My Brewery
by

David Lamotte

  
 

Well, I thought that I should come out of the closet (no not that one Scotty) and actually write something myself rather than just upload other peoples work.

There has been a bit of talk about gear lately, and for many of the discussions it would have been helpfull to show what gear I use to brew. All the photos are small 'thumbnail' images to make it easier to down load the page, but you can click on an image to zoom in to a full size view.

So, here it is and overall layout with some brief comments on how it works for me. Happy to answer any questions or discuss the construction techniques further.

The overall layout is shown above.  Apologies for the rustic brewing conditions but as I tell my wife, I can either brew or finish the paving under the back deck - not both. And I am much easier to live with if I brew.

Picture above shows (left to right) Boil kettle (60 litres), mash/lauter tun  (50l) grant (30l).  Pump (0.5 HP 90 l/min) is on far right.  This connects to  filter canister and plate heat exchanger.

All materials are stainless, all fittings are 1".

This is a closeup of filter, heat exchanger and output hose  (draped over the top of the Heat Exchanger) connected to a length of stainless pipe  to allow wort to be pumped without splashing.  There is a series of "T" pieces and ball valves which allow the output of the pump (either wort or water) to be either pumped through the filter, or circulated through a hose.

Oh, by the way the stand is also made from stainless tubing.

The rest of the stand holds the Mash tun, with the boiler free standing at the end. I do not pump directly from the tun, but let the wort flow under gravity to a Lauter Grant. When the grant if full I turn the pump on and move the wort to the boiler.

The mash tun is a 50 litre keg (legally obtained). Insulation is provided by a standard building 'Pink Bat' wrapped in some aluminium sarking. It is held in place by 2 elastic straps. Mash is filtered with a stainless tube made from termite mesh.  Held in place by a hose clamp.



There is a length of plastic hose slipped over the stainless tube to give the clamp something to bite on. The tube is attached to a socket welded into the keg wall via a 1/2" brass compression fitting. This is the only brass or copper part of the system and has had the surface lead removed with a Hydrogen Peroxide/Vinagar solution. The standard copper 'olive' replaced with a nylon one to allow easy disassembly.
 Thick dough in.  When these photos were taken, I was playing around with a 40-60-70 degree mash program recommended by George Fix. I have since learnt from discussions with Wes Smith, that this will be fatal to what little proteins are left in the UK malt. And guess what, all these beers did not hold a head at all. Poured well, but then nothing.

Grist is just moistened with warm water to give the first rest at 40 deg C.  If you can read the thermometer you will see that it is acutually about 45, but this is close enough.
Hose is connected to the boiler ready to pump the sparge water into the mash tun through the fitting on its top right hand side of thetun. The outlet of tun runs into grant (my old boil kettle)  Lid is a stainless steel tray bought for a few dollars at an op shop.

The brewing sequence is heat water in kettle, pump into tun.  I then drain the first run wort into grant, while pumping sparge water from kettle. When all the sparge water is in the tun, the grant is full so I move the hose from the boiler to the grant and pump the wort into the kettle. I repeat this as often as required by allowing the grant to fill before pumping into kettle.

At end of boil whirlpool and let settle for min of 30 mins, then slowly pump through filter and heat exchanger (water off) and back to kettle.  This heats up all the plumbing to around 70-80 deg to sterilise it. 

When it is all nice and hot, turn on water and when cool wort is flowing put outlet tube into fermenter.

The heart of my system is the pump, filter and heat exchanger. They are from a commercial 'Brew on Premises' operation that closed down. The filter has a layer of fine mesh inside a cylinder of punched sheet. The plate heat exchanger is made from plates of copper sheet covered with stainless steel. Close up of the pump (and the weeds). All hoses use 1" Milk fittings ie same as a professional micro brewery.

One problem that I have with brewing in summer is that the tap water gets up to 30 degrees. This means that the heat exchanger struggles to get the wort below 35 degrees. I found that using my old immersion chiller in an ice slurry knocked it down to below 20 degrees. 10 kg ice easily handles my 60 litres of wort.

I made the ice by freezing 5 x 2l milk bottles of water, then hitting the bottle with a hammer to crush it. I then cut away the plastic to release the ice.

I pump the wort directly into my fermenter, which is a 80 litre 'corny' keg. I have had an additional gas fitting welded in by Keg Systems to allow oxygen to be injected during the beginning of fermentation.
I insert the sintered diffuser into the fermenter and sanitise the lot with idophor.

I usually save some yeast from a previous batch for repitching. Here is a few hundred mls of clean slurry ready to go.

I always wake up the yeast by adding a 2 litres of wort. This ensures that the yeast is alive and well - by smell and taste. The picture at the right shows the same yeast 24 hours later, ready to go to work.

After all the wort is safely in the fermenter, pitch the yeast and bubble oxygen into it for a few minutes with the pressure release valve open. I then flip it closed and allow it to build up to 30-70 Kpa.

I leave it under pressure until 4-8 hours later when fermentation is really going strong.

Hope this has helped,
David
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