Electric Brewery and 3 bay ferment Build

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oceanic_brew
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Electric Brewery and 3 bay ferment Build

Post by oceanic_brew » Sun Mar 04, 2018 10:48 am

I’m finally finished a home brewery build that I had dreamed of having for years. After doing nearly 150 batches on propane outside between the garbage box and the compost bin I decided that my #1 hobby and passion deserves a little comfort.

I first started with this build pictured below which is a 3 bay fermentation chest that can hold 2 5 Gallon fermentors each. The bay on the far right receives forced air from my 4 tap kegerator via a 6” port and computer fan. Depending on the temp outside and inside, I can get this bay down to 1c, the next bay receives forced air from the bay next to it. Each bay has an upper Port for makeup air, an STC1000 for control, and a heat source.
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So I got to thinking of how awesome it would be to have a 1 tier, 3 vessel, 2 pump electric brewery installed on the stainless steel top of the fermentation chamber.

I purchased a Hosehead Brewery controller on recommendation from Keith, had Everwood fix me up with a 5500 watt element in my HLT, and BK, purchased a Vortex 340 CFM In-line fan, various fittings/parts and went to work over the period of two weeks putting it all together.

In the shop cutting panels and building range hood:
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Dismantled the old cabinet and installed the wiring and the back panel
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You can see here I have my bar sink in, all the wiring done, vent installed, and hot and cold water supply coming from the ceiling. Plus some pot lights
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Installing and cutting holes into the vent hood, I decided to attach some 1 1/4 “ aluminum straps to give it more of a barrel look, the wooden edgebanding didn’t stick at all to the laminate sheets. Oh and that’s my boy Alaska, he’s terrified of holesaws
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Putting the final pieces together:

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So some things I kinda left out:

The Hosehead controller is wired from my panel box which is 50 ft away via a 6/3 wire on a 240v service and 50 amp GFCI, it can send power to two 5500 watt elements, control two pumps, 5 temperature sensors, runs on raspberry pi and uses a software called Strangebrew Eisinore. The whole thing runs over your WiFi so you can use a tablet or your smart phone to turn pumps on and off and set temps for the BK and HLT, The software also records temp data, exports/imports beersmith files. There are few knobs/levers/switches on the panel itself. Love the thing so far. I decided to wire my in line fan to Pump 2 out of the Hosehead since I wanted to be able to turn the fan on and off via touch screen and I don’t have my second pump yet.

I have a two receptacle plug on the back wall, i broke the tab on the hot side of the plug and wired the top directly up to my controller, on brew day I just plug my pump into the top receptacle and the controller sends power to it when I tell it to. The bottom plug I plan to use on a blichman riptide.

To make life a little easier I hard plumbed the cold lines of my CFC which sits on the right side of my kegerator. I also installed a male QD fitting near the faucet of the mini sink, this allows me to fill my BK with oxyclean and backflush it through the counterflow chiller right into my house drain. Complete closed system.

So that’s it, thanks for reading! It took months of planning and building (and piles of money) to fit all of this in to one tiny space but when I get all the kinks ironed out I think it’s gonna be a suitable pilot system for my brewery!






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Last edited by oceanic_brew on Sun Mar 04, 2018 10:48 am, edited 3 times in total.

elreplica
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Re: Electric Brewery and 3 bay ferment Build

Post by elreplica » Sun Mar 04, 2018 11:30 am

Nice work bud!
At Bat: several Czech Pils
On Deck: Cream Ale
In the Hole: Kolsch
Clean Up: Tall Ships Ale clones
On tap: Propeller Pils, Festa Cream Ale

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oceanic_brew
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Re: Electric Brewery and 3 bay ferment Build

Post by oceanic_brew » Sun Mar 04, 2018 6:13 pm

elreplica wrote:Nice work bud!

Thanks!

I don’t know why all the pictures are doubled at the bottom of the post or maybe I only see that? Anyway


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Woody
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Re: Electric Brewery and 3 bay ferment Build

Post by Woody » Sun Mar 04, 2018 8:38 pm

Beautiful space and nice work!

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RubberToe
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Re: Electric Brewery and 3 bay ferment Build

Post by RubberToe » Mon Mar 05, 2018 7:53 am

Well done man!!

PS - It looks like the double images may have to do with hosting them with tapatalk or the "place inline" option in the attachments tab. I see that option is still available even though they are linked inline, not sure if that changes if you click it.
Electric Brewery Build
On tap at RubberToe's:
Sometimes on a Sunday Belgian Dubbel, Oaked Old Ale, Ordinary Bitter

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