C.D.'s Brewery.

[CD]

I enjoy seeing pictures of other people’s set-ups, so thought my own slightly odd one might be of interest. The reason it is different, is that it is built around an impulse-purchase I made in 1984 of a couple of stainless steel gas-fired boilers that were in the Government Surplus store I’d gone into to buy some rope. They’d come from a school kitchen I was told, were of 30 and 38 gallon capacity, and cost me a hundred quid the pair.

The smaller one, with burner removed, insulated with two-part polyurethane foam, and a perforated false bottom fitted, made a mash tun large enough to handle a 25kg sack of pale malt, plus whatever adjuncts (usually crystal, wheat, and chocolate malts) tickle my fancy. The larger one became the Copper, after the main and pilot jets in the 80,000 Btu/hr burner were changed to convert it from North Sea Gas to Propane.

I first used one of those plastic containers concentrated fruit juice is imported in, then sold to farmers for water butts, as a fermenting vessel, but as the result tasted like shandy, decided to fabricate a stainless steel cylindriconical one, which is encased in a water jacket made from a couple of old 500 gallon drums, joined and sheathed internally with fibreglass.

You'll have to look at that one sideways, as I don't know how to rotate it! That's enough for an initial post, and if anyone is interested I will describe the sparging, wort transfer, and temperature control systems later.

 

[stan.distortion]

Interested! You struck gold with those kettles and the fermenter looks really impressive.

 

[CD]

Interested! You struck gold with those kettles and the fermenter looks really impressive.

They are great. Their bottom is slightly domed, and a clever semi-circular channel connects the tap to the centre, so every last drop comes out when emptied. The aluminium lids are counter-balanced by two cast iron weights at the back. I’ll correct yesterday’s mistake while I’m on – shown how by grandson!

 

[Gingerbrews]

Bloody he'll, that's impressive. What size of brews are you doing with that kit?

 

[CD]

It could handle 1bbl (36 gallons), but with only 4 or so people drinking it, I brew 30 gallons every 3 months approx.

 

[CD]

Crushing and Mashing

Two-roller mill powered by a Metabo DZ 12 SP drill. Battery lasts 12 mins, which crushes just over half of the 28Kg grist. Gap set at 38 thou. Speed 250 RPM. Grist hopper is a dustbin with a 1 ½” hole in the bottom, initially sealed with duct tape. Below - Assistant Brewer mashing in.

We were not on the mains, and whilst our Lister 4.5KVa single-cylinder lighting plant could boil a kettle, that was about it, so I fitted a gas instant water heater to fill the mash tun with the 16 ½ gallons needed, and then do the sparge.

Even after I’d tweaked it to supply hotter water than it was designed for, in cold weather it struggled to reach the strike temperature of 162F (72C), so I added the electric booster shown. It is supplied via a Simmerstat, which switches it on for an adjustable time every 30 seconds. It takes 45 minutes to fill the MT and an hour and a quarter to sparge, so brewing is a fairly lengthy process. (To be continued).

 

[CD]

Sparging and Wort Transfer

The sparger arms are driven by a synchronous clock motor, so rotate at exactly 1 RPM. Each arm has 15 tiny holes underneath, of 0.4mm diameter. The hot water inlet is top left, via one of the support arms. I took the photo to show the spray pattern, but it also shows the MT false bottom. The holes are 1.8mm dia., and as I have never had a stuck mash, that must be just right.

This Stuart Turner centrifugal pump is fed via a rotary transformer, so its speed can be varied, and it is used to transfer the wort from the mash tun to the copper, to recirculate it through the hop bed in the copper, and to transfer it from the copper to the fermenting vessel. The Billy Can (Under Back in brewery parlance), has a nylon bag filter to catch bits of barley or hops, and a sieve to stop the bag getting sucked into its outlet. Although it looks a right lash-up, it works fine, and when pumping is finished, the bit remaining can be emptied by tipping it into the stainless steel bucket.

This is the recirculating set-up, the wort getting pumped back tangentially and beneath the surface which creats a whirlpool effect, so the hop trub forms a mound in the centre. The bend is not fitted when filling the copper. The piece of perforated stainless sheet, which prevents hops from blocking the outlet, came from a washing machine drum that somebody had fly-tipped by the side of the road on my way to work !
That just leaves the temperature control systems, which I will do tomorrow, then unless anybody has any questions, I'll leave you all in peace.

 

[foxy]

What I find incredible is the building of your home brewery in 1985! Most home brewers would have been doing kits I would imagine.
I do have one niggling question, when you went to the government surplus store, did you buy the rope?

 

[Oneflewover]

Great read, thanks for posting. Love the ingenuity and resourcefulness

 

[Fireside Ales Homebrewery]

This set up looks fantastic. Nice one

 

[CD]

What I find incredible is the building of your home brewery in 1985! Most home brewers would have been doing kits I would imagine.
I do have one niggling question, when you went to the government surplus store, did you buy the rope?

Hi Foxy - Yes I bought the rope, and probably used some of it to tie my purchases down in my wife’s horse trailer when I collected them the following day. Surprisingly I’ve still got the invoice for them, made out to my firm for a ‘quantity of office equipment’. Now I wonder why that was !

 

[foxy]

Hi Foxy - Yes I bought the rope, and probably used some of it to tie my purchases down in my wife’s horse trailer when I collected them the following day. Surprisingly I’ve still got the invoice for them, made out to my firm for a ‘quantity of office equipment’. Now I wonder why that was !

View attachment 28269

I doubt it would be for tax reasons.
The reason I asked if you got the rope, a guy I worked with (he was Swiss) working over here under contract had to go in the morning to the railway station to get the Sunday papers. (in Switzerland) He never got back until Tuesday morning, he met an old friend and went on the tear, taking in bars and knocking shops no doubt. His wife told me he never did bring home the Sunday papers and was still wearing his carpet slippers.

 

[CD]

Temperature Control Systems
We have our own well, so the copious quantity of water used to cool the hot wort down to pitching temperature costs nothing. It goes in the bottom connection to the FV water jacket (which has an elbow inside to start it swirling around), and out the top one which is piped to a drain.

This Electrician’s Nightmare is the control panel. The sensor of the Lae Thermomostat – a word I should register and sell to Ink Bird – is in a PVC pipe pushed through a hole at the very top of the FV, its end sealed and weighted by a stainless bolt so it doesn’t float. In Heat and Pump mode, a central heating pump circulates water from the second connection down to the water jacket, through a metal box containing a 2.6Kw kettle element, and back into the bottom connection. In Cool and Pump mode, the water is pumped through a Maxi 210 shelf cooler which is the other side of the wall. To heat, the pump goes all the time, and the heater is switched on and off (via a HD relay) by the controller. To cool, the cooler goes all the time, and the pump is switched on and off by it.
The box with the large knob contains the rotary transformer which varies the speed of the wort transfer pump, which is plugged into the black socket near the blue plug, and supplied through a remote control socket, so the pump can be started and stopped from anywhere in the brewery. The round thing is the simmerstat which controls the sparge booster heater, and the black box contains the 4 position rotary switch, and an unbelievable maze of wires!

The old chest freezer beer store, which can hold 5 x 5 gallon and 2 x 3 gallon PBs, is maintained at a cool cellar temperature of around 12.5C, summer and winter, by a similar system. The Maxi 110 unit copes, even in an 80C heatwave. Also shown is the Brewery Tap.

This is a picture of the outside of the Brewery. Mind you, if anybody had been standing where the photo was taken from in 1941, they would have taken a direct hit by one of a stick of bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe, resulting in how the place looked when we found it in 1977. And on that little bit of information, I’ll sign off.

 

[samale]

Great read and a great setup you have:hat:

 

[Surfingobo]

What a setup. Could you talk more about what you brew on it? Do you drink the same beer for 3 months or do you modify the wort for a slight variation in each keg?

 

[CD]

Thanks for the compliment. I just brew the beer that I enjoy the most, honed and refined over many years of experimenting (both in the brewery and at Beer Festivals). All the casks are identical, though I don’t fine a couple of them at racking, and do this a week before they come on stream.
Give me a day or two, and I’ll post the recipe for you to try once you’ve scaled it down.

 

[stan.distortion]

Can you include what your water is like please? I'm hoping yours is similar to mine here, very soft with a peaty bitterness, not easy to find recipes that work well with it.

 

[CD]

Our water comes off Dartmoor, and is soft. Devonport Dockyard got the same water, via Drake's Leat, and was one of the only places where ships could fill their boilers without it being treated I believe. I just use Gypsum for water treatment. Used to add a bit of Epsom Salts, but don't bother now.

 

[Gerryjo]

Excellent reading...

 

[CD]

What a setup. Could you talk more about what you brew on it? Do you drink the same beer for 3 months or do you modify the wort for a slight variation in each keg?

Herewith details of Gyle 305 brewed on Jan 24th this year, which produced 34½ gallons at 4.4% ABV.

Grain: 25Kg Simpsons Golden Promise Pale, 1½ Kg Crystal, 1½ Kg Wheat, 250gms Chocolate Malts.

Hops: First Gold (9.16 alpha), Goldings (5.2 alpha). 150gms FG start of boil; 100gms FG + 100gms G after 1 hour; 175gms G 2 minutes before off. Total boil 80 minutes.

250gms Molasses (Billingtons) added to Cu half way through sparge. Water treatment : 3½ tsps. In MT prior to mash, 5 x 1 tsps sprinkled on top of grain at intervals during sparge. 10oz Irish Moss added to CU 20 mins before end of boil. 1lb brewer’s yeast, cropped from the top of a local Micro’s FV the previous week. 1pt Auxiliary and 1 ltr Isinglass finings, details later.

Brew Day. Start filling MT 9.10am, filled to 16½ gall 9.55. Hoist grain hopper (dustbin) over MT, check temperature carefully with accurate glass thermometer, when at 72C start mashing, see photo, finish mash 10.10am. Temp 65C. Set Taps (start transferring wort to Cu and start sparge) 12.10. Copper Up (full – 2” below top!) 1.30pm. Boil starts 2pm, off 3.20.

After 1 hours rest (for both wort and brewer) collect half a pyrex jug full from the top of the Cu, cool to 20C, and add to yeast to wake it up. Start 15 minute whirlpool to recirculate wort through hop bed, then pump it up into FV. Start cooling water flow. When temp is down to about 24C, check original gravity which was 43, add sample jar content to yeast, which was working away, then add it to the fermentor, time 6pm.

I reckon that’s enough for now, but will detail the fermentation and consumption processes shortly.