2. Design
Tiers
I pretty early settled on 2-teir. The brew rig would live in the garage of a 1920s house, that had a ~7.5' ceiling. I'm also not a huge fan of putting scalding liquids above my head. So that made a 3-tier system, not my choice.
A single tier system was an option, but would require 2 pumps. I liked the idea of using the pump only to move hot water to the mash tun, as this would limit the likelihood of bacteria or wild yeast in the pump.
Size
I wanted some flexibility in style of beer and batch size: 10gallon lower gravity brews and 5 gallon high gravity brews with some possible 7 or 8 gallon batches in-between. To achieve this I went wi the following:
- 15.5 Gallon Keggle HTL
- 52 Quart (13 Gallon) Coleman Xtreme Cooler
- 15 Gallon Blichman Boilmaker
This system should handle batches from 15-25 lbs of grain pretty well.
Recycling
I made a few design choices around things I had around. 2 Major components were a set 3 2x4s that were nailed together. They had previously served as a vertical support beam that a previous owner had jacked under the bathroom wall in the basement. I had since replaced with with a microlam beam that spanned the same space horizontally. There was no way to separate them and I couldn't figure I'd ever use them for anything else, so I cut it in 4 18" lengths and used it as the landing platform for the burner legs. If I were doing from scratch I would have used a 4x4.
I also had some big pieces BC 3/4" plywood scraps from a frame for holiday wreath I had made. This amounted to 4 outside 2' x 2' corners with an circular arch. And the inner 36" diameter circle cut in half. I decided to use the corners as braces at the foot of the riser for the cooler where it met the frame. I decided to use the inner semi circles as the platform for the cooler.
I also had a few more studs lying around and some other stock. In the end I bought only 1 2x3 for the framing of this project that was used for the cooler frame to support the plywood. Everything else was from scrap.
Reference
Great thread on wooden homebrew rigs, with lots of pictures and info
Previous | Contents | Next
2. Design
Tiers
I pretty early settled on 2-teir. The brew rig would live in the garage of a 1920s house, that had a ~7.5' ceiling. I'm also not a huge fan of putting scalding liquids above my head. So that made a 3-tier system, not my choice.
A single tier system was an option, but would require 2 pumps. I liked the idea of using the pump only to move hot water to the mash tun, as this would limit the likelihood of bacteria or wild yeast in the pump.
Size
I wanted some flexibility in style of beer and batch size: 10gallon lower gravity brews and 5 gallon high gravity brews with some possible 7 or 8 gallon batches in-between. To achieve this I went wi the following:
- 15.5 Gallon Keggle HTL
- 52 Quart (13 Gallon) Coleman Xtreme Cooler
- 15 Gallon Blichman Boilmaker
This system should handle batches from 15-25 lbs of grain pretty well.
Recycling
I made a few design choices around things I had around. 2 Major components were a set 3 2x4s that were nailed together. They had previously served as a vertical support beam that a previous owner had jacked under the bathroom wall in the basement. I had since replaced with with a microlam beam that spanned the same space horizontally. There was no way to separate them and I couldn't figure I'd ever use them for anything else, so I cut it in 4 18" lengths and used it as the landing platform for the burner legs. If I were doing from scratch I would have used a 4x4.
I also had some big pieces BC 3/4" plywood scraps from a frame for holiday wreath I had made. This amounted to 4 outside 2' x 2' corners with an circular arch. And the inner 36" diameter circle cut in half. I decided to use the corners as braces at the foot of the riser for the cooler where it met the frame. I decided to use the inner semi circles as the platform for the cooler.
I also had a few more studs lying around and some other stock. In the end I bought only 1 2x3 for the framing of this project that was used for the cooler frame to support the plywood. Everything else was from scrap.
Reference
Great thread on wooden homebrew rigs, with lots of pictures and info
Previous | Contents | Next