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My new setup

 
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spidermonk13




Joined: 07 Apr 2018
Posts: 4
Location: Pittsboro, NC


PostLink    Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 1:13 am    Post subject: My new setup Reply with quote


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First I'd like to thank Kal and anyone else behind Electric Brewery. What a wonderful wealth of info. I got my hybrid minimalist electric brewery setup and had my first brew this weekend. I relied a ton on the info from this site.

I wasn't able to jump right in to a full setup like Kal's, but wanted to move my brewing from the kitchen stove to my new garage and to improve both my efficiency (time and brewhouse) and quality.

My setup includes the following:
* 16x16 control panel with single pid and single heating element output all hooked up to a new 240V 30A GFCI circuit
* Single 20 gallon electric kettle with RTD sensor that acts as both the HLT and boil pot
* 10 gallon mash tun with stainless steel false bottom
* Copper wort chiller
* Fermenter bucket
* Aeration pump
* Water supply line to fill the pot from the laundry sink in the garage
* 3 tier brewing stand if you count the floor with old kitchen cabinets as the base

After one brew the benefits I saw were:
* Out of the kitchen! No more competing for space, humidifying the whole house with the essence of hop, and storing all my stuff in the corners of the kitchen
* Customized space to keep all my stuff at hand
* Way easier filling and cleaning
* Way better ventilation
* Able to dial in a temperature and walk away - so much better than stove top
* Less lifting and moving hot water around
* Cut my average brew time down from ~ 6 hours to ~ 4 hours

A few disadvantages when compared to a full setup and my old setup:
* Not a HERMS setup - still relying on the cooler to control mash temp
* Sparging requires transferring from the pot to a bucket so the pot can be used as the boil part
* Have to stir water a little in the HLT
* 3 tier stand requires a ladder to see in the pot
* Garage is dirtier than the kitchen - especially since I'm still keeping goat feed/hay there Sad
* No climate control in garage

I did want to design the system to allow for gradual expansion to the full setup. I think next would be adding a 2nd electric kettle (the boil kettle). This simplifies sparging and allows direct transfer from HLT to mash to boil kettle. Then I could add a HERMS coil to my HLT with my first pump. Followed by converting my mash tun to a kettle then add a second pump and flatten out my stand. I can add extra features to the control panel too, like timer, alarms, and volt/amp meters.

Here is the overall layout - off to the left is my new workbench with all my tools
http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=444

Here is the control panel
http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=445

And the inside
http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/forum/album_pic.php?pic_id=446


Last edited by spidermonk13 on Tue Apr 10, 2018 1:39 am; edited 2 times in total
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kal
Forum Administrator



Joined: 12 Dec 2010
Posts: 11116
Location: Ottawa, Canada

Drinking: Pub Ale, Electric Creamsicle, Mild, Pliny the Younger, Belgian Dark Strong, Weizen, Russian Imperial Stout, Black Butte Porter


PostLink    Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 1:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Congrats on the setup! I hope it brings you many happy brew days!

(Welcome to the forum too!)

Kal

P.S. I removed the [img] tags from your links as they're not direct images so tags can't be used

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My basement/bar/brewery build 2.0
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