Like many people who brew, I started on the kitchen stove, moved to a Coleman stove outside, then eventually graduated to a three-legged propane cooker like you see with every turkey frying kit. The problem with that was I could only heat one pot at a time. And three legged burners are not the most stable platform in the world, especially when you add 80-100 lbs of boiling liquid. So when my coworker suggested we partner on a brewing system, I knew welding was in my future. He had some ideas on the overall dimensions, but the final design was mine.
The stand is made out of 1" square steel tubing that I cut and welded
together.
It has casters for easy moving, removable burner grates since
they'll probably rust out some day and a two zone propane burner setup. Everything is
covered with black paint. The burner grates are covered
with a high temperature grill paint. I have high pressure burners under
the wort kettle and hot liquor tank, and a low pressure burner under the
mash tun. The burners on the upper level run off a
single regulator, which works well even when both burners are lit.
Some of the specs for this stand are:
Overall dimensions - 58" L x 20" W x 25" H.
Each burner is held by a cross bar that runs diagonally under each grate.The Dog House Brewstand Fabricating Service
If you are located in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and would be interested in a custom built stand for your brewing set-up, I'd be happy to quote you a price on your design. Or I can help you design something that will meet your needs. I can make it as fancy or as simple as you like. I can deliver anything from a very basic unpainted frame to a ready-to-use setup that needs only your propane and pots. Most stands can be built in under a week once a design is finalized. You can contact me via email at:
the_dog@thedoghouse.net
(sorry for not making it clickable, SPAMBOTS made me do it this way)
The kettles are converted
15.5 gallon beer kegs (legally acquired). I started with straight walled
kegs that were as dent free as I could find. An important check is that
the keg does not wobble when set on a flat surface. You do not want a pot
holding 13 gallons of boiling fluid to wobble! Also be sure that the kegs
do not leak anywhere besides maybe the valves. Many retired kegs leak.
Check all seams for any signs of corrosion. When in doubt, keep looking.
And don't try to use the old style barrel-shaped kegs. The bases are too
narrow to be stable.
Holes were cut in the tops of the kegs were cut using a plywood template and a plasma torch, leaving a rough 12" hole. I then spent about 30 minutes on each keg with an air powered die grinder to clean up the plasma cuts. I used a 12" pot lid to check for roundness. I also spent some time wire brushing the outside of the kegs to remove residue from labels and other "things" I probably don't want to know the identity of.
I have also seen kettles that have the whole top cut off. There are advantages (easier to cut top, easier to clean, better aesthetics for some) and disadvantages (less volume, must add new handles or go without handles, harder to find a lid, increased exposure to sharp edges). If you plan on doing full boils on 10 gallon batches, I recommend the configuration I used.
Once the top openings were complete, I had the 1/2" male pipe nipples welded close to the bottom by a local stainless steel fabricator. These nipples are about 4" long and threaded on each end. Additionally, the mash tun has a 1/2" female nipple about 1/3rd of the way from the bottom of the keg in which I mount a Polarware thermometer. The metal fabricator could have also cut and cleaned the top opening. I save approx $75 by doing it myself.
Once the welding was done, the plumbing began. A 1/2" ball
valve has been screwed onto the bottom nipple of every vessel. The valves I used have
stainless steel balls in either brass or stainless bodies. You can find
them at most home supply stores, and they're not very expensive. At the
output end of each valve, I added a 3/8" hose barb. Then I simply
slip 3/8" ID tubing over the barb to drain from the mash tun into the wort
kettle, and from the wort kettle into the carboys. If you use a pump to
transfer fluids, you'll want to use some kind of screw connector to prevent
leaks. I've thought male garden hose connectors on the valves would work
well with stainless washing machine hoses.
The wort kettle received a piece of 3/8" copper tubing
from the pipe nipple to about 2 inches from the opposite wall of the kettle.
A brass 1/2" female NPT to 3/8" compression fitting makes the connection.
This tube draws the wort from low in the kettle and help keeps particulate
matter out of the carboys. You can use a stainless steel scrub brush
slipped over the end of the copper tubing to filter out hops and any grain that
may have made it into the kettle.
In the mash tun,
there is a 3/8"
copper tube bent at 90º to draw from the bottom of the pot.
The end of the tubing has small slits at the four compass points, then is
slightly flared so that liquid will still drain if the tubing is pushed to the
bottom of the pot. a stainless steel false
bottom keeps the grain out of the tube. All that was left was
to add a couple of 12" diameter lids.
The sparging process is not yet ideal. To get the sparge water onto the top of the mash, I transfer water from the hot liquor
tank to that red Coleman drink cooler. Then I have to lift the cooler on
top of the hot liquor tank. After that, I use a 2 gallon pot to keep the
cooler topped off. The valve
in the cooler has been replaced with a piece of Lexan tube and a stopper.
The cooler will keep the water temperature fairly constant as gravity moves
the water down through the sparging wand above the mash. I use a
stainless steel "spinning" sparger. Be careful not to drop it, or
like mine, yours won't spin very well either.
Yes, building a brewing system like this takes a lot of time, money and effort. So why do it? It's certainly not required to start making beer or even to make good beer. But as with any hobby, things usually progress. You get better at the "sport" so you buy better gear. Better golf clubs, a nicer water ski, more modern sails... or bigger brewing gear. As with most people, my skills progressed and my equipment followed along.
When I first started brewing, 5 gallons was fine. I could do the boil on the kitchen stove using a basic 5 gallon pot. I was using beer kits or bulk malt extract, with little to no grain. I wasn't married, had a gas stove and didn't care about making a mess. I fermented in the laundry room, aged in the laundry room and chilled the homebrew in the kitchen fridge. It was about as basic as you got.
Then I started doing partial mashes. Only 3-4 lbs of grain, but the number of pots needed grew, as did the mess. I added two 2-gallon pots, a funnel and a strainer. I made lots of messes. But the beer got better. And nothing motivates a homebrewer like getting a good batch of beer.
Sometime about 6 months later, I decided that bottling sucked. So I bought kegs and an old fridge. After a couple of false starts, I got everything figured out. But that's a different part of this website...
Unfortunately, kegging would eventually lead to bigger batches as it occurred to me that I could make 10 gallons of beer for about the same amount of effort and mess as 5 gallons. So in a natural progression, I started using a borrowed 38.5 quart pot for my wort kettle and used my 5 gallon pot for the mash tun. I still mashed on the stove, but the new wort kettle was too big to use inside. So hello Academy Sports.... $35 later, I had a nice 120,000 BTU propane cooker. I also borrowed a couple of 6 gallon buckets set up for sparging the mash. This worked OK, but required a lot of back and forth between the kitchen and the garage or back porch.
Fast forward a bit. My coworker suggests bigger is better. Welding ensues. But after several years of waiting for him to catch up, I take matters into my own hands. Now I actually have something that I can use.
In 2006, I bought myself a nice March magnetic drive pump. It took me awhile, but I finally welded a mount that lets me hang the pump under the mash tun. Yet it's removable to allow for easy cleaning. I used an old license plate as a splash shield. It took me a bit to get the hang of setting the valves for proper flow, but it's worked quite well on about 6 batches of beer as of the latest update.
Of course, with a magnetic pump, I know needed a system for quickly removing and connecting hoses. My new system isn't perfect, but some high quality brass fittings get the job done. The biggest pain was converting the 1/2" NPT male threads to the quick connects.
And with that done, I bent some copper tubing into a circle and drilled small holes on the bottom to use as a dripper during recirculation of the mash. It tends to plug up a bit, but is quite handy when I'm doing a double temp mash.
That's easy... Let's brew. Since I started using this latest incarnation, I've made 100's of gallons of beer. I used to brew about every three weeks, but have slowed down to a few times a year. From dragging the stand out to rolling it back in takes 5 to 7 hours. Some of the improvements I'll make as time and money allow:
I can envision somewhere down the road making the transition to an even larger system - possibly a full barrel system. But I'll need a bigger space, more kegs and probably a walk in cooler to make that happen. I'm not holding my breath.