Brewery Porn!

[biertourist]

Decided I'd share some pictures of the outcome of my 3+ years of work building my brewery here slowly now that I've actually taken a few decent photos:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153513160301929&l=98d287c810





It's a shame that I had my "AlphaGeek" brewery log printed on the wrong material on the front of the glass door True fridge.  I'll eventually get it reprinted so you can actually see it.


Adam

[biertourist]

Here's my Alpha Geek Brewing Company logo that you'd be able to see had I printed it on the right material:



Adam

[nigel_c]

I've been following this closely and its really is a thing of beauty. Its great to see a brewery built exactly to the spec you want. Even with the dodgy mash ton welds it's a cracker.
What sort of efficiency are you turning out? 

[biertourist]

The fridge was acquired from Craigslist; someone in the area found it in their garage when they bought a new house- previous owners didn't take it with them.  It had pepsi logos all over it and I peeled off the vinyl pepsi labels and then spray painted it black over the 90's pepsi logos with a rattle can and put rolling and locking casters on it.  Then control the whole thing with a Johnson temp controller with a temp probe immersed in the fermenter to measure actual beer temps.

Sink was also a craigslist find but didn't come with a faucet and then I found it it required a fairly rare type of commercial faucet.

Stainless panels are from a local metal shop (onlinemetals.com); with a 30% off coupon, only $40 per panel and I then just cut them with a dremel in a couple of spots to make them fit.  Held up with velcro "command strips".

Stainless table and GFCI breaker panel from Home Depot (US version of B&Q).

HLT was a 20 gallon chinese-made crab pot that I drilled and installed 2 ball valves and the site glass in. -And had a triclamp fitting welded in for my electric element. -Added a copper 90 fitting to the inside and VIOLA! -Whirlpool!

Mashtun is one of the German / French coolerbox mashtuns from Ebay with a stainless tri clamp bottom drain installed and the whole thing is then elevated up on the crab pot rack. Homemade stainless false bottom (perforated sheet from Stainless metal.com) cut with a plasma cutter into a circle and then stainless bolts and nuts added to hold it 1/2" off of the bottom. Drilled a hole in the lid and made a "poor man's CIP ball" using a replacement lawn sprayer head inserted into a small section of silicone tubing ($0.49 plastic spray head that works with a regular Chugger pump).

Boil Kettle is a Craigslist keggle find that's had an incredibly amazing stainless welder install a triclamp fitting into it for the electric boil element.  It's a full whirlpool kettle; the electric element does inhibit the whirlpool quite a bit so I use a stainless hop spider.

Control Panel and all electric was done myself with a modified plan from PJ on HomeBrewTalk.  Plastic VERY small control panel box with a single Auber PID controller. NEMA4+ rated so chemical and splash resistant but I would NOT recommend anyone go with a box this small.  I had to have each part modelled in 3D AutoCad before cutting holes to find a way to fit everything into the box.  The electric in and electric out to each element is using SwitchCraft connectors (high voltage rated audio connectors).  Its got a 3 way switch that let's me send power out to EITHER the HLT or the Kettle but not both simultaneously.

Discontinued Counterflow chiller from BrickRiverBrew.com.  Was called the "Brutus" and was geared towards nano brewers or large batch home brewers.  I got it for cost from the owner as I got the prototype and was testing it for him.  It's amazing for HERMS mashing and recirculated chilling.

I installed LED lights in the garage and put silicone over all electrical connections so that hopefully it can stand up to the steam.

I epoxy coated the garage floor myself over a weekend after 2 prior weekends of prep; it was a $150 kit at HomeDepot (US B&Q).  I love it, but I fear in 5 years or so it's going to start flaking up.

Kegerator was an internet clearance (Chinese) from a company that makes the fridges cheap but uses proprietary tap tower fittings so you have to buy their crappy overpriced taps.  I bought it and then used my dremel tool to hack it so that I could use a normal and cheap tap tower on it and then repurposed some driftwood I found at a local Seattle park into tap handles.

Monster MM 2.0 mill with the hopper extensions powered by a cordless 18v drill.

I just won an XBOX One in a free raffle and if the thing will sell on CL, I'll be getting a 15 gallon SSBrewTech Chronical to put into the True Fridge and ferment with maximum bling!  -About that time kid #2 will be here and the brewery will be the last thing on my mind for a while...




Adam

[biertourist]

I've been following this closely and its really is a thing of beauty. Its great to see a brewery built exactly to the spec you want. Even with the dodgy mash ton welds it's a cracker.
What sort of efficiency are you turning out?

After switching to fly sparging and now back to single batch sparging, I usually get 75%-79% efficiency.
The tiny increase in efficiency was NOT worth the extra time and over sparging risk with fly sparging.  I don't think there's anything that could convince me to fly sparge again.  (MAYBE if I won a Blichmann autosparge, but definitely nothing beyond some gadget that automatically matched the in and out liquid flow rates.)



Adam

[nigel_c]

Congrats on number 2.
How long are you out of Ireland now? The Beoir meet ups started dropping off as soon as you left.

[Leann ull]

No Herms Adam?

[biertourist]

Far and away the most labor intensive part of the build was the control panel; just an unimaginable number of hours in planning, sourcing parts and building.  BUT for maybe 1/5 - 1/6th the cost of buying a pre-made control panel it was probably a necessity.


The HLT is definitely the best bang-for-the-buck part of the brewery.  Converting a $110 20 gallon crab pot really was dead simple once I figured out how to drill stainless and it's a great HLT.

I learned the hard way that focusing on the Kettle's ability to easily separate the wort from the hops and break material is one of the most important design considerations when it comes to making it easy to brew.  This was unfortunately my breweries 2nd kettle; whirlpool keggles are popular FOR A REASON.  Don't mess with perfection.

What I need to learn and focus on going forward: plumbing.  I don't know why, but my brain is just bad at understanding driving directions and brewery plumbing.  I've seen people operate hard plumbed sweated copper and it just makes brewing incredibly simple -even if you don't go 100% hard plumbed.

Camlocks are incredible, but incredibly expensive -all those little camlock fittings add up quickly. Swapping hoses can get annoying AND hard plumbed systems are cheaper if you sweat copper yourself with lead-free solder.

I also learned I'm an electric brewer for life.  It also makes life easy.

I also learned that hiring a professional plumber is REALLY expensive.  I had a number of plumbing challenges and ultimately the plumbing probably cost as much as the rest of the brewery COMBINED... Next time I'll try to find a friend who knows how to plumb or find someone who will trade some cost for some beer because plumbing costs are ASTRONOMICAL in Seattle.

Adam

[biertourist]

Congrats on number 2.
How long are you out of Ireland now? The Beoir meet ups started dropping off as soon as you left.

On July 5th I will be 3 years out of Ireland.

[biertourist]

No Herms Adam?

There's HERMS. The counterflow chiller is my external HERMS HEX.  It gives me very fast yet very gentle HERMS mashing without the explosion risk of RIMS; it's easy to clean, too.
(I only HERMS mash beers that need it though so maybe 1 out of 4 or 1 out of 5 beers. -Wheat beers and if I want a VERY well dried out west-coast style IPA.)

Pump #1 recirculates the hot water from the HLT through the outside of the HEX and back into the HLT whirlpool fitting while pump #2 recirculates wort from under the false bottom and through the inside of the HEX in the opposite flow and then back into the top of the Mash/Lauter Tun.



Adam