Designing your own home brewery Mike Heydenrych Presented at the Worthogs meeting of 12 February 2003

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What do you want to achieve?

The six most important aspects of making good beer Big yeast starters Temperature control Full wort boils Cool your wort quickly Oxygenate your wort Keep good records     Mark Tumarkin, Hogtown Brewers, posted on HBD

How much will your wife allow you to spend?

Mash Cool Ferment Dispense Beginner R500 Kit/stove R0 Pot in sink R0 Bucket R50 Bottles R50 Hobbyist R1500 Partial/zap-zap R100 Immersion R110 Fridge R800 Bottles R50 Enthusiast R10 000 All-grain R3000 Counterflow R300 Cylindro-con R1500 Cornelius kegs R5000

Mash Cool Ferment Dispense This presentation Beginner R500 Kit/stove R0 Pot in sink R0 Bucket R50 Bottles R50 Hobbyist R1500 Partial/zap-zap R100 Immersion R110 Fridge R800 Bottles R50 Enthusiast R10 000 All-grain R3000 Counterflow R300 Cylindro-con R1500 Cornelius kegs R5000

Mash/lauter systems: Cooler box Mash Pipe with holes under to drain away wort

Mash/lauter designs: The Zap-Zap system (Charlie Papazian) Make holes 2-3mm Cheap, easy Lautering is by pouring water from a jug by hand No direct heat

Cold water in Immersion cooler Warm water out Hot wort Kitchen pot

Mash Cool Ferment Dispense Chemical Engineers’ heaven Beginner R500 Kit/stove R0 Pot in sink R0 Bucket R50 Bottles R50 Hobbyist R1500 Partial/zap-zap R100 Immersion R110 Fridge R800 Bottles R50 Enthusiast R10 000 All-grain R3000 Counterflow R300 Cylindro-con R1500 Cornelius kegs R5000

Hot Liquor Tank Three-tier  No pumps  Recirculate by carrying buckets  Climb to look into HLT Mash/ Lauter Kettle

Hot Liquor Tank Two-tier  Easier to check vessels  Needs a pump  Not a great deal of flexibility Mash/ Lauter Kettle

Hot Liquor Tank Single-tier  Easy to work with vessels  Relies on pumps  Needs at least 2 pumps for sparging Mash/ Lauter Kettle

Optional HLT recirc.

Hot Liquor Tank My preferred layout Mash/ Lauter Kettle Sample tap To chiller, fermenter

Hot Liquor Tank Fill Mash tun Mash/ Lauter Kettle Optional HLT recirc.

Green = open/on Red = closed Sample tap To chiller, fermenter

Optional HLT recirc.

Hot Liquor Tank Recirculate/ramp Mash/ Lauter Kettle Sample tap To chiller, fermenter

Optional HLT recirc.

Hot Liquor Tank Sparge Mash/ Lauter Kettle Sample tap To chiller, fermenter

Optional HLT recirc.

Hot Liquor Tank Chill Mash/ Lauter Kettle Sample tap To chiller, fermenter

Hot Liquor Tank 2 volumes Vessel sizes Brew length = 1 volume Kettle Mash/ Lauter 0.8

volumes 1.5

volumes Fermenter 1.2

volumes

700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 0 Does size matter?

(Prices of vessels from Sinvac, May 2002) 100 Cost = (11.2) 2/3 200 300

Volume, litres

400 500

Typical 60ℓ setup

Detailed vessel design   Principles Practicalities  Kettle and Hot Liquor Tank heating    Mash/lauter tun design Counterflow chiller Fermenter

Hot liquor tank - principles   High W/m 2 on heater element OK Thermostat control useful, not essential  If you have a HERMS coil, then movement of the water around the coil is essential, else you get:   cold layers of water at the bottom of the tank poor transfer of energy to the wort in the tube

Hot liquor tank      Need volume - plastic tanks are economical Geyser elements are acceptable  1¼” (32mm) thread Power rating unimportant Geyser thermostat OK Recirculation useful for good temperature control

Hot liquor tank schematic Optional HERMS 2kW geyser element with thermostat Outlet valve Inlet for recirc.

   Kettle principles For a given kW heater element, you will evaporate a given amount of water per hour, whether the lid is on or off.

Rolling boil serves several purposes  Agitation for agglomerating protein particles    Evolution of steam to drive off volatiles Temperature to drive  -acid isomerisation Temperature to drive Maillard (darkening) reactions Wort ingredients foul heater elements and cause them to fail unless the energy density per m 2 is reduced.

Kettle - practicalities     Use stainless steel if possible, and heat using gas Plastic works well, but specify large-area Incoloy heating elements (approx. R250). Strive for 24kW/m 2 (4m for a 3kW element).

3kW elements for kettles from 40-100ℓ You need a good rolling boil, even with the lid off.

Heating elements: sealing detail Kettle wall Electrical box Sealing washer Electrical connector Electric element Securing nut 12 mm

Mashing  Temperature ramping: 3 methods    Add hot water, thinning the mash Heat up recirculated wort, either by  HX with hot liquor (HERMS),  Directly heating wort under the sieve, or  Directly heating wort electrically (RIMS) Heat up mash and grains directly:  Decoction mashing  Heating container directly  Stirring with a heated mashing fork

Mashing - principles    Thinning the wort reduces enzyme activity (but OK for  -amylase?) Heating up recirculated wort denatures enzymes, so keep temp. rise low, and minimise the time the wort spends hot Heating up mash and grains directly: Movement of particles relative to the hot surface NB to prevent burning (phenols)

Mashing – Pros and Cons    HERMS (Heat Exchanger tube in HL tank)  You can’t overheat the wort  You need to stir your HLT with HERMS RIMS (Recirc. Infusion Mashing System), electrical heating of recirculating wort  Best used by controlling the electrical energy input based on the wort temperature.

Direct heating by gas  Long residence time of heated wort under sieve (keep this volume low!)

Sparging – principles Stuck mash - Compressible filter bed Low pressure drop Medium flow Medium pressure drop Med-fast flow High pressure drop Slow flow

Sparging – principles Stuck mash - Compressible filter bed 1 cm/min Pressure drop

Sparging – principles

Lauter plate design

There tend to be more openings on the edge, hence more flow down the sides.

Make as many 2-2,5mm holes as practical, preferably with a greater density of holes in the middle Try to get as close to plug flow as possible – clean water fully replacing sugary wort as it moves down. Start sparging only when the liquid level falls below the top of the grain bed

Sparging – practicalities    For mashing, you want an approximately equal height/diameter ratio to keep heat loss down.

For sparging, you want to keep the surface area as large as possible, but have at least 30cm of bed Balance large surface area with the heat loss, or use separate mash tun + lauter tun.

Mash/lauter tun: design Well insulated Mash Keep volume here minimum Apply flame close to outlet Vessel diameter should be slightly more than the height to get fastest recirc and lautering Recirculation

Counterflow chiller: principles   Maximise heat transfer area Fluid velocity improves heat transfer  Heat transfer rate determined by the side with the lowest fluid velocities Heat transfer occurs across the wall Cold stream Hot stream

Counterflow chiller: principles Temperature Hot wort Cooling water Distance along the length of chiller These lines become parallel if water flow rate decreases to wort flow rate. Typically, you’ll use 3-5x more water than wort.

Counterflow chiller: practicalities   Use 15.2m of 10mm soft copper tubing Use 15m of 20mm garden hose  Roll out copper tubing flat on the lawn, and push it into the hosepipe.

 Use a copper connector (ask Moritz) to make the seal on each end: Warm water out Cold water in Cold wort out Hot wort in

Counterflow chiller: practicalities   Where the chilled wort leaves the counter flow chiller, put it through a 10mm copper coil (5m) dipped in an ice bath Ensure movement of ice water past the tubing by   Jigging the tube bundle, or Putting a fountain pump in the bath C/flow chiller Ice bath To fermenter

My first counterflow chiller

Cylindroconical fermenter      Need < 30° included angle underneath 5% of volume below side offtake Sinvac 180ℓ,

Pioneer 70ℓ

Need to make a stand Open fermenter (loose lid) has worked fine

Grain roaster

Discussion For a counterflow chiller design spreadsheet, [email protected]

Added later, some suppliers (details on Worthogs web site):

Metraclark (Mitchell St, Pta) for 10mm copper tubing Sinvac (Pretoria West, near Iscor) for most plastic drums Pioneer plastics (Rosslyn) for 80 liter conical fermenter Plastilon for silver insulation, plastic buckets, packaging materials in general