Electric Brewery's

[Scott H]

We spoke about creating a discussion so people who have or people who are thinking about and/or building can share pic's info and pitfalls to avoid.

Just about finished building my bench and hopefully will have a chance to start wiring it up this weekend. Pics to follow shortly.

[Adam Sparks]

Yeah the house re-wiring adds up fast. I ran all the 2.5mm cable for my house and brought everything out at the right place and fitted off ready to be tested, this saved about 2.5k but the new breaker panel (which I moved inside leaving the meters outside) and the connection to that cost about 4k once all was said and done… Not cheap

[Barry]

Yeah I get it all at less than trade too, not cheap.

[Adam Sparks]

Its a nice feeling seeing all those new breakers and rcd's though… The old panel and wiring was an accident waiting to happen.

[Barry]

That's how mine feels too. The cheapskate part of me wants to only do what's required for the brewery, the OCD part of me wants the whole thing tidied up. In such conflicts mister OCD usually wins :)

[Scott H]

Must be time for updates from who's doing what.

Got the last of my pipe fittings and QD's from aliexpress the other day just waiting on my silicon tubing to arrive and then I'll just need my pumps to have it in a usable state. Will be using my immersion chiller as my HLT coil for the time been and I still also need 1 more 63L pot. Not sure what I should do about the coil really TBH I could use my current home made chiller permanently and switch to using a plate/counterflow chiller but I need to ask around a bit more and find out what people with counter flow/plate chillers think.

Hows everyone else's builds going, you must be getting close Barry?

[Barry]

Close but no cigar, yet.
Still have to decide whether to wait a month and replace the switchboard or plunge and brew sooner. Counterflow is in place and waiting for a couple of fittings from China, and just have a couple of plumbing bits to sort.
It's actually making me more complacent, all this waiting. Throw in a job change and a holiday and it's all too easy to just wait.

[Adam Sparks]

Hey Scott

I used to use a counter flow chiller but I found it actually took longer to chill than an immersion chiller. I had to lower the flow to just a trickle  and it took about 40 minutes to transfer at 20c any faster and the temp shot up to 26 or 28. If I used a bag of ice to pre chill the water then it was efficient. Could have been my dodgy home made cfc though, perhaps plate chillers are better.

For my current build Ive opted for a hard plumbed stainless coil in my boil kettle. I like being able to leave the trub in the kettle and it only takes 20 minutes to drop the temp to 20c if your recirculating as well.

Ive got a few more things to do on my panel yet but she's coming together nicely. I opted for a combo amp and volt meter thanks to Barry's advice, and Ive filled the other hole with a temperature meter for the panel itself.

Need to weld a stand yet, have no idea how to do that so it shall be interesting!

[vdog]

How do you find the cleaning with the hard-plumbed coil Adam? I've wondered about doing that but always worried that it'd be a serious pain in the neck to clean properly, bits getting stuck etc. Interested in your experience.

[Peter Smith]

water blaster ..... if you can take the kettle outside...

[Peter Church]

I have a 20m copper coil plumbed in my hlt, cleaning is a breeze but no trub though in the hlt. I use it to recirc and step mash. Just hit it with the scrubing brush and hi pressure water. Like Adam i built a cfc and have been underwhelmed with it, need to strip it down and get more turbulence in the water flow I think. For my current chilling I use the immersion chiller initially to drop to 40 then direct the water through the hlt coil before going through the immersion chiller and throw a couple of bags of ice in the hlt, drops 60l to low 20s pretty quickly. Photo of my hlt and coil Is on my profile page somewhere

[Richard Jack]

What was the sizing on your counterflow chiller?

[Peter Church]

7m from memory, 20mm id hose on the outside, didn't wrap copper wire round the outside to create turbulence in the flow though, will try that as a future upgrade