Designing your own home brewery

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Designing your own home brewery

• Mike Heydenrych
• Presented at the Worthogs meeting of
• 12 February 2003

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What do you want to achieve?The six most
important aspects of making good beer

1. Big yeast starters
2. Temperature control
3. Full wort boils
4. Cool your wort quickly
5. Oxygenate your wort
6. Keep good records

? ? ? ?
Mark Tumarkin, Hogtown Brewers, posted on HBD
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How much will your wife allow you to spend?
Beginner R500 Hobbyist R1500 Enthusiast R10 000
Mash Kit/stove R0 Partial/zap-zap R100 All-grain R3000
Cool Pot in sink R0 Immersion R110 Counterflow R300
Ferment Bucket R50 Fridge R800 Cylindro-con R1500
Dispense Bottles R50 Bottles R50 Cornelius kegs R5000
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This presentation
Beginner R500 Hobbyist R1500 Enthusiast R10 000
Mash Kit/stove R0 Partial/zap-zap R100 All-grain R3000
Cool Pot in sink R0 Immersion R110 Counterflow R300
Ferment Bucket R50 Fridge R800 Cylindro-con R1500
Dispense Bottles R50 Bottles R50 Cornelius kegs R5000
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Mash/lauter systems Cooler box
Mash
Pipe with holes under to drain away wort
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Mash/lauter designsThe Zap-Zap system(Charlie
Papazian)
Make holes 2-3mm Cheap, easy Lautering is by
pouring water from a jug by hand No direct heat
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Immersion cooler
Cold water in
Warm water out
Hot wort
Kitchen pot
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Chemical Engineers heaven
Beginner R500 Hobbyist R1500 Enthusiast R10 000
Mash Kit/stove R0 Partial/zap-zap R100 All-grain R3000
Cool Pot in sink R0 Immersion R110 Counterflow R300
Ferment Bucket R50 Fridge R800 Cylindro-con R1500
Dispense Bottles R50 Bottles R50 Cornelius kegs R5000
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Three-tier
Hot Liquor Tank

• No pumps
• Recirculate by carrying buckets
• Climb to look into HLT

Mash/ Lauter
Kettle
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Two-tier

• Easier to check vessels
• Needs a pump
• Not a great deal of flexibility

Hot Liquor Tank
Mash/ Lauter
Kettle
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Single-tier

• Easy to work with vessels
• Relies on pumps
• Needs at least 2 pumps for sparging

Hot Liquor Tank
Mash/ Lauter
Kettle
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My preferred layout
Hot Liquor Tank
Mash/ Lauter
Kettle
Optional HLT recirc.
To chiller, fermenter
Sample tap
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Fill Mash tun
Hot Liquor Tank
Mash/ Lauter
Kettle
Optional HLT recirc.
To chiller, fermenter
Green open/on Red closed
Sample tap
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Recirculate/ramp
Hot Liquor Tank
Mash/ Lauter
Kettle
Optional HLT recirc.
To chiller, fermenter
Sample tap
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Sparge
Hot Liquor Tank
Mash/ Lauter
Kettle
Optional HLT recirc.
To chiller, fermenter
Sample tap
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Chill
Hot Liquor Tank
Mash/ Lauter
Kettle
Optional HLT recirc.
To chiller, fermenter
Sample tap
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Vessel sizes
Brew length 1 volume
Hot Liquor Tank 2 volumes
Mash/ Lauter 0.8 volumes
Kettle 1.5 volumes
Fermenter 1.2 volumes
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Does size matter?(Prices of vessels from Sinvac,
May 2002)
Cost (11.2)2/3
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Typical 60l setup
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Detailed vessel design

• Principles
• Practicalities
• Kettle and Hot Liquor Tank heating
• Mash/lauter tun design
• Counterflow chiller
• Fermenter

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Hot liquor tank - principles

• High W/m2 on heater element OK
• Thermostat control useful, not essential
• If you have a HERMS coil, then movement of the
  water around the coil is essential, else you get
• cold layers of water at the bottom of the tank
• poor transfer of energy to the wort in the tube

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Hot liquor tank

• Need volume - plastic tanks are economical
• Geyser elements are acceptable
• 1¼ (32mm) thread
• Power rating unimportant
• Geyser thermostat OK
• Recirculation useful for good temperature control

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Hot liquor tank schematic
Optional HERMS
Outlet valve
2kW geyser element with thermostat
Inlet for recirc.
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Kettle principles

• For a given kW heater element, you will evaporate
  a given amount of water per hour, whether the lid
  is on or off.
• Rolling boil serves several purposes
• Agitation for agglomerating protein particles
• Evolution of steam to drive off volatiles
• Temperature to drive ?-acid isomerisation
• Temperature to drive Maillard (darkening)
  reactions
• Wort ingredients foul heater elements and cause
  them to fail unless the energy density per m2 is
  reduced.

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Kettle - practicalities

• Use stainless steel if possible, and heat using
  gas
• Plastic works well, but specify large-area
  Incoloy heating elements (approx. R250). Strive
  for 24kW/m2 (4m for a 3kW element).
• 3kW elements for kettles from 40-100l
• You need a good rolling boil, even with the lid
  off.

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Heating elements sealing detail
Kettle wall
Electrical box
Sealing washer
Electrical connector
Electric element
Securing nut 12 mm
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Mashing

• Temperature ramping 3 methods
• Add hot water, thinning the mash
• Heat up recirculated wort, either by
• HX with hot liquor (HERMS),
• Directly heating wort under the sieve, or
• Directly heating wort electrically (RIMS)
• Heat up mash and grains directly
• Decoction mashing
• Heating container directly
• Stirring with a heated mashing fork

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Mashing - principles

• Thinning the wort reduces enzyme activity
• (but OK for ?-amylase?)
• Heating up recirculated wort denatures enzymes,
  so keep temp. rise low, and minimise the time the
  wort spends hot
• Heating up mash and grains directly
• Movement of particles relative to the hot
  surface NB to prevent burning (phenols)

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Mashing Pros and Cons

• HERMS (Heat Exchanger tube in HL tank)
• You cant overheat the wort
• You need to stir your HLT with HERMS
• RIMS (Recirc. Infusion Mashing System),
  electrical heating of recirculating wort
• Best used by controlling the electrical energy
  input based on the wort temperature.
• Direct heating by gas
• Long residence time of heated wort under sieve
  (keep this volume low!)

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Sparging principles

• Stuck mash - Compressible filter bed

Low pressure drop Medium flow
Medium pressure drop Med-fast flow
High pressure drop Slow flow
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Sparging principles

• Stuck mash - Compressible filter bed

1 cm/min
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Sparging principles

• Lauter plate design
• There tend to be more openings on the edge, hence
  more flow down the sides.

Make as many 2-2,5mm holes as practical,
preferably with a greater density of holes in the
middle Try to get as close to plug flow as
possible clean water fully replacing sugary
wort as it moves down. Start sparging only when
the liquid level falls below the top of the grain
bed
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Sparging practicalities

• For mashing, you want an approximately equal
  height/diameter ratio to keep heat loss down.
• For sparging, you want to keep the surface area
  as large as possible, but have at least 30cm of
  bed
• Balance large surface area with the heat loss, or
  use separate mash tun lauter tun.

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Mash/lauter tun design
Well insulated
Mash
Vessel diameter should be slightly more than the
height to get fastest recirc and lautering
Recirculation
Keep volume here minimum
Apply flame close to outlet
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Counterflow chiller principles

• Maximise heat transfer area
• Fluid velocity improves heat transfer
• Heat transfer rate determined by the side with
  the lowest fluid velocities

Heat transfer occurs across the wall
Cold stream
Hot stream
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Counterflow chiller principles
Hot wort
These lines become parallel if water flow rate
decreases to wort flow rate. Typically, youll
use 3-5x more water than wort.
Temperature
Cooling water
Distance along the length of chiller
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Counterflow chiller practicalities

• Use 15.2m of 10mm soft copper tubing
• Use 15m of 20mm garden hose
• Roll out copper tubing flat on the lawn, and push
  it into the hosepipe.
• Use a copper connector (ask Moritz) to make the
  seal on each end

Warm water out
Cold water in
Cold wort out
Hot wort in
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Counterflow chiller practicalities

• Where the chilled wort leaves the counter-flow
  chiller, put it through a 10mm copper coil (5m)
  dipped in an ice bath
• Ensure movement of ice water past the tubing by
• Jigging the tube bundle, or
• Putting a fountain pump in the bath

To fermenter
C/flow chiller
Ice bath
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My first counterflow chiller
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Cylindroconical fermenter

• Need lt 30 included angle underneath
• 5 of volume below side offtake
• Sinvac 180l, Pioneer 70l
• Need to make a stand
• Open fermenter (loose lid) has worked fine

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Grain roaster
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Discussion

• For a counterflow chiller design spreadsheet,
  mike_at_heydenrych.info
• Added later, some suppliers (details on Worthogs
  web site)
• Metraclark (Mitchell St, Pta) for 10mm copper
  tubing
• Sinvac (Pretoria West, near Iscor) for most
  plastic drums
• Pioneer plastics (Rosslyn) for 80 liter conical
  fermenter
• Plastilon for silver insulation, plastic buckets,
  packaging materials in general