Electric Brewery Build UK Version

[Fil]

fingers crossed for the fanfair!! lookin forward to the fully lit pic of the front face ....

[barneey]

The plug was wired, the mains switch "on", key inserted, all other switches turned off, the key turned and the power remained on in the house .

Good news first the safety start works well, if any of the switches are on the thing wont power up

Everything works fine apart from a few items, timer switch (although may have to read the instructions on that one to see if I need to press a button), the Amp meter doesnt power up, the Rims / Boiler switch is round the wrong way, there is a fault on the boiler 2 side of things, 1 DC voltage display doesnt work.

The pids arent connected to any sensors yet so need to try them out.

So with a little more fault finding everything should be up and running very soon.

A piccy of the from panel.....

[Belter]

That's immense. You should be very proud of that. I expected more buttons though for the amount of gear you put inside

[barneey]

the thing is so over engineered, its impossible to add anything else to the box, the control for the 2nd boiler element even had to be placed on the bottom.

I cant think (with the exception of the the flow meter) of anything else that was required, all my digital scales etc are all mounted elsewhere

The next build might incorporate a few electronic ballvalves

Cheers

C

[Fil]

way hey no plumes of toxic smoke.. SUCCESS! SHE LIVES!!!

[Kev888]

No smoke is always a nice start

[themadhippy]

no plumes of toxic smoke..

its not toxic smoke,its magic smoke and once its been allowed to escape its a bugger to get back into the kit,which will refuse to work properly until the correct amount and type of magic smoke has been refitted.Another problem is finding a supplier of the correct magic smoke,sometimes generic magic smoke will work,you can normally find it in those specialist shops that stock rocking horse manure and unicorn eggs,but if you need the manufacturers own magic smoke you may have to get it refitted by a specialist refilling centre.Its also worth replacing the sparks if the smoke has escaped but you need special (read expensive) tools to that safely and is often too complicated to attempt at home

[Matt12398]

I'm confused as to why all the displays say orAL. Did you think to yourself, if I'm going to this much trouble to brew beer I might as well include some additional features?

[barneey]

no plumes of toxic smoke..

its not toxic smoke,its magic smoke and once its been allowed to escape its a bugger to get back into the kit,which will refuse to work properly until the correct amount and type of magic smoke has been refitted.Another problem is finding a supplier of the correct magic smoke,sometimes generic magic smoke will work,you can normally find it in those specialist shops that stock rocking horse manure and unicorn eggs,but if you need the manufacturers own magic smoke you may have to get it refitted by a specialist refilling centre.Its also worth replacing the sparks if the smoke has escaped but you need special (read expensive) tools to that safely and is often too complicated to attempt at home

I`m quite lucky I didnt need any magic smoke in the end, althought I do keep a spare bottle lamp of the stuff from previous experiments just incase.

Anyway the timer switch is now fixed (forgot to wire a neutral supply ), the lighting was an easy change over the wires fix, the boiler 2 was a wiring fault, and the DC volt meter was down to a broken wire. So the only thing not working now is the Amp Meter, which would appear to be a duff 5 vdc power supply issue (have now ordered a new board).

I had wondered why "the electric brewery" design had gone to all the trouble of a load of switches for the alarm "on / off" having tested these today I now know why, noisey little devils they are.

I'm confused as to why all the displays say orAL. Did you think to yourself, if I'm going to this much trouble to brew beer I might as well include some additional features?

All the PIDs display Oral as there were no sensors attached hence the "oral" alarm feature. As to any additional features what did you have in mind?

Cheers

[Belter]

By digital timer do you mean a timer that you can set so the system starts heating early in the morning? Or like a 90minute timer?

[barneey]

At the moment the timer is only wired as a straight forward stopwatch device, and will just sound the alarm etc. I think it would be possible to encorporate say using the count down function to switch on the HLT at a certain time, but am not sure how that would work in relation to the element switch etc.

The operation at the moment would be just to start the board, set the PID turn on the pump for the HLT recirc and leave until the desired temp has been reached. If using tesco bottle water that takes sometime, if using the hot water from the house condensing boiler circuit (fully turned up) not long at all.

[Belter]

That's cool. I was asking thinking you might know the best option for the timer I'm after. I want a 230v timer that is panel mountable and will turn on early on a brewday and be about the size of your voltmeters. I was hoping that's what you had.

[barneey]

The timer I`m using is this model B3S http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Digital-Quart ... 851761959? its the relay out put one, they also do make them with a SRR output. A bit of thought would have to go into making it work with the PID / bypass able if necessary.

[Belter]

Cheers I'll take a look.

[barneey]

Just tried an external 5vdc supply with the Amp meter and the meter now powers up, so all is up and running apart from sorting out the fine tuning of the PIDs.