Finally - The day has come

The System is finally complete.



The summer has been a bit hectic and most of the work on the brew system has been trying to figure out how to do things. First of all I got rid of the second shelf. I didn't want it to extend the whole way across since I would need to get to the tops of the two bottom kettles. I purchased some expanded metal and then build a couple of cross beams to give the expanded metal some support. The expanded metal was the same kind of metal used in many grills and smokers. I would recommend catwalk material over what I used. It is much thicker and probably wouldn't require any support. I found both types of metal at a metal salvage yard. Problem with the catwalk material is that I didn't need 20 feet of it and couldn't fit that much in my truck anyway. For the supports I found some bedframe rails at a garage sale. $5. Much more sturdy than angle iron. I used my $15 angle grinder to cut them to size.

The next step was mounting the burners. I have one hose and black iron tubing controlling all 3 burners. I have a shutoff valve for each burner. Now that it is complete it was really a fairly some task. (Did I mention that I am NOT a plumber.) Once I had the burner all hooked up I connected a pressure hose to the system and put about 20 lbs of pressure (valves shut) through the system and used a bottle of soapy water to test for leaks. NONE!

The last task was figuring out how to run all of the liquid lines thorough the pump and then through all of the different valves. Here is a picture coming out of the mash tun and the boil kettle. From there it goes into the pump.



Coming out of the pump I had to build another "manifold". Here is a picture. It is much less complicated than it looks. A t-connector from the pump. (Looking at the picture...) To the left is a valve that goes to the wort chiller. To the right there is a valve that allows pumping from from the mash tun to the boil kettle. Going up is the recirculation that goes from the mash tun, through a coil in the hot liquor tank and back in to the mash tun.



After all this was done I added a few lines so that I could run a hose into the system and then run water into the HLT and/or through the wort chiller.

Here is a picture of the system with all three burners going at one time. If you look close you can see all three flames.



The real test will be this weekend when I plan on trying to brew a batch. We will see if I have time to get to that.

Take care.