Valenwood Shiny Brewery complete!

[bolty]

I have finally got my shiny brewery all up and ready to brew with. All water tested and ready to go. Thanks to everyone who has helped this happen (physically, and with advice/stealing ideas). Special thanks go to MD for the shiny work he did, and Vossy for the silicone tubing. :thumb:

The connectors are from Intreco, and the pump is a Totton one from fleabay.

Enough wittering. Here are the pics:

Back of HLT with the 2 Backer elements installed using Q-Max 40mm cutter.

and the inside

and the sight tube. Nick, you were right on how much of a PITA it was to calibrate this, and ended up doing it to the litre, just to do the HLT justice!

Currently deciding whether to underlet the mash or just add the strike water, then grain? I have checked both configs with the pipework I have and they both work:

Standard strike

Underlet

Here is the recirc config and the return manifold

I have made a spinning sparge arm, using a compression tee where I nicked the olive on the down pipe and then took the nut off, put loads of PTFE on the thread and put the nut back on so it was tight on the thread, but not the olive. I have tested this with gravity feed and it spins, though maybe too quickly :) Last one is a video

Here is the inside of the boiler with shiny hop stopper (rip off of MDs design)

And finally the recirc through the CFC configuration, saving the water from the CFC into the HLT for cleaning up afterwards.

Had great fun getting this together, and can't wait to use it, though will have to wait a couple of weeks as I have family commitments.

 

[Muddydisco]

Looking good dude :thumb:
Have you tried pumping fluids around it yet?
I think the mash tun needs raising a little to help get the pump primed for mash out?

 

[Dieseljockey]

Brill setup B.. :clap: ..I'm taking great interest in your pipe work...as I picked up my 100l pots up from MD on Wednesday....just waiting for my Q-max cutters to arrive....so won't be far behind you :thumb:

 

[bolty]

Have tried it with 40 litres of water going though in a 'wet run', and seemed to be fine. Though only when its a proper brew will I truly know!

I have got some concrete block I can use to raise the tun up if needed, or before recirc could add some of the sparge liquor, to get more liquid going through.

 

[Tony]

wonderful set up bolty! looks the biz!
:

 

[31bb3]

nice work there mate im ever so envyous

 

[unclepumble]

Lovely shiny can't wait to see the first brew :thumb:

UP

 

[Sean_Mc]

That's a beautiful set up, might try and make the spinny sparge arm

 

[brewzone]

Look forward to seeing Your 1st brewday!

Flickr video of a spinning sparge arm I posted in April

 

[carpet19]

Hi bolty, im tring to make a spinny sparger, what do you mean when you say "a nick in the olive" cheers.

 

[bolty]

Hi Carpet,

The way I did it was to tighten the compression fittings either side fully (for the arms), then with the top compression fitting, fully tighten it (the olive bites into the copper pipe), then undid it fully. I then added a load of PTFE tape to the thread of the top compression fitting and threaded the nut on, though only partially.

Because of the PTFE tape the nut does not have to be fully tightened to lock onto the thread leaving the olive not compressed between the nut and the fitting, thus allowing it to spin. You can then either put food safe, high temp grease or small amount of PTFE tape on the top of the olive, if it does not spin, to help it go round.

I then drilled the holes in the arms, starting from the centre I drilled them in a descending pattern to make sure the centre ones don't take all the water.

 

[Mr_Zee]

Looks good to me.

Where did you get the hose and fittings from?

 

[jonewer]

In fact, where did you get everything from! I want one like that!

 

[bolty]

Hose was from Vossy, and the quick disconnects were from Intrico.

Went for the stainless so I can clean everything with the same stuff (even though Alu was way cheaper)... And I thought that it's an investments, so may as well do it properly. They work an absolute treat and hook up/off really easily.