Planning a brew shed.

[Troutman47]

Hi all,
I'm planning on building a brew shed and am looking for hints and tips, do's and dont's.
It's going to be 12ft long and 8ft deep.
My drinking buddy is building the shed from scratch.
A mate is a sparks so he'll be doing that side of things, I'll be doing the plumbing.

The main thing I'm thinking about is steam extraction, what have you found to be the best way of getting the steam out during the boil?
Any other considerations?

Cheers

[BenB]

Okay- random thoughts on brew shed....

I brew in a fairly modest 8*6 ft shed so careful planning with storage is very important. In terms of ventilation I stuck a large industrial fan on the side of the shed. It's got a silly amount of extraction capability but it only works if

1) I allow air into the shed somehow- if I close the door it stop extracting (an open window also works)
2) You need some kind of hood to catch the steam otherwise you don't get steam build up but you get ridiculous amounts of condensation all over the shed ceiling

I wired the fan into a plug- this enables use of a inline dimmer socket which works well to reduce the racket a bit- if you're having a fan on a fuse spur I'd consider an fan controller fitted...

In terms of the shed itself I insulated with polystyrene and then covered that internally in WBP ply. Painting the walls/ ceiling/bench was with exterior gloss weathershield- expensive but left a wonderful easy-to-clean finish. Obviously Celotex / Kingspan would be better insulation and less of a fire-risk.....

Re sockets- industrial metal sockets placed liberally- you can't have too many provided you don't use them all at once...

One thing I did which has worked well is I drilled holes at intervals into the shed floor using a 5mm drill bit with built in countersink, I then coated the floor in anti-slip decking oil. Essentially it means the water I inevitably spill onto the floor just drains through below the shed- saves constant mopping up and the anti-slip function is obviously to avoid me slipping whilst carrying toast warm wort.

Are you planning on having a sink in there? I just use a small bucket on the floor for waste water (e.g. from rinsing pH meters, alkalinity testing etc) but it means having a hose going out of the shed for waste water from the immersion cooler (which gets in the way- and it's blinking hot at times)- I'm planning on adding a short section of copper pipe through the shed wall with a compression fitting and garden hose adaptor at both ends- essentially a garden hose bulkhead fitting. That means I just need a short section of hose from the IC to the shed wall and then I would connect to the outside of the shed to the drain. Obviously ignore all that if you're having fixed drainage...

Only other considerations would be a fire alarm and burglar alarm.

Anyway, good luck with the project.

[BenB]

Only other thought would be to make sure there is adequate exterior lighting. Unless the shed is directly next to your house it's worth ensuring there's good exterior lighting specifically for the shed. A number of times I ended up tidying up in the pitch dark, tripping over stuff (my garden is v messy). I ended up putting some spotlights under the eaves of my house and shed exterior lighting as well (LED strip lights). Both of these are on cheap (£8 for 3) remote control sockets. This means I can switch the shed lighting and the garden flood lighting from anywhere in the house- also avoided running cables down the outside of the house from a switch to the floodlights. The remote controls use a basic 433Mhz remote (same as garage shutters) so I used a "universal programmable" keyfob to replace the original rather chunky remote control.

Anyway, this is the brew shed with the floodlighting off but the LED strip lighting working....

[lord groan]

I found the most important thing to remember is that steam loves to condense, so whatever extraction system you use try to minimise the cold surfaces (ie metal) or you'll have to cope with drip catchers , condensation drains etc. I tried a few things, making hoods to catch steam, fitting drip trays below the edges of the hood, none were good! After various complicated ideas I went back to basics:
My shed is clad with shiplap, I found the board directly above the top of the boiler and removed it. I cut it into 3 and nailed the 2 end pieces back in place, then screwed the middle section above the boiler itself back on, that now makes an easily removable exterior panel.
Then 4 x 12cm computer case fans screwed inside the shed in a row across the opening, wired together to run off the old computer psu. A short piece of plastic strip cut from a piece of damp proof course wedged at an angle under the fans to catch the drips from those and guide the water outside. Sorted! 4 fans suck the steam directly away from the boiler to the outside, they are the only things that collect condensation, I just need to keep the shed door open a little to maximise airflow.

As you can see from the pic, the ferm. fridge is right next to the boiler so that cold metal wall ought to run with condensation, but it stays dry. One thing I tried first was keeping the wire grills from the computer fans in place to protect my fingers from the blades, but the wire caused 10 times as much condensation so they got removed.
A simple 'dirty' solution but it works better than anything else I've tried.
Good luck

[Troutman47]

Thanks for the replies gents!
I like the idea of a variable speed fan, I found this on eBay,

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/281246668624

Is this suitable? It'll extract 108 cubic meters on full whack!

[Troutman47]

Just talking to the wife about the shed and the subject of waste water came up.

What options are there to recycle the water used in the IC and cleaning down?

TIA.

[BenB]

Regarding the fan flow volume is important but unless you're using the extraction ability well it'll just make lots of noise. I think the industrial one I installed did about 300 but with the door closed and no hood it was still like a steam room in there. My one was like

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Industrial-Ex ... Swu4BVyHXG

I got mine from a restaurant that was closing for about 40 quid.

Waste water can easily be stored in a water butt and you can water butt pumps to water the garden with.

Personally if I was on a water meter I'd be tempted to utilise ambient water for cooling- it would be quite easy to have two water butts with only one full of water. Pump the water from one (at ambient temps) through the IC into the empty one. Okay it would be hot but it would rapidly cool ready for next time. A bit of tap water or some other cooling would be needed for the last bit- although by the time my water supply has got to the bottom of the garden it's not that much colder than ambient anyway...

[Fil]

fwiw for simple and effective steam extraction from my brewshed i use a big fan sat behind the kettle to 'blow' the steam out the open doorway. with the door and window open the fan stimulates a natural in through the window out through the door circulation path which carries all the boil off steam with it.

[Troutman47]

Its not about the cost of the water, it just seemed a shame to waste it.
South West Water is either the most expensive in the country or the second most expensive, but when i checked out how much they charge for water its only £1.98 a cubic meter?
£1.98per 1000 litres!
20p for 100 litres, so its nothing really

I used to use a fan to blow the steam out the kitchen in the old house, currently i have a window open and the extractor above the cooker on max which does the trick.
I'm gonna have a stable door fitted to stop the dogs coming in and plan to have the top door open and the extractor fan on.

I noted BenB, you said about security, I'm not too worried about that, recorded crime rate here for 2014/15 was one and that was a fight in one of the pubs. 15/16 there was a complaint that someone had moved some flower pots from outside their house to outside a neighbours house!

Does it matter if the roof is pitched or sloping?
I'm leaning towards sloping only as it'll be easier and hopefully cheaper to build but I've told my mate it has to be 8ft at the front down to 7ft at the back so i don't bang my head on anything! (I'm 6ft 5")

Anyway, thanks for everyones input, some good stuff there!

[BenB]

I suspect what would be best would be a vent at roof height at the front of the shed (and the door open) and a fan blowing in via a HEPA filter. I do worry when 300m3/hr are entering the shed that will include a fair amount of wild yeasts (especially as my shed is at the bottom of the garden under trees). A positive pressure ventilation system would be great...

Re the water it is kind of amazing that we get that much drinking grade water for so little. Just seems a shame to waste it. I just let the IC out water cool in FVs and water the garden with it.