Keggle Fitout Advice

[Boon]

Hi all,

I've some forced time away from brewing (due to the arrival of a small person) and i'm getting back into it and I want to step my game up. I've brewed half a dozen extract brews and a couple of BIABs in the past, but I want to go all grain. 

I have 3 kegs (legally obtained) that i've cut the tops off and now I want to fit them out. Alongside I have a 3 ring burner with variable pressure regulator. I'm intending to just do 20L brews. 

My thinking is:

HLT: Ball valve, sight glass, temp readout and potentially 2.4kW element. 

Mash Tun: false bottom, centre pickup, ball valve, insulation of some sort and potentially temp readout. 

Boil Kettle: Ball valve, whirlpool pickup, sight glass, temp readout. 

Sourcing parts. I'm thinking of purchasing parts from SHFC Precision Machinery on Aliexpress - http://www.aliexpress.com/store/1017341 

I've seen a few positive comments about these guys on the forum. 

My questions are:

1) Weldess fittings. From my reading, if you get weldless fitting right they are great. However, i'm not 100% sure about the sealing design etc of the SHFC bulkheads. I've heard positive things about the electricbrewery design but this has a different design (both attached). 

Has anyone used the SHFC parts/design and how have they found them? 

2) I'm thinking of putting a ~2.4kW element into the HLT to allow me to have a setup that can preheat my strike water without me being there (or awake even). Has anyone used this type of setup? Any thoughts? 

I considered going fully electric, but putting in a 32A feed to the garage will require redoing the whole switchboard....so at this stage, i'm thinking just 10A electric for the HLT (or combination if required) and gas for the boil kettle. 

3) The intention is to eventually put in a HERMS coil and pump setup. Is there anything i'm doing with the above proposed fitout that will make it hard to move to a HERMS setup at a later date? That is why I wondered about not fitting a temp readout to the mash tun.

4) Insulation for the Mash tun - Does anyone have any great recommendations? People in the states seem to frequently use reflectix but i'm not sure what the equivalent is here?

5) Brew stands. I've seen a lot of beautiful single tier brew stands, but I think they maybe somewhat beyond my ability and the time I have available to construct them. Does anyone have any no 8 wire alternatives or ideas that may simplify the building of a brew stand without extravagant costs?

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this - Any thoughts would be much appreciated. 

[Rhys Williams]

> I'm intending to just do 20L brews. 

I have heard that it takes a lot of energy to bring a 50L keg to boil, due to the thermal mass. If you are only looking at 20L, you might want to look at a smaller brew pot. 

You might also need to consider your losses. I have a 30L brew kettle and typically have 26 post boil. Allowing for 2L of crud post ferment, you only end up with 24L of glorious amber liquid.

2. If you stick to the 50L kettle, you could look at 2x2.4 Kw elements, and run to separate power sources via extension lead. This will reduce you time to boil drastically.

5. 4x2 - Good old wood. Knock something together, and adjust as needed, once you are happy with the design, make it out of something else. Or just leave it and spend the time brewing!

Cheers

Rhys 

[Peter Smith]

I do mainly 40-44L batches,  I run 2 x 2.2kw in a 50L aluminium pot,  they produce an ok boil.  I know a few people who say they prefer the boil gas gives, they haven't been keen to go for the big 5500w elements due to the power upgrades needed.  

I use a 50L keg as a mash tun, in summer there no issue not been insulated but in winter with a breeze it needs a duvet wrap.   I was planning to use a sleeping matt foam roll and some webbing straps so it could all be removed for cleaning.   be carefull in beersmith the us kegs are lighter then nz ones so the strike water clacs re temp are out....   ours are about 13kg from memory (you can edit this somewhere), I struggled with this and still wing it a bit on basis its quicker to cool things to correct strike then try to increase temps in tun.   20L runs in a 50L keg are harder to keep temps...    you will find yourself adding hot water a few times if no insulation.  I went stainless keg as someone sold one, I was going to go round cooler style.  My thinking is that my 50l keg system doesn't devalue with time, they just don't get old really...    I have had only one bad sparge where i got a lot of grain in the outflow, after a stir things settled down... can put down to a not perfect fitting false bottom, though after about 20 batches only one bad is ok, seen a lot worse.

I get between 70-76% total eff%   for a 50L   maybe a tad less if 20L

HLT is a 2.2kw 40L urn its just fine though I wish it was 50L.  10amp is fine.

Some people install a herms coil in a smaller pot (15-20L) so there HLT is completely independant  and they can use a smaller element in the smaller pot, Control temps and have sparge water at perfect temps in hlt

[IPeeAye]

I've used SHFC and they are good, both in terms of quality and service. You might want to rethink the 20 L batch sizes, I found that I quickly needed to brew bigger batches (time/effort/reward calculation). I now do 65L brews, but 45L would also have been fine, 20L gets old pretty quickly, especially if your beer is good and the word gets out :-)

As for hoses, I used silicon hoses once then switched to coil supported hoses (WAM) from the hoseshop.co,nz they handle the heat/pressure and don't kink. I've done 20 brews and they are still fine.

I made a brew stand out of an old bar leaner/table, works a treat.

All the best,

[Sam DT]

Those hoses look good - what type do you use?

Looks like most of the food grade stuff is too large for 1/2" fittings or sub 100 C

[IPeeAye]

I think I used Non Toxic Spring Flex S17009-013 13mm internal diameter on my 1/2" fittings.  (it is under plastic hoses on the left hand side menu on their website)  It says that the product is only rated to 65C, but I have used it for quite some time with no issues whatsoever. I ran hot 100C water through it first to take away any smell/flavour.   I think its about $5m or thereabouts.

[Boon]

Thanks all for your thoughts. they help massively. 

I'll go ahead with picking my bits and pieces from SHFC. 

I'll see how I go on batch sizes - Since i've got the kegs I can always go bigger in the future.