Brewstand

Here is a photo of my nearly complete brewstand.  To finish I still need to clean up the electrical wiring (and to think I’m licensed in something like this),  build my circuit board, build the HERMs pot, program an Ardunio and paired Android app.  Besides that I can do large batches 15+ gallons of infusion mashing  brewing.  More photos at the end.

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First Edition

When we lived in CA I  was able to get some brewing equipment off of Craigslist that would let me do at least 15G batchs.  The problem with that is that I didn’t think it to be a good idea to lift 10+ gallons of boiling water above my head to pour into the mash tun.

Since I had everything in the garage which was incredibly over packed the initial stand had to be very compact.  I knew the pump wasn’t self priming and came up with an idea to solve that…suction start.  I tried a few concepts before I figured out how to make things work the way I intended it too.  Here is a photo of that stand for batch #12.

Second Edition

With a pump in hand I started day dreaming of a better brewing setup.   I spun up some ideas for a single pump HERMS system and created some basic Visio drawings to help make sense of it.     I posted my ideas on homebrewtalk, but didn’t catch the attention of anyone.  By this time we had moved to CO and I continued to press on with my idea.  In a panic to make my back-to-back brew days while Lisa and the kids were out of town I slapped together my concept.  Needless to say the brews day didn’t go well.  Switches didn’t work, power supply died, liquid wouldn’t transfer through the tubing, and all sorts of other things.

Third Edition

I learned a lot on the failed brew session and went back to the drawing boards.  With more space to work in CO I dreamed up a real brewstand.  A 2 tier, all wood,  and pretty simple to assemble brewstand.  I use some grid paper to get my the concept put together and then used Google SketchUp to complete the design.  One theory for my failed liquid transfers was too much back pressure and suction on the tubing.  So I simplified the tubing and added in a gant before the pump.  I got one brew day on this setup for batch #16.  The day went well, but I figured out a few more tweaks to make.  I then had a 3 day brewing marathon to make 40G in 4 beers.  The brew day was success and I’m quite pleased with my brewstand.

Next update for the brew stand I hope to have the HERMs system up and running with a decent looking control panel and Android app.

 

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