Brewery help

[TAB]

I am making a home brew setup based on one a friend of mine has. Homebrewers please take a look (see attachment) and give me suggestions on improvements or alteratons. He has improved his over time and I would like to make use of others ideas.

Other questions

How do you guys chill your wort? He uses the horizontal cylinder filled with cooling water and the beer passes through it in a tube.

Pros and cons of using an ez-mash screen and what size?

Pros and cons of using a false bottom?

Hopefully I can be brewing some beer this winter and drink it beside a wrm fire.

 

[Chuck52]

Tab,

Looks like a good setup. The only question I come up with is how do you clean the tube the beer passes through in the wort chiller? The chillers I've used are copper coils you put into the boiler of hot wort and run cold water through. They just need to be rinsed after use, because the hot wort sterilizes them when they are first immersed. I guess you could say the same about the chiller you describe, but I'd worry about crud I couldn't see building up in there.

Chuck

 

[knucklehead]

Da picture is too small! Pretty impressive setup, though. How much are you going to brew, yearly?

Most chillers I've seen and used are simply copper coils immersed in the wort, passing cooling water through the wort, not the other way around. But I can't think why it wouldn't be as good either way. I'm trying to think about chilled surface area, etc., and either my brain ain't working or there isn't a difference. One thing to think about is cleaning the system - how do you clean the insides of the tube, or coil? You will also need to filter the hops well unless you are using big bore tubes. And you know the type of cooler your friend has needs to be counterflow, right? Cold water and hot wort go in opposite ends, so the maximum Delta T is maintained for good heat trannsfer.

I can't speak to the other questions - the fanciest I got was to drill a million holes in the bottom of one of my plastic buckets with an 1/8" drill, and nest both of them for a cheap n' dirty lauter tun. I heated my mash in the oven, turned it into the tun, and filtered with water from a saucepan into my carboy. The carboy sat in a sink full of cold water to cool the last few degrees. So I'm a rank amateur, I guess. But it tasted just as good.

 

[knucklehead]

Ahhhhh similar, nearly simultaneous conclusions regarding cleaning the coil!

What else do you suppose we agree on?

 

[TAB]

The reply to all the cleaning questions is that he rinses, sanitizes, rinses after brewing and then again before the next use. It's way more efficent cooling, he thinks, but building the unit and cleaning are negatives. I was thinking I would go with the coil unless there was popular support for the cooling cylinder.

 

[knucklehead]

Counterflow is more efficient - it's what all the extraction feedwater heaters in boiler plants use.

 

[TAB]

I tried to make the picture bigger. When I increase the size I exceed the limites or lose all the detail. It's hard to see, he does cross feed the water through the chiller.
I would like to make several batchs per year. Different kinds and maybe have people over to try them out and watch some football.
To filter the hops I was wondering if the ez-mash screen or a false bottom would be better.

 

[MossRoad]

I eliminated the white space around the picture and am attaching it. Hope you don't mind /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[TAB]

I don't mind at all. Thanks David

 

[Steven]

If thats your basement I would be concerned about the propane cylinder. having that in your basement could void your homeowners insurance if something happend. your house would be in many tiny splinters.

Great setup though, I used to brew for a while did most of it in the winter used the soda kegs and charged them with co2 to push the beer thru the filters into another keg. cooling was done as the wort gravity fed controlled by a valve thru a copper coil in a large barrel packed with snow. my friend had 20 of those kegs and they hold 5 gallons each. bottles are a pain.

 

[Chuck52]

<font color=blue>What else do you suppose we agree on?</font color=blue>

How about "live a good life", but for goodness sake don't analyze why!

Chuck

 

[RobertN]

This system is similar to mine, except that I use a 48qt ice chest for the mashtun, and have a regular old coiled wort chiller. Five of us built the same systems about 12 years ago, based on what one of my friends had seen and used with another buddy.

I like the ice chest for a mashtun, as it holds temp really well. It is also shorted, so the overall height of the system is shorter. My mashtun has two copper pipe maifold, witha lot of sltis made with a sawsall. One manifold is on top, and acts as a sprinkler. The bottom manifold takes the runoff out to the boiling keg.

My chiller works fine, and is easy to clean. When I get real fancy, I put my old 5gal wort chiller in a bucket of ice water. I connect the hose to it, and then another hose over to the chiller that's in the wort. It works great that way.

By ez-mash screen, do you mean that screen filter thing that Jack Schmidling sells? I think that tool takes too much of the sweet wort from one spot, instead of the entire grain bed.

The lower manifold in my mashtun runs basicall three pipes along the entire length of the grain bed. So, I pull sweet wort from the entire base of the grain bed; I think that works much better, but that is IMHO, as I have not tried other methods.

I think my manifold approximates what a false botom does, in a rectangular ice chest.

The system your buddy has is a great setup. I'm sure it works great. I think my mashtun probably is easier to work with, but either step should work just fine.

 

[Chuck52]

Robert,

Do you do a single temperature mash or do you get fancy? I was mainly wondering how you heat the mash if needed. Bleed off some wort, heat it and put it back? If I ever get around to it, I want to make a mash tun using an Igloo-type cylindrical cooler, probably with a manifold much like yours. Somewhere in my piles of stuff I have a nice list of the required plumbing fittings to do the job.

Chuck

 

[RobertN]

Chuck,
I have done two step mashes. With enough grain for 10gal of wort, I can hit a second temp. But, it does tend to fill the cooler pretty full. If I were to build another mashtun, I would go for a bigger ice chest.

I heat the mash by adding additional hot water. It does thin out the mash, but it works ok.

One thing I like about using a rectangular ice chest, is that it is shorter than the cylinder type. I use 15gal kegs for mash/sparge water and boiler. The boiler sits up high enough that I can drain the cooled wort directly into a carboy that sits on the floor. As I make each step up towards the mash/sparge water heating keg, the system gets to be about 7' tall. To use a cylinder cooler type mashtun, it would be even taller. I'll have to borrow a digital camera and take a picture of the setup. I've been meaning to do that...

 

[TAB]

I understand the concern for portable propane in the basement. Our house is to new to blow to splinters. The set-up in the picture is in a friends garage. I am planning to be in our garage until I get the brewhouse done next summer. The brewhouse may actually be in the barn we're building, but I am kinda thinking I may do a stone, block and brick building about 14'x14'. I was figureing mostly to the soda containers. Then I get to make a tap area in the bar.

 

[TAB]

The cooler idea is what I was hoping for. If you had a picture that would be great. The owner of the pictured equipment says he has to have a small ladder to get into the upper barrel.

 

[TAB]

Forgot to mention that the ez-mash I was thinking of was about a 12" long x 1"dia. screen called the bazooka at homebrewheaven. My friend made his own screens and said it was a pain. The have a good looking false bottom at homebrewheaven, I think. I wasn't sure if going to the tube screen would be better. It makes sense that you would be better off drawing from the whole bottom since you sprinkle the water all acrossed the top.

 

[TAB]

I have seen a couple counterflow chillers at brewers websites. Don't know anyone that uses the the types I've seen. The copper submersible ones seem to be the easiest to clean. Part of me wants something easy and part of me wants something pretty cool.

 

[TAB]

Chuck, parts lists and would definately be helpful.

 

[RobertN]

I know people use the screen type setup, but I think it brings the runoffs from a considerably smaller, concentrated area. I would look at having a piece of slotted tubing coiled up or something so it would fit the bottom of the container.

I'll bug a friend to borrow a camera... I've been meaning to get pictures... It's a pretty simple manifold.

My system is still tall. I use a short ladder to get to the upper keg when filling. I certianly wouldn't want it any taller.