Bad Dog Two - 120L Brewery

[ajh800]

Got mine yesterday - so many options to use these. Like adm says, they need a good deep cleaning & de-greasing, but very solid quality items. How adm got them in his car amazes me..

I'd say Roger has sold these at scrap value, given stainless steel is £1500/tonne.

Look forwards to seeing these bargain items modified & put to good use

[unclepumble]

Before you go spending lots of money of Solenoids and pilot valves etc, have you considered how having an auto gas system on the pots is going to effect your house insurance, (I am assuming you will be siting these in your garage) the Pots will be classed by any insurance company as pieces of industrial equipment, therefore if you have any fire or accident at your property as a result of their use, then technically your home insurance will be null and void.

Further to that assuming they do fall under the industrial bracket, they will need to tested and certified by an appropriately qualified gas engineer, (your local central heating engineer is unlikely to be qualified as industrial is a seperate set of certification AFAIAA).

You may be better to buy seprate stand alone burners such as Fokers, and just use them outside.

Sorry to give the negative message here, & I wish you all the best with your builds, they are looking promising.

UP

[adm]

Well......good point.

My intent though is to mount the pots on a wheeled frame so that to brew I can wheel the whole thing OUT of my garage (although in reality, in winter months I am probably likely to just open the garage door and push it there to avoid rain.....)

I don't see why they should be classed as industrial equipment though, unless I was selling beer commercially - in which case i would then need totally different insurance anyway. I'd have thought that as long as I wasn't selling any beer, a brewery would be classed as hobby equipment. After all, it's no different really from having a propane powered heater or barbecue on your property.

The gas system would be fail safe - normally off solenoids - along with (probably) a flame detection circuit and master manual gas valves, so I don't really see this as being any more dangerous than either a central heating boiler or a gas cooker.

But it's certainly worth bearing in mind....

[adm]

I've just been reading some stuff about burners....and it appears that for propane, there are both high and low pressure options available.

Low pressure seems to be from 37 - 150mBar....whereas my Bullfinch burner runs at anywhere from 500-2000mBar - so I'm presuming that's "high pressure". My regulator is adjustable from 0 to 2 bar.

Now then, does anybody know if these wok burners from these pots are low or high pressure? I'm guessing they are low pressure.....and trying to work out whether or not my current reg will be usable if I dial it down to 500mBar or less.

I suppose it will be a bit of trial and error in the end....

[adm]

Not much progress on this so far......been a bit busy with other stuff.

But I can report that apparently the burners are low pressure and meant to run at a 14" water column pressure, which equates to around 35mBar or so.....i.e. low pressure propane.

I've bought three solenoid valves off eBay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Dungs-solenoid-ga ... 500wt_1182. These look like good quality items, and I'd rather get them than cheap chinese items......the seller does deals for multiples too.

Not sure that these will accommodate the full volume of gas needed or not, but I'll have a play and find out. If not, they'll certainly work for pilot valves and I'll have some fun messing around and trying to figure out how to get a computer controlled ignition system going. I'll wire them to my Arduino board when they arrive and practice controlling solenoids with piss poor code. I'm committed to a fully computerised system now, for better or worse - at least it'll give me a "project" for a while.....

[Subsonic]

looking good ADM! My mate in Texas uses a central heating controller to fire up his high pressure propane setup. He has wired up a home made control unit that basically turns this on and off and runs it as a RIMS system. Works really well, 0.5c fluctuation on a 50 litre keg. I am looking at getting 2 more KingKooker burners from the US. You can get just the high pressure head for $15, its the postage that will be a killer . Should finish my 3 tier setup this week. Marchmay, thermometers and silicone for the peristaltic sparge pump should all arrive today / tomorow. Will just move the burner about to heat each keg.

[adm]

looking good ADM! My mate in Texas uses a central heating controller to fire up his high pressure propane setup. He has wired up a home made control unit that basically turns this on and off and runs it as a RIMS system. Works really well, 0.5c fluctuation on a 50 litre keg. I am looking at getting 2 more KingKooker burners from the US. You can get just the high pressure head for $15, its the postage that will be a killer . Should finish my 3 tier setup this week. Marchmay, thermometers and silicone for the peristaltic sparge pump should all arrive today / tomorow. Will just move the burner about to heat each keg.

I'm just going to rejet the existing burners I think......I might as well reuse them!

I was looking a central heating boiler valves, ASCO type valves and similar things myself - but they are the best part of £100 each.... the solenoid ones I've got were <£15 each - so I'm hoping they'll work OK. They screw directly onto the burner pipes on the pots, so I'm fairly positive they'll be OK. I need to get a 24V DC power supply now so that I can start playing with them.

I need to figure out an automated ignition system next - I don't want to use a pilot, but I guess I could if neccesary. I'd like some kind of electronic spark control though - I was thinking about maybe using a coil and sparkplug from a car as they are probably pretty low cost and could run on 24V DC too.

[Subsonic]

Have a look at an oil burner unit. I use a Riello burner (RDB3 CF 489T50) that I have wired and generally bodged to heat my kiddies pool. It has a nice photo electric unit that basically turns the sparker on and off as it detects the 'light'. I don't pretend to be any good about electrics (says he after using 3 chainsaw files cutting the holes in the keg for the thermometers) but they may be worth a look if you can get a fleabay one to bodge. Some pics on my picasaweb I just can't figure out how to post pics direct from picasaweb.... http://picasaweb.google.com/subsonic40g ... terProject#

[adm]

Have a look at an oil burner unit. I use a Riello burner (RDB3 CF 489T50) that I have wired and generally bodged to heat my kiddies pool. It has a nice photo electric unit that basically turns the sparker on and off as it detects the 'light'. I don't pretend to be any good about electrics (says he after using 3 chainsaw files cutting the holes in the keg for the thermometers) but they may be worth a look if you can get a fleabay one to bodge. Some pics on my picasaweb I just can't figure out how to post pics direct from picasaweb.... http://picasaweb.google.com/subsonic40g ... terProject#

Funnily enough, I've got exactly the same Riello oil burner that runs my central heating.....althoug I don't think the Mrs would approve if I cannibalised it for brewing.

However......

I think I've sussed it now anyway. It looks like this thingy will do the trick....it's a 9V battery powered spark igniter - just need to add a standard spark electrode. I'll just do away with the battery and have my final control board provide 9V to it and have the computer fire the igniter for a few seconds when it first activates the gas solenoids.

Woopee do! This looks like a cheap and simple way to do it. No flame detection circuitry, but I can live without that.

[rick_huggins]

No flame detection circuitry, but I can live without that.

Can't you just hire a arsonist pigmy for that job mate?

[Bionicmunky]

ADM if your looking at going down the computer/arduino/sanguino controlled route have a looksee here http://www.brewtroller.com/

[adm]

I've seen the Brewtroller before....but I decided to go down the "make it myself, get frustrated, bang head against the wall and then throw it away" route instead

Although I'm actually doing quite well with it at the moment. I've got the digital temperature sensors working on the OneWire bus, I'm learning how to code for the Arduino and I'm going to start working on the solenoids next. I need a 24V DC power supply for them though, so I need to find an old printer PSU or similar that has enough volts. I've even got a real time clock going on it now.....

Who knows - I might end up with the Brewtroller, but things are looking promising with the Arduino at the moment.

[adm]

Here's my breadboard circuit so far:



Arduino board, DS1307 real time clock, LCD display ( I need a bigger one) and DS18B20 digital temp sensor (only 1 wired, but the circuit supports multiple on the same1 wire bus )... the sensor had been immersed in my glass of scotch and soda (with lots of ice) and had read -0.44C at the lowest point, but was warming up again when the pic was taken.

All good so far - I can do the basics, which is read the temperatures on the sensors, log the temp and time and display it on the LCD. Next step is to actually get this lot driving solendoids and spark igniters (just bought two 4 port spark igniters from eBay for $24) and then to finesse those by using some PID code.....

It's all fun - if not the easiest way of doing things.

[Taf]

Hi All.

Can anyone advise my best option for a gas burner for one of these 120 litre boliers? Has anyone stuck with the existing burners? I will be using propane. I've looked at a couple of options. One of the guys I know has a large wok burner as per this website http://www.stockpotsrus.co.uk/index.php ... 06a4a43c5f but they are not cheap. Not sure which one he has, but presume it's one of the bigger ones. They are a bit pricey. Another option is a burner from this website http://www.gasproducts.co.uk/acatalog/B ... rners.html They seem more reasonable, and postage is not too bad, but not sure which one would be best get +100 litres up to a rolling boil.

Thanks for any advice that you can offer.
Cheers,
Billy.

[stu-le-brew]

some input I can offer, my stainless boiler is 100ltrs I usually make 55ltr brews so have about 65ltrs in the boiler at the start. I use a gas burner with butane (a Foker triple burner made of cast iron) which is supposed to have an output (from memory) of 8.7kw it takes about an hour to get to the boil and it does the job - so for 120ltr I would guess you will need more like a 12kw burner.

hope this helps