Barry's Blog (15)

Hey,

So after a wet run and autotune it was time. Time to brew and no more procrastinating.

I started contemplating this build nearly 2 years ago and starting collecting parts about a full year ago. It's been 19 months since I brewed at home.

Brew day on Sunday 7 December 2014 started really late, I had to pick up the kids from their grandparents and do some other stuff but in truth I was scared. Scared at how much more involved the process might be with 2 pumps…

At long last.

Today the sparky came round and rewired my house switchboard. He also added a 32A supply and caravan outlet for the brewery.

So tonight, after almost a full year of buying up parts, relentless researching, construction, wiring, etc etc etc I fired the Kauri Road Brewery 2.0 into life.

Tonight was just a hot water run, autotuning the HLT PID and running both pumps and all hoses at 80degC.

Only 2 leaks, one at the outlet elbow…

Etch O Sketch.

Did a little etching last night in my HLT, worked out pretty good.

Despite the blurry shit photo it's actually crisp and neat. Each line is an exact 1mm tall rectangle. 

The only thing is it's a pretty light etch, whether that's because of the nature of these cheap shitty pots, or whether my 9 volt battery was a bit…

Finally got my wiring done, sporadic nights over a couple of weeks but I got there in the end.

I would recommend to anyone doing this to set enough time aside to do it in one bang :)

There's enough to this system that just when you have your head around it you discover some other little piece of complexity that makes you think really hard about what you're doing.

My timer is different from Kal's one on theelectricbrewery.com so that took a fair amount of…

Extra photos.…

More bits arrived today. Enough to go forth and build my panel.

I spent the last few days getting the paint done, making sure all holes were drilled and clean, bits of filing and touching up paint, etc. 

Last bit of drilling was to tap holes in the heatsink for my SSRs, and through the cabinet door for two surplus kitchen handles I had left over.

Tapping the holes was clean and easy, I recommend this approach over nuts.…

A pretty hard out half day spent today cutting holes in my control panel. It's now ready to paint.

I still have a few bits and pieces to arrive but have enough to be comfortable hacking through steel safe in the knowledge I've measured thrice.

I used a jigsaw and did a lot of filing for all the rectangular holes, every single round hole was accomplished with chassis punches. Thus they are clean as a whistle, so satisfying.

Photos are of the stress test –…

Electrickery.

Got enough bits arrive to tempt me into beginning to mark up my control panel. I did enough of that this evening to ensure I don't do a single bit of cutting until I have absolutely every piece of the puzzle.

My control box is just so tight that I had to adjust things like the position of the far right timer because it might hit the side of the box as the door swings shut. And the excessively large machanical relays within have to be placed very carefully…

Dip tubes/inlets done, thanks to the kind lend of a pipe bender by Peter Smith – cheers!

Made short work of some bloody hard stainless, and good learning – last one is the best one.

kettle inlet/whirlpool:

HLT inlet:…

Additional photos fwiw

Kettle interior

Mash tun interior

Pumps…

Significant progress this weekend, cyclone Lusi gifting me a fair amount of indoors time.

Got all my vessels completed, all that's left to get going is the electrickery (so still quite a bit then).

I had mixed experiences with some of the fittings, all four taps through the pots seemed to go together quite differently despite each pair of them being made up of identical parts inside and out.

But they all passed an initial leak test, not with vessels full but with me…

Tiny bit more progress tonight saw my making holes in my stainless pots for the electric elements.

Massive thanks to Guy Gibson for the lend of the chassis punch, legend.

I'm doing these following theelectricbrewery.com's instructions to the letter – 2 gang metal junction box, faceplates either side, 32mm hole through a faceplate on the back, element, oring, washer on the outside, lock nut on the inside. Unsurprisingly looks like it'll be perfect.

The hold up has…

A quick update,

I spent our national day doing brew stuff – getting fridges and fermenter in place at my other 100l brewery, and attempting to finish the new brewstand at home.

The 100l brewery has had her cherry popped, we brewed on Tuesday night and beer is in our sexy new 120l fermenter which as of today sits in a huge glass front Skope fridge.

But moving on to the Kauri Road Brewery, after 2 weeks of relentless busyness (honestly I've never had so…

This is a new beginning for me.

I've heard so many disheartening stories lately about people selling their brewing equipment, indeed when I look around realbeer now there's a distinct lack of the old guard, the legends who contributed so much knowledge to the fledgling all-grain brewing scene in NZ. In actual fact more than a few of those legends are now the legends who make up the very best of the best on the shelf at your favourite craft beer outlet and dominate the awards…