false bottom for the tun , i have set up the tun so its a bottom drain, therefore relatively no wasted wort , Unfortunately i used normal steel mesh on this and it failed miserably on a water test (fortunately rather that than wasted wort :) ). I checked it the day after to find a previously shiny FB had turned into this reddish chunk of wire :evil: - lesson learned dont listen to anyone in woodies/atlantic when you ask about the corrosiveness of metals
I will use an extendable sieve strainer upside down which will fit over the majority of the MTs floor temporaly . I am thinking of looking into getting a local metal fabricator to do one up (from what i gather he is suggesting it aint going to be 2 expensive)
I will post more pics once i have maiden brew completed etc.
Anyway hope you like the brew porn :
