Anyway, here goes with the brewery description.
Groundwork
Basically this involved converting your average domestic garage into a brewery. This involved power and water. I fitted a load of new sockets and rana new cold water pipe through the wall from the downstairs toilet which was conveniently on the other side of the garage wall. There was an existing ring main just for the shed but I replaced the sockets and installed some new ones.
Note the 'industrial' ones on the right. They're rated for 16A so there's more headroom for the immersion heater elements (which draw 13A).
We had initially planned that I'd have all the garage as a brewery but after moving in we decided we needed a utility room and so the garage was partitioned into two bits with the 'wet' brewery at the front and the utility at the back. I'm still gonna get my bar in the utility though so all is not lost
The brewery section floor was painted an attractive battleship grey and carpetright supplied some very cheap carpet for the utility.
Brewery Overview
The brewery consists of two 70 Quart (66L) Igloo coolers on the left hand side - the mash tun is the one on the top. The Brupaks boiler is on the right above the two pumps. One pump is a Totton (left) and the other I think is a March May. Both came from ebay as did the coolers.
I've been using the March May pump as the main pump and the Totton as the pump for recirculating the wort at the end of the mash. No real reason but the March May is a bit easier to prime.
If I was going to do this again I'd raise the HLT a bit higher as there's not much head for priming the pumps from the HLT.
Between the boiler and the pumps there's some thin sheet metal to protect the pump electrics from splashes.
The brewery stand was an afternoon's work with the electric mitre saw. It's a pretty straightforward construction but it's nice and solid. It's coated in several coats of outdoor varnish - which was a complete pain to do with all those bloody slats. It's fitted with lockable castors so it's easy to move it to clean underneath.
Mash Tun
The mash tun is a converted Igloo Cooler. I didn't use the existing drain hole as it was too big a hole and was at the end. Note: The Zymico Kewler kits don't seem to fit these igloo coolers. I cut a new drain hole in the side using a holesaw and then a big one in the outer wall. The plumbings are 15mm male and female irons and a bunch of washers and Fernox sealant. They lead to a 15mm compression ballvalve then to another female iron into which is screwed a CPC disconnect.
These disconnects are made of polysulfone and can handle boiling liquids. You can get them from cole-palmer over here but they're expensive and are much cheaper in the states. The are 1/2" NPT fittings but with lots of PTFE tape they fit 1/2 BSP just fine. All the vessels are fitted with male disconnects with females on the hoses (there's more males and males are cheaper). All hoses in the system are rated for boiling liquid and came from Northern Brewer in the US (as did the QDs).
The filter manifold in the tun is just a bigger version of the usual slotted manifold.
The return manifold for recirculating is fitted through the lid of the tun and is height adjustable using a jubilee clip (low tech but works). As well as the four outlets at the ends it also has holes drilled in the underside of the arms.
HLT
Plumbed like the MT on the outside but with just a right angle on the inside so the maximum amount of water can be sucked out.
Kettle
This is a Brupaks 75L stainless kettle. It comes fitted (but not wired) with 2x 3KW immersion elements. I wired these with 1M each of proper immersion heater flex and then it's joined via splash proof connectors to a longer flex to go to the plug.
The reason I didn't just have a long flex is that I don't like drag the cables around when I'm cleaning. The short flexes get in the way less.
The ballvalve that came with the kettle is a POS so it was replaced. Seveneer pointed me in the direction of BES who supplied a lovely 3-piece stainless ballvalve.
On the inside of the kettle I thought the existing hop filter would leave far too much wort in the kettle so I changed it so that it went to the bottom of the kettle. The pickup has a stainless mesh filter (a cut down zymico Bazooka filter)
Even with this mod there's still about 2L of wort left in the kettle - quite a bit on a 20L brew but this kettle is really meant to do rather bigger brews than that.
well...that's about it. Still awake at the back?
