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.

[Richard Jack]

Cool, thanks. Looking at making one myself and it seems that making them bloody long is the way to go.

[Peter Smith]

what about feeding the output back into the kettle, until the output temp drops enough to feed into fermenter?

[Adam Sparks]

Its fine to clean, nothing that a bit of caustic or warm pbw won't take off. If your lazy you can just leave it soaking in some napisan solution then hose it off but caustic makes really short work of it.

[Peter Church]

I have two more deliveries to arrive before starting on the full control panel build, auber for a ramp soak pid and rtds and the timer and a couple more fittings from aliexpress, still brewing using the second hand controller setup I got on trademe driving the hlt amd then a 23 tip mongolian burner for the kettle. Barry do what ever it takes to get a brew down, biab on the bbq even if thats what it takes.

[Barry]

I have another co-op brewery so I'm still brewing fortunately!

[Adam Sparks]

That doesn't work very well peter (smith). It takes a very long Time to drop if your feeding warm wort back into a big volume of hot wort. Your better off running it out slightly warmer and chilling the rest of the way in your fridge. That is unless your using cold liquor to chill... Ice etc

I'm a fan of the hard plumbed coil. Just turn the valve when your stand is up and wait 20 minutes or so

[mattd2]

Paul W did a video on his YouTube channel (another1) a while ago testing this and the conclusion was it was the same (basically). From my vague memory I think the 2 methods were:

• Single pass through a CFC with wort restricted to result in pitching temp wort into the fermenter
• Multi pass through the CFC with wort pumped full throttle and recirc'd back into the BK until the output of the CFC could go straight to the fermenter at pitching temp

For #2 I can see some pros/cons. Pro - You can do a hopstand at a lower temp than flameout, e.g. flame out - chill to 75°C - whirlpool / stand 20 minutes - finish chilling. Con - You are also cooling down the heat energy in the pot and if you are using a thick SS keg/pot could be about 3% more energy required

[Peter Smith]

I have a small iwaki mag pump that has 14mm OD in/outlets that take a clamped hose, no screw fitting.   would you guys clamp a small piece of hose to these then go disconnect or just clamp the end of a hose to the pump, meaning its harder to break down etc?

[Barry]

I have the same problem with my chiller, I'm going short piece of hose to disconnect.

[James Millar]

Looks like I've accidentally ordered SPDT mechanical relays from ebay, rather than DPDT ones. D'oh. I can return them and buy DPDT ones, but I think I've figured out a way to use them, but need an electrical engineering opinion as to whether this is possible. And safe.

Like theelectricbrewery.com, I want to use mechanical relays to ensure complete disconnect between the phase line and the element when the relay is switched off (as I understand current can leak through SSRs). They use DPDT relays effectively like DPST relays to switch both phase and neutral off (black and blue lines in their diagrams (note 220V version)).

Can I use my SPDT relays (acting as SPST relays) to switch ONLY phase off, while leaving the neutral line connected to the rest of the circuit? Is there any safety reason I can't do this, or do I need the relay to switch both phase and neutral? 

[Barry]

I believe this will be fine on an NZ 240V system. Kal's system was designed for 220V derived from two 110V hot wires, thus the need to physically cut supply on both legs. Every circuit in your house is switched completely safely on just the single 240V phase, with nuetral running directly to the load. I can't see why your control panel would be any different.
Actually makes me question why I didn't get SPDT myself.

Just something to note though, in your diagram above you show the blue nuetral wire going to the bus. If the nuetral from your high load elements goes into the same bus as the other (low load) components of your panel it will need to be rated for the full load. Might be a better idea to keep the lower load stuff on the bus and wire your high load elements with heavier gauge wire directly and separately.

[James Millar]

Cheers Barry. Will just keep the SPDTs and use them to switch the elements. The whole brewery will be protected by RCBO as an added safety feature.

I've redrawn the wiring diagram so the neutral wire drawing 24A heads straight to the relays controlling the 2x elements. The neutral bus is now just running the low load.