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.

[Patrick]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Electrical-PID-Digital-Temperature-Controll...

[Scott H]

Right time for an Update.

Pumps arrived this morning have connected them up and test run them, pretty happy with them fairly quiet.

Alls thats really missing now is my HLT coil and a new 63L pot to match my other 2 new ones.

As for the coil not sure if I'll just plump my current home made imm chiller in (kink and all) and get a new 3/8 imm chiller to use and look at upgrading the coil at a later date.

Current upgrade path is looking like New coil > False Bottom > Final Panel build in proper box > Chuggers/March 809.

[Scott H]

And maybe make a proper pump stand even though current one is in style with setup.

Pumps I used are these ones here if you ask for the MP-15RM model when you order you'll get the one with 1/2 in BSP threaded ports.

[Barry]

That's looking like a mean setup Scott, nice work man!

[Adam Sparks]

Looking great Scott! I'm at a similar stage at the moment. Just awaiting a few replacement meters for my panel. And I've replace my timer reset button with a 2 pos switch for 'pause - run' functionality. Also adding a two position switch to put my HLT PID into 'timer mode' so that the sestos timer can turn it on after countdown. It would be good to set that before going to bed or work the next day

[Adam Sparks]

Hey Barry I'm curious where you placed the mutual inductor for measuring the amps. Does this simply go around the phase coming into the main power relay? Or did you place it on the output of the power relay? I.e. Over the high and low cables drawing the load?

[Barry]

Power comes in to main power relay and goes out, to SSRs and hot bus in parellel (2 wires, one 2.5mm to SSR and one smaller to hot bus). Both of those go through the inductor so I can read the load from SSRs and every other component - pumps etc (they're all fed from the hot bus).
Make sense?

[Adam Sparks]

It does thanks!

[Adam Sparks]

Barry one more question if you don't mind. In Kals instructions he has the volt meter reading the voltage from the boil Phase of the relay to the hot bus. Did you do this? If not where did you take power form for the combo volt and amp meter?

[Barry]

Power for that can just come from any 240V source, the nearby switches or PIDs or a separate leg/run from the hot bus. The bonus of a 240V only system is that it's all the same voltage, when the circuit is complete it kind of doesn't matter where it's being fed from, it measures the voltage of the whole system.
The volt meter is arguably the most redundant part of the panel. Kal added it because it had more relevance for US brewers given their default system is 110V and running 240V elements of 2 opposed phases is rather unusual. Good visual safeguard that the two hots are doing what they're meant to. We don't have that issue.

[Adam Sparks]

Ok so I can use the wiring thats already in place i.e. a phase from the boil relay -->meter --->hot bus?

[Barry]

The feed into your hot bus is coming from the boil relay? Doesn't that mean that your hot bus will only be live when your kettle element switch is on? Doesn't sound right to me, hot bus should be fed from your power in.