Brewing setups vary widely between brewers, so much in fact, that it’s hard to find anyone with the same exact equipment as you. Whether you piece together a system of odds and ends, fabricate it yourself, or order something completely pre-built, it’s always interesting to see what others use to make their beer. This month we will be looking at three do-it-yourself brewing systems from local homebrewers.
First up is Jeff Swem’s massive 25-gallon electric/propane hybrid setup. The rig starts by pre-heating the water with a propane direct-fired water heater which then goes through his water filter and into the 10-gallon HLT (hot liquor tank) and/or mash kettle. Once the strike water is heated to the desired temperature, it’s pumped into the mash tun and mixed with the grain.
The brains of Swem’s rig is the massive control box the houses the pumps and proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller, which calculates the difference between a measured process variable and a desired setpoint. In this case the mash or sparging temperature is chosen and the controller will maintain the set temperature (measured by a thermometer in the HLT). If the temperature falls below the chosen value, an electric heating element in the HLT is activated to push the temperature back to the desired setpoint. The control system is set up on one side for a Heat Exchanged Recirculating Mash System (HERMS), a process where wort is passed through a copper coil heat exchanger inside of the HLT. The other side has a PID controller for mash out and/or sparging the wort, which is then pumped over to his propane direct-fired boil kettle.
Using his massive four-coil wort chiller to cool down, Swem then aerates with pure oxygen through his DIY oxygen stone wand. The collected 20 gallons or less of wort is then transferred into a 22-gallon conical fermentor that resides in a temperature-controlled fermentation closet. A PID controller is once again used to control heating and cooling elements inside the closet. The whole setup, including the brewing system and fermentation closest, costs around $2000 – much less than such a system would cost without a DIY approach.
George Thornton, owner of The Homebrewer in North Park, has a very cool, all-electric setup using two 10-gallon cylindrical coolers and a converted half-barrel keg for a boil kettle. His electric control box contains two PID controllers, one for the HLT and one for the boil kettle. The HLT cooler has a 2000W heating element installed in the bottom and runs off 110V from the control box. The other cooler is a simple mash tun with a mesh tube screen for lautering.
Thornton’s converted keg boil kettle, or “keggle,” contains a 5500W heating element hooked up to a 220V outlet on the control box. Switched dual electrical sockets on the control box allow pumps to be used to re-circulate the mash and for pumping wort through a plate chiller after the end of the boil. The system is very compact and great for using indoors or in small spaces. Danny Leaf from Leaf Sales in Chula Vista assembled and wired Thornton’s control box and was also responsible for most of the fabrication on Jeff’s system.
On a smaller scale, Chris Manzi, manager at The Homebrewer, has a more manual but still compact brewing rig featuring two eight-gallon stainless steel kettles on top of a 60,000 BTU dual burner propane fired stove. On a shelf to its left sits a 10-gallon cylindrical cooler mash tun with a mesh tube screen for lautering. The HLT must be lifted off the stove to add the strike water into the mash tun, and the boil kettle has to sit below the mash tun to collect wort before being lifted back onto the burner. While a pump could help out, it’s rather easy doing it manually since everything is compact and he’s only dealing with less than six gallons of wort or water at a time.
The coolest part about Manzi’s rig is his water setup. With an input hose connection he can either go through his water filter and into the HLT, or rout the water around to where his mash tun normally sits for use as a rinse station once brewing is complete. With a robust two-coil immersion copper chiller, wort for a five-gallon batch can be cooled down to yeast pitching temperature within seven minutes when pumping ice water through the chiller. The rig currently doesn’t have any wheels but the addition of a couple casters would make it even easier to move around.
So there you have it, three DIY systems from a larger nano-sized brewing scale all the way down to a more traditional five-gallon homebrewing setup. Hopefully the rigs will inspire those of you looking to take your brewing system to the next level.