brewing a Zwickel beer

[Zwickel]

g´day homebrewers,

decided to do a brewday today, since the weather is not eligble to do anything else, it´s 10°C outside and showery....brrrr...
11kg of foinest Pilsener malt are ready to get crushed:

That´s my baby, making 60 litres of foinest beers, computer controlled:

The windshield is around the MLT on the left, right side stands the HLT, each provided with its own gas burner.

Front view of the MLT:

as the work proceeds, I´m gonna show you more pics.

Ch(B)eers :drunk:

 

[corby_brewer]

hope you have a good one mate. :thumb:
P.S nice and sunny in england 18 degrees

 

[llannige]

Have a good un.

Great set up by the way. :thumb:

 

[Zwickel]

....P.S nice and sunny in england 18 degrees

that makes me jealous, normally we get only bad weathers coming from England

View on top of the MLT:

On top of the stirrer is placed a spare thermometer, then the on left the main temp probe, another temp probe and the inlet for the sparge water, one more pic:

now have to go for lautering

 

[A T]

Wow nice set up :clap: :clap: Enjoy your brewday :thumb:

 

[dandan]

P.S nice and sunny in england 18 degrees

Its 13c up here in Lancashire and pouring it down!

Nice set up Have a good brewday!

 

[jamesb]

Cool up here in sunny North Wales and I'm fresh from a rant at the Wickes manager about why every DIY store these days are bloody useless. Plumb Centre was equally as bad "nah, they dahn't make such a thing la". Had to whip out my BES catalogue to prove otherwise. :grrr:

Anyway, good luck with the brew and I demand more details on the computer control please :geek:

 

[Zwickel]

Thanks brewers for the good wishes,

lautering has been done, the windshield is on the HLT and 80litres of wort are starting to boil:

what a wonderful world..... :mrgreen:

 

[leedsbrew]

Awesome set up matey! Hope all goes well. Leeds in "Sunny Yorkshire" is currently 14 deg C and raining! :thumb:

 

[Zwickel]

....Anyway, good luck with the brew and I demand more details on the computer control please :geek:

Allow me to introduce/explain my technical equipment in another thread. May be some of you homebrewers are interested in a computer aided brewing system, although it may be only from interest if you wanna do step mash.
The program is written by a friend of mine and is freeware. Basically its controlling the temp of the MLT and HLT and switches on and off the stirrer and gas burners.
Inbuilt is a water level sensor, so filling the pots with water is also automated.

Cheers :

 

[tubby_shaw]

What a great brewery and brewday thread :thumb:

 

[ano]

The program is written by a friend of mine and is freeware. Basically its controlling the temp of the MLT and HLT and switches on and off the stirrer and gas burners.
Inbuilt is a water level sensor, so filling the pots with water is also automated.

Nice, yeah further explanation would be nice =) Controlled through serial ports?

 

[Zwickel]

The program is written by a friend of mine and is freeware. Basically its controlling the temp of the MLT and HLT and switches on and off the stirrer and gas burners.
Inbuilt is a water level sensor, so filling the pots with water is also automated.

Nice, yeah further explanation would be nice =) Controlled through serial ports?

yeah, on the serial ports are some Dallas 18S20 temp sensors and at the parallel port is a 8bit relais card with 8 switchable relais.
I´m a little bit in rush at the moment, right now have to do the whirlpool, cooling down, aerating and pitching the yeast.

I´ll continue the thread, posting pics, as I´m proceeding with the brew.

 

[ano]

Take your time, you can always post more detailed info later in the Equipment forum. I'm sure many would be interested.

 

[A T]

Oh yea i'm sure everybody would love to read about this in a thread of its own It looks amazing

 

[Zwickel]

Thanks mates, your comments are highly appreciated.

so, doing the whirlpool, the mash paddle stands ready to go:

the wort is spinning:

after the debris has settled down, the wort flows by gravity through the plate heat exchanger into the buffer:

it takes about 20min. to get around 66l through. 66l is the final amount of wort.

okay, I´ve forgotten to mention:
I get started with 40l of water. first lautering brings me around 30l "vorlauf"
then batch sparge with another 30l of water, lautering agin,
then fly sparge another 16 litres of water.

altogether I´ve used 86 litres of water.

That brings me around 66 litres of wort.
Because my fermenter holds only 60l, I´m gonna freeze 6 litres of wort in portions of 1l, just to feed the yeast when I need it next time for a brew.

 

[Zwickel]

here one can see a graph that shows the water inlet temp of the heatexchanger and the wort out temp.

water is at 14.3°C, wort out is at 15°C:

that´s a little bit too warm for pitching the yeast, have to cool it down a bit more in the fridge.

The yeast stands ready to get pitched:

here one can see how the whirlpool works:

 

[Wez]

Awesome :clap:

 

[commsbiff]

Gah - I only wish I lived in Hamburg, so I could come and see that awesome setup you've got. Top banana!

 

[Zwickel]

Now I´m home and hosed.

Finally hit the targed spot on:

12° Plato is an OG of~1048, just Bingo.

Now the wort is cooling down, guess it takes a few more hours, then I´m going to pitch the yeast and after 5 days racking the young beer into kegs.

So I can survive the next 3 weeks, then have to brew again

Cheers mates :drunk: