Home Brewery Upgrade--the New Setup

Well, unfortunately, I failed to take pictures when I punched holes and installed the inlet valves in my mash tun and boil kettle.  Guess I got excited and jumped right in.  It was a bit stressful, but I feel a LOT better now that it's finished and everything turned out well.

View of inlet from inside kettle.  5' of
silicone tubing coils around to the
bottom of the kettle to help with
whirlpooling.

Kettle inlet valve installed 2" from top.
Blichmann Thrumometer installed inline
to monitor wort temps into kettle

Mash Tun inlet valve for sparging

So, now that the modifications are behind me, it does seem much simpler than it did when I was in the planning stages.  The only real equipment modification was the addition of the inlet valves.  Two big additions were the March pump and the Blichmann floor burner.  Other than that, all the fittings are now quick disconnect and I replaced all my flimsy 1/2" vinyl tubing with thermoplastic tubing, which makes a pretty badass looking hose when it's rockin a QD fitting on each end.





Tomorrow I plan to brew my first batch on this new setup, a Scottish 70/- that I'm calling No Pence.  It will be a 5 gallon extract batch made with Marris Otter LME from Northern Brewer.  This will be my first extract batch in over 6 years; thought I'd keep it simple as I get used to the pump, etc.

From kettle to pump, through chiller, back into kettle!

Today, I set up the BK, pump, chiller circuit and ran some One Step cleanser through it.  This was meant not only to clean but more importantly to test run the setup before brew day tomorrow.  Worked great!  I couldn't be more thrilled.  The test run did expose some leaks, but after tightening up a few spots I think I'm ready.  Got some nice whirlpool action inside the kettle, too, and I dropped an extra tablespoon of One Step powder into the kettle which didn't take long to find its way into a tidy little pile in the center.

Maybe difficult to see, but there's a nice whirlpool going.

Can't wait for brew day tomorrow!

Home Brewery Upgrade--The Plan

So, now that the problems have been outlined, let's talk about solutions.

All the parts for the upgrade are in.  I have 10 stainless quick disconnects, several feet of thermoplastic tubing and some silicone tubing, three stainless ball valves, two street elbows, a March pump, and a Blichmann floor burner.

I also picked up a used Barley Crusher with 7" rollers and a 15# hopper.  This should make it much easier to mill my grain than it is on my current Grain Gobbler with 2" rollers and plastic funnel for a hopper, which holds maybe 2#.  More importantly, the Barley Crusher should improve the consistency of my crush, which will help me hit my efficiency more consistently.

Now, lets tackle each limitation in order, and talk about what all this stuff is going to do about it:

1.  Fly sparging with the lid off = massive heat loss.  I need an inlet valve about 1" from the top of my mash tun.  This should allow me to add sparge water above the grain bed while keeping the lid on, retaining much more heat. One ball valve, street elbow and some silicone tubing--along with the right size hole punched at the appropriate place on my cooler--should do the trick.  I've seen two configurations that I like.  The simpler one, and the one I plan to use, comes from The Electric Brewery build.  A length of tubing simply rests on the grain bed supplying sparge water at a single point.  Shouldn't really have a problem with channeling, but if I don't get good results with this, I can try the other configuration, which employs a T to form the tubing into a circle which hovers above the grain bed.  Holes punched in the tubing allow sparge water to be "sprinkled" evenly across the surface, similar to my current sparge arm.  Either way, the significant improvement is the addition of the top inlet valve--allows me to sparge with the lid on, and combined with the March pump, will allow me to retire my two pitchers and do a proper vorlauf.

2.  Can't fire the BK until runoff is complete.  So the addition of the Blichmann burner should do the trick here.  My summer batches will be done on the patio, HLT and MLT on the patio table, BK on the burner a foot below.  Shouldn't have a problem firing that puppy up during runoff, at least to maintain temp in the BK, if not to raise it, without fear of kettle caramelization.

3.  Stovetop boiling is no good.  Blichmann burner.  Done.

4.  Added a plate chiller; created issues.
       a.  Cold break ends up in the fermenter
       b.  Gravity is not the best way . . .

       The addition of the March pump and an inlet valve on the boil kettle will take care of both of these issues.  The pump pulls the wort through the plate chiller and recirculates it back into the BK as I see fit, and finally pumps it into the fermenter.  And of course the whirlpool attachment on the interior of the inlet will help to chill the wort inside the BK, at a rate I decide, controlled by the ball valve on the exit end of the pump.  This allows all lengths of whirlpool/ hop stands at temps I control, for any number of fun aromatic additions.  Meanwhile, cold break is pumped back into the BK, where the whirlpool action deposits it neatly in a cute cone in the center of the kettle with the rest of the trub, far from the output valve.  When this process is complete, the pump moves the chilled wort into the fermenter.

So that's it!  My next post, hopefully soon, will include pictures of the modifications as they were made.  Can't wait until this is complete and I can brew on it.