Brewery Work: Ongoing

I can’t bring myself to solder another valve connector, so it’s time to write.

After the initial brew which went poorly I decided to change some things in my design and fix up a few things that I had designed poorly while I was at it. This weekend I got the first batch of the changes done and I’m still working on it.

The main thing that needed to change was the need for a way to filter the wort as it comes out of the boil kettle and before it enters any plumbing, and I needed to change from solenoid valves to motorized ball valves where there is a chance solids will enter the plumbing. I ordered 8 motorized ball valves (MBV) to replace all the solenoids that come in contact with solids. Unfortunately the MBVs require 3 wires to operate and I had designed the control panel with 2 pin valve connectors. So that meant pulling the bottom panel and rewiring that whole thing. While I was at it I decided to change from 2 SSRs controlling a single hot leg each to 4 SSRs controlling all four hot legs. I also added a loud buzzer, moved the BrewTroller and relay board to have more room to work and cleaned up a lot of the wiring. For electronics, left to do is finish wiring the new valve connectors and retest all of the control panel logic. I also need to wire all of the valve status LEDs, which I never got around to doing before.

Since I was making so many changes I decided to make some plumbing changes as well. The biggest change is that I re-routed the HLT output through the HEX so that when I begin my sparge it will flush the HEX with clean, hot water. That will help with cleanup and will save some wort that was otherwise being lost. I also added dump valves right at the kettle exit for all three kettles to make cleaning easier and I am putting a purge valve right at the pump exits to make priming easier. I also have plumbing slated for H2O input, so I can ditch the hose for filling and I am going to move the MLT heat sensor to the output of the MLT instead of inside the kettle. I got some really weird heat readings last time and I think it was due to uneven heating in the mash.

Finally, for filtering, I ordered a Hop Stopper which is a giant mesh pancake with a dip tube in the middle. I have the Hop Blocker from Blichmann, but it just plain doesn’t work very well. Part of that is due to my lack of whirlpool at the end of my brew, but it’s also just too coarse for pellet hops.

Additionally, the guy who is doing The Electric Brewery posted his info on how to make Blichmann style weldless fittings and I promptly ordered the parts from McMaster to do that. I wanted to do it myself but it probably would have taken some experimentation and he did it for me. So far I have installed one set and they are way, way more solid than what I was using. Haven’t tested for leaks yet but it looks great and I bet it will be leak free.

As for the first brew, I kegged the beer last week and have been drinking it. It’s not great, but it’s not bad. According to my hydrometer and refractometer it’s only about 3.2% ABV. I think that the temperature readings I was getting were way off and I ended up cooking the mash way too cold. I also failed to take good reading during the mash so I didn’t catch the error. Brewing is apparently not like riding a bike. I have forgotten quite a bit.

So, that’s the update. I am hoping to brew again next weekend with all the upgrades in place and hopefully things will go much more smoothly!

Don’t Buy Solenoid Valves For Your Brewery!

So, last night was the inaugural brew on the new brew system and until the very last step it went wonderfully. Unfortunately, the last step turned it into a total disaster.

I’ll do a full writeup once I stop weeping but the gist of it is that the hop and break crud from the boiler ended up clogging my chiller and about half of my valves. The chiller was clogged so bad it ended up taking me 3 hours to chill the batch down to pitching temperature. I didn’t find out about the valves problems till tonight when I tried to clean the whole mess up. One of my solenoid valves was stuck open by three tiny pieces of hop leaf.

So, tonight  I cleaned the whole mess up, stripped it almost completely down and I’m now planning how to fix things. One of the things I’ll definitely need to do is replace any valves that might end up with crud passing through them with ball valves or motorized ball valves. I’m also going to need a filter system in place for the wort before it hits the chiller.

All in all, I am really happy with the brewery. Even though I had big problems for the most part it went really, really smooth. I have a few bugs to work out and then it’s going to kick major ass.

Brewery Work: Lots!

Last weekend, the weekend before it and tonight have been very productive on the brewery build front. It’s getting very close to done. At this point the only thing I really have outstanding is valve wiring and final plumbing hookups. All the kettles have all their bulkheads installed and tonight I finished installing the heating element in the boil kettle and tested it.

I had to chase down some noise and interference throughout the control panel which was causing the LCD to scramble now and then. The pumps needed snubbers which I build from a 47 Ohm resistor + .1uF capacitor wired in series placed parallel to the hot and neutral on the plug of the pump. The solenoids all needed suppression diodes which I have been working on installing right into the coil head of each solenoid as I wire them up. 4 of 11 done so far.

Tonight after the final kettle work I spent some time heating water in various kettles and testing my heat exchanger. It seems to work pretty well although I am either having some pump priming issues or the heat exchanger is too restrictive. The flow is not very good through it. I am pretty sure it’s a pump prime issue. Tomorrow I am going to rotate the head of the pump to a configuration a lot of brewers are having success with and see if it helps. The result will have the inlet of the pump facing down and the outlet facing up. The idea is to have any air trapped in the head go to the top and be evacuated so the entire pump head can fill with liquid.

I am really hoping to be able to brew this weekend but it’s probably not going to happen. I need some final pipe fittings to get everything finished and the eBay seller I want to get them from is being slow to respond. We’ll see!

Lots of pictures to come – I’ve been too busy working on it to take any!

Brewery Work: Not Much

Well, the long weekend and most of this week have been kind of a bust. I floundered around with getting the control panel painted and was never happy with the results. I finally decided to throw in the towel and get some professional help so now it’s in the queue at Seattle Powder Coating. I should have it back in 4-5 days. Unfortunately that is kind of holding everything up. The main things I still have left to do are:

  • Build the second valve manifold.
  • Build the kettle input manifolds.
  • Drill the MLT and BK.
  • Wire all the valves.
  • Wire the temperature sensors.

Unfortunately I am kind of hesitant to do any of that until I know where the control panel is going to live, whether it works and how long cables will need to be.

So, I’m stuck.

I do have some parts showing up tomorrow I should be able to work on. I have some tri-clamp fittings coming that I am going to build into the HERMS coil so it’s easily removable and I have cable grips coming that will go on the valve side of the valve cabling. With that I will at least be able to wire the valves on one side and leave them long on the other. Once I have the control panel and decide where it’s going to live I can cut the cables to length and terminate them.

So, probably not too much going on for the next few days, but as soon as the control panel is back I expect to wrap the whole project up very quickly.

In better news, I did finish getting the stand put together and got the casters installed. So, it sort of looks like a brewery at least. And it rolls around the garage very easily 🙂

Brewery Work: Front Panel

Just a little bit of (perceived) progress tonight but it took quite a while. I got the four main rectangular holes done on the front panel. There are two more than I have not decided if I am going to use so I am hesitating on cutting them. I was able to do the three BTPD holes on my mill which worked really great. 1/8″ flat endmill, 12 IPM, 6700 RPM and .010″ DOC went through the .080″ steel just fine. Unfortunately the hole for the LCD was too far in the Y direction for the mill to get so I had to cut it by hand using my Dremel. That kinda sucked but it only really took about 20 minutes and it didn’t come out half bad.

Next up, I have to make a decision about the two remaining holes (probably yes), get those cut and then strip and finish the panel. Then it’s finally time to button this thing up. Can’t wait!

[slickr-flickr tag=”brewery20100701″]

Brewery Work: Front Panel and Bottom Panel

Got a lot of work done on the brewery tonight. I picked up some paint stripper from Lowes and set into the bottom panel with it to see if this ugly coating would come off. It came off nooooo problem. I’m intending to paint the whole control box gloss black. The paint stripper is nasty stuff. Ate right through my nitrile safety gloves and by time I realized all the fingertips on my left hand were burning and tingly. That sucked.

While the stripper was working I started laying out and drilling the front panel. I drilled all the major round holes and pilot holes for all the rectangular holes except two that I am not sure about yet. I’m hoping I can cut the rectangles on my mill but I am  not sure if the whole thing will fit in there. That’s tomorrow experiment.

Finally, because  I couldn’t stand it any more, I installed some of the major components into the front panel. It’s looking really great. I am super excited to get it finished up. Tomorrow I am going to get the rectangular holes started on the mill (hopefully), set to stripping the main box and get the bottom panel primed and painted.

The control box is turning out to be a lot more work than I expected, but it’s turning out really nice so I don’t mind. It’s bugging me that I still have not put power to a kettle but I think it will be worth it in the end. I want the system to look as good as it runs and I’m getting there.

[slickr-flickr tag=”brewery20100630″]

Brewery Work: A Few Holes

Welp, I started today thinking I would be able to build the entire control panel for the brewery but what I ended up doing was cutting 6 holes. I realized I had no good way to cut the large diameter holes in steel for the receptacles until I remembered… hey, CNC mill! So I spent like 6 hours watching the mill pocket out a few large holes.

Let’s just revisit that… “pocket out a few large holes”.

Something seems wrong there.

Pocket… out…

Pocket.

Courtney and I were just sitting on the couch when I realized that I spent hours watching the mill grind a bunch of metal into dust instead of having it run a few simple contours which would have taken like 20 minutes. I have no idea how I missed it. At some point in the day I decided, “Hey, I’ll just use the circular pocket wizard and let the mill do the work!”

So stupid.

Anyway, here’s some pictures. Here’s to hoping tomorrow will be far more productive.

[slickr-flickr tag=”brewery20100626″]

Brewery Work: Mostly Electrical

This weekend I did lots of work on the brewery. I built a 25 foot, 6 gauge extension cord that will carry 50 amps at 240 volts. That cord serves two purposes. One is so I have an extension cord for my welder, and the other is so I can plug in the brewery anywhere in the garage I like. I also replaced one of the 3 wire 240 volt receptacles in the garage with a new 4 wire one which is required for the brewery. I’ll be using 120v and 240v in the brewery and the 4 wires will get me that.

I also finished wiring up the HLT and got it all waterproofed.  I believe I now have a pretty safe vessel for electric heating. The whole thing is well grounded and electrical connections are all secured in a weatherproof junction box. The HLT has a 10 foot, 10 gauge, 3 wire power cord terminated in a NEMA L6-30 plug which will go to a matching receptacle in the control panel. Eventually.

I also did some pump testing and tested my HERMS coil for watertightness. All looks good there. The March pumps are a pain in the ass to prime but I think that when I have my solenoids all wired up I can nearly automate it. The first solenoid off the pump will be for draining (by design) and now I think I will also use it for priming. Opening that solenoid will let the head of the pump fill without having to push any pressure.

I also spent a bunch of time this weekend modeling all of the components that will be used in the control panel in 3D using SketchUp. I did this so I can build a full model of the control panel before I start cutting into the box. I don’t want to make any mistakes here. So far it’s looking good. My SSR heat sinks will have to live under a few shallow components but they should have plenty of breathing room.

So, all in all, very productive weekend! I am waiting for some replacement parts for the control panel and a whole batch of stainless steel nipples to plumb all my manifolds. Those will all be here this week and then things will move fast. I am really hoping to be able to fire the whole thing up this weekend!

Here’s some pictures from the work this weekend. I’m using a new (to me) WordPress plugin called Slickr-Flickr and it seems cool so far.

[slickr-flickr tag=”brewery20100620″]

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention about the extension cord. After I wired the plug and put it all together I tested each wire with my volt meter as I always do. Except this time I found a short between a hot leg and neutral! Turns out the little metal pressure plate in one of the terminals had  a sharp edge and when I closed the plug it cut into the wire next to it. Lucky I tested it. Most likely it would have just flipped the breaker, but it’s a 50 amp breaker and I don’t like the idea of a 50 amp short!

HLT Work and Pictures

Took an hour or so tonight and finished cutting all the holes in the HLT. I had to drill a liquid return hole near the top of the kettle and cut the big 1.25″ heating element hole at the bottom. I put the liquid return at 2 inches from the bottom of the rolled to top of the kettle cause that looked like a good place to put it. The heater element hole went 3″ from the bottom of the kettle on the right side. I originally wanted to put the heating elements in the backs of the kettles for aesthetic reasons but decided at the last minute that I would have more room to work inside the kettle for adding accessories if I went in from the side.

For the large heating element hole I used a “chassis punch”, which is a new tool to me. It’s basically a heavy metal punch and die that the punch slips in to with a bolt through the whole thing. You drill a pilot hole, put the bolt through, put the punch on one side and the die on the other and tighten the bolt till you have a perfect hole. It worked well, but I am not sure it was any easier than the step drill I’ve been using for the 7/16″ holes. I also think the threads on the bolt stripped a little. My understanding is that Greenlee makes the best chassis punches, but they are kinda expensive. I picked up a knockoff from Radio Daze.

I also finally took some pictures. Here is the kettle with the 2 HERMS coil holes, the liquid return hole and the heater element hole and a picture of what I refer to as “The Loot Table”. This is all the stuff I’ve currently collected for the brewery. It’s going to overflow in the next week as the last of the orders all come in. I can’t wait!

So now all the modifications for the HLT are finally done and with any luck tomorrow I will be able to put it all together and start doing wet testing. Gotta make sure there are no leaks before I give it the juice!

Minor Progress

I made a little progress last night on the brewery but there is some other news to share!

First, progress: I picked up a tubing bender from Harbor Freight and it made quick work of bending the other 90 degree bend in my HERMS coil. I measured everything out and chopped off a few inches of each end of the coil so everything lined up and the coil is now ready to be mounted. I’ve decided to hold off on mounting it till I finish drilling holes in that kettle. It will be way easier to clean out the swarf, cutting oil and nasties without a giant coil mounted in there. I still need to cut a 1.25″ heater element hole, a hole for the temperature probe and a hole for liquid return near the top. It’s getting late tonight so this will probably happen tomorrow.

Next, kits: I ordered and received all the parts to make 10 BrewTroller PID Display kits so tonight Courtney and I made up the kits and printed some nice labels for them. Now they are in a box just ready and waiting for you to buy them!

Finally, parts: I ordered the last of the expensive parts for the brewery. I ordered a bunch of control panel components along with the enclosure that will actually be the control panel. It’s a 14x14x8″ steel, hinged and locking enclosure. I’ll post of a picture of the control panel design soon but basically it holds:

  • 1 key operated switch for main power with a large power light.
  • 2 3 position selectors along with lights for setting heaters to On/Off/Auto.
  • 2 3 position selectors along with lights for setting pumps to On/Off/Auto.
  • 3 BrewTroller PID Displays.
  • 1 BrewTroller LCD.
  • 1 Giant aluminum encoder knob for controlling the BrewTroller.
  • 11 (or more) small 3 position toggle switches + LEDs for setting valves to On/Off/Auto and for showing their status.
  • 1 large PANIC switch that cuts all power.

Inside the control panel will be the BrewTroller, 16 port relay board, 2 very large contactors for controlling power to the heaters, 2 SSRs for controlling heat, a compact computer power supply for lots of 12v current and lots of other little odds and ends.

Anyway, I also ordered the last of the valves I will need. 10 more of the little bastards. That was expensive but it’s gonna be awesome. Unfortunately I decided at the last minute I needed 11 valves (which I now have coming) but I only planned my control panel for 10 so I need to move a few things around and I will be short one damn LED.

I think that’s it for tonight! Looking forward to the weekend when I hope to make some serious, serious progress. Hopefully by then the rest of my kettles will be here, too!