Electric Brewery - What I would change

[Norrii]

For those of you that have gone before us and built your Electric Brewery, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently next time? An extra temperature sensor or pump connection in the control panel? A larger brew kettle than the HLT or Mash Tun? It would be great to get the NZ experience.

[Norrii]

Great stuff Kilian. I'm early in my build and all I can say is, prepare for a lot of planning, a lot of thinking, and a lot of figuring out. I'm tracking my progress in the blog on this forum here (http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/profiles/blogs/electric-brewery-bui...). There are links to where I am sourcing parts. There is also a great blog by Barry (search on Kauri) on his build end to end.

[Norrii]

Question for the panel - I'm going 20gal for the HLT and Mash Tun. I can't decide whether to go 20gal or 25gal for the boil kettle. I want the option of filling 3 kegs from a brew day and I don't think the 20gal boil kettle will cope. Thoughts?

[Peter Church]

I run 60 litre HLT and 60l Mash and a 100 litre Kettle, there are times when I have needed every bit of capacity in the kettle

[Norrii]

Interesting. And your HLT and Mash tun are big enough to "feed" the larger boil kettle? ie, time over again, you wouldn't get 3 x 100 litre pots?

[Barry]

I'm with Peter, plan your end state and spec/design your system around that. 

I went through so many months of consideration of ways to make it cheaper. Or questioned the design and explored a ton of options to make it cheaper.

Two things I'd change:

No cooler mash tun – rather another same pot with stainless false bottom. Only did the cooler thing because I bought one pump, but two pumps arrived and it changed the whole scheme.

And I'd add a hop spider. Still planning on doing that. 

[Nathan]

Agree 100% im a cooler mash tun not but now with herms no need wish i had a ss vessel.....yes hop spider is my next issue..

[Norrii]

Talk to me about the hop spider. TEB uses the big mesh screen and swears by it. I'm using a wort chiller with the "Jamil Whirlpool" addition with the hope all the hop debris will be nicely in the middle (and possibly with the need for the Blichmann hop blocker (as Tony Yates does). Are you finding too much trub going through to the fermenter? Any concerns that the hop spider will reduce utilisation?

[Barry]

I used a bazooka screen on my kettle outlet, it clogged and was a massive pain in the arse. I took it off and now even with whirl pooling I get way too much debris into the fermenter. I'm not concerned at all about utilisation, my boil is vigorous af.

[Norrii]

Good to know. Would be great if you could report back how you get on once you have it installed. You too @Nathan