My Professional Basement Brewery

[Bryan Rabe]

About a year ago, I set out to construct a professional "German" brewhouse in my basement. While its not completely finished as of yet, it's getting close. I still have the room left to finish, grain storage and delivery, and hop automation left.

I partnered with stout tanks and kettles to come out with a Low Oxygen Brewing specific kettle line, so others could buy these if interested. I designed theses kettles specifically to be optimized for my brewing. So this really is a from scratch build, all the way from designing the kettles, to them being custom built to my specs, etc.

The Vessel specs:

26 gallon HERMS HLT
50ft SS herms coil
Tangential whirlpool inlet
100% tri clover, sanitary welded and mirror polished inside and out
Bottom Drain
On legs and wheels.
Gasketed and clamped lid
Sample Port

20 gallon mash tun
100% tri clover, sanitary welded and mirror polished inside and out.
Custom Lautering pipe
Custom hangers inside for a BIAB bag
Bottom drain
On legs and wheels.
Gasketed and clamped lid
Sample Port

20 Gallon Boil kettle
100% tri clover, sanitary welded and mirror polished inside and out.
Domed bottom, with trub dam
Tangential whirlpool inlet
On legs and wheels.
Gasketed and clamped lid
Sample Port

To control the system, I built a control panel from scratch using a 24" touch screen monitor. I 3d modeled the system from scratch as well, and use that as my background.

Assembled system

The Setup:
The system features roughly 24 electric ball valves
15 solenoid valves
5 proportional valves
4 pumps
8 flow meters
9 temperature sensors
2 Mirco motion mass flow meters, for realtime gravity in the mash tun and boil kettle
Each vessel has its own DO and pH probes.
Each vessel has its own volume sensors
Each vessel has it own Pressure sensors (for monitoring pressure in the vessels)
4 CFC chillers
Each vessel has a dedicated oxygen sensor for o2% in the headspace
Built in acid dosing, and auto ph logic
CIP
RO TDS and replacement automation

I have built the automation scripts from scratch, and as of right now it is nearly 100% automated ( minus grain delivery and hop additions, but thats in progress)

The brewing interface looks like this :

On brewday, I have a separate page that I upload all the variables to that day of brewing

Once I click "Recipe Input", it then goes about its way on brewing.

Which makes it very easy to start brew sessions early in the morning, or even from work, and time it to be home just for hop additions.

Stress free remote brewing:

When brewing is done, the fermentation automation takes over with a few stout conicals, and some SS brew buckets.

Again I 3d modeled everything and built the scripts to control it

Once fermentation is nearing completion and since I brew according to the RHG, the system will transfer the beer over to the serving kegs where its using some more custom scripting to "Auto Spund" the kegs based on their temperature and carbonation level desired. It's all dynamic, and no human interaction is needed.

I built this brewery because the Continental macro brewers and their technology fascinate me. I have the strictest of standards when it comes to beer, and this system allows me to always reproduce the beer I set out to brew. Automation is one of my favorite things to do, and it allows me to have stress free, and always consistent product.




Edit: A lot of people have asked for specs on the vessels.. here they are: http://www.lowoxygenbrewing.com/stout-tanks-and-kettles-llc/

I have a bunch more stuff on FB and IG, and YT

https://www.facebook.com/thebeerery/
https://www.instagram.com/lowoxygenbrewing/

Prost!

 

[Leon103]

Jesus. Every idea I have in my head you have just produced. Lol

How long did it all take and costs? How big is your cellar?

 

[braziliain]

Wow. That is quite something.

 

[Wilfy]

That. Is. Tremendous.

 

[Bryan Rabe]

Jesus. Every idea I have in my head you have just produced. Lol

How long did it all take and costs? How big is your cellar?

Firstly Thanks to all.

Well with designing basically everything with scratch it's been awhile. I designed the kettles late last year. I then had to find someone to build them, and then get them manufactured. While that was happening I had been sourcing parts, and designing other stuff. Assembly and fabrication of the actual stuff started probably July. I started learning the scripting and automation around may or so.. so its pretty much been a year. There was some work in there with Spiedel, helping them develop some kits so it's kind of a blur.

With doing all the heavy lifting myself, I am at about 4000us right now. A lot of ebay, china, and surplus equipment auctions.

My celler is about a 1/3 of my basement so about ~500sq ft. I built the house a few years back and purpose built the celler ( floor drains all over) .

 

[Hoddy]

Whats the controller you've used and what language you using? And is the visualization all VB based or have you got hold of an open source SCADA system?

 

[MyQul]

Thats some serious(ly shiny) kit you have there. What do you do will all the beer as you said in your intro post you've made 1500 batches since 2000

 

[Bryan Rabe]

Whats the controller you've used and what language you using? And is the visualization all VB based or have you got hold of an open source SCADA system?

It's based of Brucontrol, and uses arduino controllers.

Thats some serious(ly shiny) kit you have there. What do you do will all the beer as you said in your intro post you've made 1500 batches since 2000

I have a lot of friends with my beer on tap ( roughly 20 taps, I fill)

 

[britton]

Holy ****!

 

[GerritT]

 

[ACBEV]

Thats some serious(ly shiny) kit you have there.

That's what I thought... Then I thought, hold on a minute, it's almost exactly identical to my brew house! Except for the shinyness and mine is mostly plastic stuff from the car boot sale and an old bucket and wooden spoon. Oh and I've got an on/off switch for my boiler too.

Seriously, it does look good.