[bentwood]

Hey guys, new to the boards and just spotted the Pimp My System forum.  I've been working on this system for a while now and thought I'd share.

This 31 gallon system is made up of tanks from Stout Tanks in Portland and the automation was done by Brewmation in NY.  Originally it arrived from Brewmation on this black brewing platform which I built the pallet for and the panel stand:


After brewing on this one time and doing 6 hours of cleanup I realized that wasn't going to work for me so I had a friend put this aluminum stand together for me and it arrived last Friday.  I spent the next two days moving things over and just ran a water batch through last night to test everything out.  So far, so good.


Now I'm working on getting the brite tanks set up and the CO2 system installed in a 74cu foot roll in commercial fridge.  I have two 1BBL tanks and 12 6th BBL commercial kegs.  4 taps. 

The touchscreen allows for recipe input and temperature trending.  The strike pump has a flow meter to measure out the strike water and then the operators screen lets me turn on and off pumps and heaters with a touch.


As I said it's a work in progress and I'm still learning.  The transition from 5gal to 31 is a learning curve but aside from the nasty cleanup job the first time the whole project has been a lot of fun.

Cheers.

More pics:

Sorry, lame hosting provider insists these are the correct orientation..



This is an 80gal but I have a 55gal on order as well

Ready for the trial run:

[Franklin]

SERIOUS HOMEBREWING !!!

[AleForce]

Nice.

[tschmidlin]

Awesome!

[blatz]

DAYUMMMM!!!!

[donsmitty]

About the orientation of the photo.....just don't try to brew that way. 

Do you move everything outside when you fire up the burners or just open the garage door?

[gymrat]

What are you going to do with all that beer?

[thebigbaker]

Wow, great set up and really like the touch screen!

[gsandel]

nice!  I am green with envy!  I have a stout tank HLT/Herms and use tri clamps and silcone hoses in configurations similar to yours and have been feeling decadent about moving from a one pump system with a complicated manifold to two pumps.  I see your touch screen indicating that  you have 4 separate pumps.  I can't tell from the photo what kinds of pumps you have, and how/why you need 4.  I doubt my system will ever exceed 20 gallons, (10 gallon batch, maybe an odd 1/2 barrell), but wanted to know what drove that decision.

[AleForce]

I like the pallet dolly in the photo's... Really gives another perspective to the size of your system.

[bentwood]

Currently I just open the garage door when I brew.  The whole thing is electric as we didn't want any open flames in the garage and while it's a bonus it's also a curse because it means extra cleaning and four more triple clamps.  There are a LOT of triple clamps on this thing. 

As to what I'm doing with the beer, I'm drinking some of it (probably too much) and I'm giving away "samples" so I can get feedback on my recipes.  This whole thing is a trial to see if I want to quit my full time job and become a full time brewer.  If not then it's just a fun hobby and I should always have beer on tap in the garage.  The growlettes I ordered have a clearly written disclaimer on the back that it's a sample and they can't sell it or transfer it or come back and sue me for anything and it has the government warning on it.  I have a beer evaluation sheet I modified from the BJCP sheet and they have to fill that out.

There are two stand alone pumps.  Not sure what the strike pump is but it's a smaller version of the march pump for wort transfers.  Then there is a dual pump that has the hoses running through it and rotating wheels to move liquid.  These are used in tandem to sparge and move wort from the MT to the kettle.  They move liquid pretty slow so it takes a while.  They can be used in tandem or separately but are housed in one body. 

I also have two external to the system pumps for moving wort and finished beer around (chugger pump)and 1 for sucking the crud out of the kettle and pushing cleaning solution through everything.  That last one is a self priming job from little giant which was surprisingly inexpensive. 

Kevin at Brewmation built in probes so the heaters in the kettle and HLT kick in when they reach a certain level.  The Kettle has monster heaters in it, maybe too big and you can adjust the output.  I had some problems with this last time and had a series of boil overs.  A 55 gal kettle with 25 gals of wort and it was lifting the lid.  Took me some time to get that sorted out and that is a large part of why I had such a mess the first time.  That and a stuck mash which was entirely my fault because I screwed with the false bottom and limited the flow.  Lesson learned.

[euge]

Someone got bit bad by the brewing bug! Very nice...

[gsandel]

thanks for the info, and sharing a beautiful system.

[troybinso]

I like those tap handles. Where did they come from?

[bentwood]

I like those tap handles. Where did they come from?

From the Keg Cap Tap Company