Budget AG build plan

[mzc]

Firstly thanks for bewildering range of advice and ideas I've picked up lurking, any of the good parts that follow are due to the great information here.

So, my Dad has a decent homebrew set-up for kit beers, and has made a couple of AG kits using his friend's equipment. For christmas I have the possibly naive idea of constructing some AG equipment so that he can do his own.

I am lacking in budget, skills and tools though, so I thought I'd lay out my plan and see if it seems feasible or indeed sensible.

For a mash tun, I'd get a 28L Thermos box, make a 20mm hole through the inner wall and a bigger hole through the insulation to the outside (40mm?), cut up 22mm copper pipe into a manifold with hacksaw slits in the bottom, connected with unsoldered elbows/tees, and one 22->15 reducing tee connected to 15mm copper pipe, through a filed out 15mm compression tank connector (hopefully that comes with a washer), to a full bore 15mm female compression brass ball valve tap.

I think this is doable, though I don't have any hole saws (do I have to get a special bit as well as the hole saw itself to stick on a normal drill?).

And do people usually put hose tails on their mash tun taps? I've seen ones for 1/2" bsp thread (like below) but not 15mm pipe.

The boiler is more tricky, I'm thinking something like the Malt Millers boilers, i.e. a big stainless pot to be heated on a couple of gas hobs on the stove.

A big shiny pot isn't really in budget for me, and my Dad can probably get ahold of a stainless pot easier, so I'm going to leave that up to him.

The plan is a big (32L ish?) stainless pot with a 20mm hole cut out. I'd get the bulkhead 1/2" x 15mm compression extended fitting to go through the hole, a couple of washers and a 1/2" stainless ball valve tap to screw onto the outside of the fitting with a little PTFE tape, and a hose tail.

The hop strainer would be made out of drilled 15mm pipe leftover from the mash tun and connected into the bulkhead fitting, either with a 15mm compression end bit or is just crimping the pipe up adequate?

Should be easy enough to assemble, after cutting the hole in the pot with one of those Q max steel punch thingies.

My main areas of concern are:
- Is boiling with a 32-40L pot on a domestic gas stove top (across a couple of hobs) possible or practical?
- without a HLT, I imagine the process would go like heating the water to a bit above strike temperature in the boiler, using some to warm up the mash tun first, then mashing the grain with more water at around the strike temp for the ~90min, heating more water for sparging and transferring it to some other pan, pouring out the wort into the boiler and batch sparging with water from the pan. Then lifting the boiler full of wort back onto the stove top and boiling away. As I can't stretch to an immersion chiller either, I guess an ice bath or something would be required next, then into the fermenting vessel as usual.

Is this all way too complicated? Is lifting the wort-filled boiler back up to the stove top after sparging going to be too difficult?
- Have I missed anything obvious? Any easy ways to reduce costs?

The 1/2" x 15mm long fittings and s/s ball valve are harder to find and more expensive, BES seems like the best place to get them, but that ruins my plan of getting 22mm x 1m and 15mm x 1m of copper pipe if I get everything from there. Another alternative is to get 15mm x 2m and make the manifold out of 15mm pipe, but seems like people think 22mm is better at reducing stuck mash.

Sorry for the brain dump, I hope some of that is comprehensible, it mostly confuses me.

 

[the dribbler]

I think you will find that your cooker will struggle to boil that quantity of wort.

My Mate does exactly this, and he's french with a cooker with big gas rings. It takes ages to boil - I mean ages, like 1 1/2 hours.

It sure stretches out the brewday.

For cheapness I'd consider a suitable plastic bucket and two Tesco cheap kettle elements.

I lift the wort from the floor to the cooker area (I use electric thou), and it's a pain. And I'm 6.5 18stone. Lifting 40Kg of hot orrible shape is the best,..still I do it every other week.

 

[Dave1970]

I use the boiler as an HLT, mash, then sparge into 2 FV's. These are then lifted & poured into the now empty boiler, splitting it across the 2 makes lifting the hot wort pretty easy- about 17 litres in each isn't hard to lift

 

[bobsbeer]

Welcome. : Nice shiney pots look good but are expensive. Far cheaper to go decent plastic bucket and Tesco elements as mentioned. You could make an HLT and boiler for the price of 1 shiney pot. They cost about £15-20 each and another £40 for the elements. You would only need a 38mm hole cutter and one suitable for the bulkheads. You would still need to lift 30lt of wort in the boiler unless your dad has a shed and can construct a 3 level unit to take the equipment.

 

[TRXnMe]

Where are you? You'll find experienced AG brewers in most cities in the UK, so let us know where you are and you might get some DIY build support from someone with some experience :)

You can build the kit relatively cheaply, it's the tech to build hot liquor tank controllers that either costs money, or requires some savvy to put together.

Gas is OK, but not on your average cooker, look on eBay for the ex army gas burners, they come complete with regulators and all the bits necessary, they are also plenty powerful enough for home brewing.

Electric would be my favourite for a a hot liquor tank, mainly due to the way it can be controlled, with a PID and sensor. Gas is a 50:50 call with any bias being on whether or not you have some where under cover, but outside, to boil with gas.

Do you have a budget in mind? We are all rather good at soending money, and if it's someone else's cash..... :clap: :party:

 

[wilsoa1111]

im still on my DIY AG equipment- plastic boiler is still doing the business-do need to keeps the elements clean or they do **** out then are magically revived by a clean- i lack the planning to syphon so lift the sucker-i only boil off 6-7l fo my 30l of wort isnt too bad to lift

ALSO TO ADD: a wort cooler and someway to attach to hose and sink- can and did make my own but if doing again would pos buy one if could get for £40- defo a great wee gadget- Oh and lots of dif sizes of pvc tubing- always comes in useful

PS to attach the ball valve to siphon can get 15mm Outer Diamet pvc tubing and tighten to fit as if it were copper pipe- works a treat

BTW regardless of what i do i get 72% end efficency and it takes on avg 4-5 hours to do a brew-vs 30mins to do a kit-it is half the price though and twice as tasty and infintly flexible...so i reckon well worth to £80-100 outlay- by brew number ten i will be in profit (and it s getting close

 

[tazuk]

i would go down this route like i did all working sweet here

look here viewtopic.php?f=36&t=31604

 

[mzc]

Thanks for the replies.

Where are you? You'll find experienced AG brewers in most cities in the UK, so let us know where you are and you might get some DIY build support from someone with some experience :)

In London, though I'll have to lug anything I've made oop North for christmas.

In terms of budget, I've priced out the mash tun at about £25 in fittings, pipes, valves and tools from one of the plumber supply websites, plus another £15 for the cooler from amazon.

The reason I was thinking of going for a stainless hob based boiler was really that I could supply all the bits aside from the pot for not much more, another £15-20, and leave sourcing the pot to my Dad (sneaky) but with minimal assembly requirements. However it sounds like it's too optimistic on just a hob.

Building an element powered plastic boiler seemed like it would cost a fair bit more, though that was looking at expensive elements and thermostats and things, though

i would go down this route like i did all working sweet here

look here

your boiler there looks like it could be doable, probably with a smaller bucket, but then budget kettle elements come with the dangers of giving someone else my dodgely prepared electrics (a genuine concern). Without a HLT I'm assuming you use a boiler like that to get to mash temperature water by just checking with a thermometer and turning the elements off?


Now I'm worried I'll end up just producing a mash tun, which won't be any use without a boiler!

 

[wilsoa1111]

TBH ive not had any issues with the electrics so far, they do produce a bit of heat in the element area but they are hot cond sockets- not even tripped them once (do feel a bit more secure when they are on their individual RCD's on seperate double wall sockets in the kitchen .
if cost is still the factor u could look at BIAB- money saved on mash tun could go elsewhere/making all in one boiler and mashtun-was what i was planning till i decided it would result in less eff and more aggro

 

[TRXnMe]

The absolute easiest way to wire the elements is with a Maplins hot plug, it's a kettle connector, splash proof and no more difficult than wiring a standard three pin plug :)

If you're worried about wiring full stop then go gas, something like this (you can get them ex army, with controller etc for cheap) http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Heavy-Duty-St ... 4abf50100b will do as long as it's used where there is good ventilation. Don't use it inside as the gas take the oxygen before you do and that gets unpleasant

 

[DirtyCaner]

If your gonna be spending 40 quid on making your mash tun you migh want to consider this :-

http://www.leylandhomebrew.com/item2761.htm

I use one of these and have done many brews without any problems.

Let me know how you get on,

DirtyC

 

[mzc]

Well, I've finally got all the bits and pieces so I can start constructing the New Improved Plan equipment, using a big plastic bucket, two tesco kettles, and the rest as before. (All rather over budget now, oops). I'm going to use a couple of waterproof enclosures and rewireable hot kettle plugs to try and minimise scary exposed wiring and hopefully make it all a little safer.

Here's the before picture

I stole the waterproof enclosures idea from cnelsonplumber's thread (thanks to him for the extra details!), but my plan to connect up the plug with a rewireable hot kettle socket is probably not going to work as it looks like it just barely won't fit. I'm thinking I may have to chop a bit off the kettle plug to fit it in the enclosure but I figure it's still better to connect to the pins using a wired up plug rather than soldering straight on.

Now just to construct it all. What could possibly go wrong...