BUBBAJOHNS BREWERY

Let me throughout my disclaimer:  I herniated a couple discs and ended up having surgery to relieve the pain, so I am going from the great invincible Bubba that can lift 15gal of boiling water up to a higher spot (better gravity flow) to how can I brew with a bad back and not hurt it.  The biggest lesson I learned during this is after 10 years of brewing and 5 years of it doing all grain, using nothing other than gravity is that once you get a pump to run in the system it shows you how nice 2 pumps would be in the system. 

 The dimensions are 2'X6'5"X2' (fits perfect inside the bed of my F-150) and a height of 26.5" w/o mash tun or 50" with it.  There are still some miner things that have to be fabricated, mounted, and hooked up, but it was the smoothest batch of beer we have ever made.  The solder jobs on the plumbing didn't work out that good and 1st run up we only had 2 leaks, but after I moved the pumps around (to see if I could remove everything) it created an additional 3 leaks at various times (never at the same time) and the repairs to those without putting too much heat on the pump heads was fun to say the least.   The plumbing is kind of isolated yet redundant and this allows us to use both or just 1 incase we lose one.  All-in-all it came out good and we have plenty of room for expansion in the future, with the addition of a keg as HLT everything seemed to fly bye since we had plenty of hot water.

I am still experimenting with how I am cooling everything down.  The batch above has water going thru a CFC and then into a IC.  I would cool down with the IC until about 140 then start cycling the wort thru the CFC and back until I was at a constant temp below 70 degrees.  This last time I ran two different hoses to each of the devices and ran them together at the start.  Hard to tell what will be next I am trying to balance the system between quickly cooling and not wasting a lot of water, and on that note my water averages about 58 degrees.

Here is the latest and greatest.  I modified some of the plumbing to 1/2" vinyl tubing.  With the rigid line it made it hard to reconnect after cleaning, so we went with the flexible line and different connections to make it not only easier, but also quicker. 

Here is what it looks like from the back.  I still haven't wired the remote starters so until then we use the propane bottle to lite it off.

This is the latest and greatest for the plumbing.  I still need to change the outputs, so they are up against the frame and need to make a cover for the pumps.  The set up right now works pretty good but a lot of extra wire and lines right now, so I plan to hard wire the pumps eventually.  I have a lot of valves as it is in this but would like to add 2 more to completely isolate the the input to the second pump.

Last but least the grain mill.  I want to motorize it and have it completely in this box, but sense it is a single roller (Philmill) I might just have to spend the money and get a dual roller.  I have made probably at least 20 batches with this and the majority of those being 12.5 gals and it has worked perfect every time, so I am in no hurry to replace it. 

Previous Lessons Learned

The first thing you will notice when surfing the Internet for ideas on how to build a beer brewing stand is there is not a standard design to follow.  Everybody builds to their own tastes and needs, so taking that into account I decided to make a prototype out of wood and learn the lessons of what is good and what is bad with the design.  The major problem with my system is my HLT is half or more as small as the mash tun.  The procedures have been to heat 5 gal of water and then transfer it into a  igloo cooler and then heat  a additional 5-6 gals for the sparge and this has caused me to run behind and really run behind when trying to do a double batch.

The main concern I had was to size and where would it be stored. I came up with the max height and length being 5' and width of  22".  I built the stand out of 4. 2"x4"x8', 2. 1"x5"x8', 2. 2"X2"X8", and last but least scrap 3/8" plywood I had laying around (actually all the wood was scrap I had laying around from other projects.  Everything has 3" woodscrews and gorilla glue holding it together.  I saw a couple pages  (wish I could give them credit but due to computer reformats I no longer have that info) that had the burner stand sideways and I liked this, and this lead to the  first lesson learned:  when you are making the base for a 16" keg bottom and try and turn it sideways you need a inside diameter of 22" s and not the 18" I left, so with the 18" that gives me 1" all around and makes for good fire hazards.   The 7.5 gal pot only has a 13" base so that one got mounted the way i wanted. 

As you can see in the below pictures everything worked, but is a major fire hazard and needed to be watched and watered constantly especially after the 4th batch.  I found out with the smaller wind break on the HLT burner that if it is turned up all the way you will get fire out the bottom and this melted the wires to the starter, but it still works so I am not touching it it.

As I said before that the biggest thing 1 pump made me realize is how nice 2 would be.  I used air type quick disconnects with nylon braided beverage hose.  The first batch we got grain hulls stuck inside it which killed the flow until we cleaned it out.  I mounted a valve after the pump for use adjusting the flow during the sparge (I fly sparge).  Timing is essential as I said you have to move the sparge water from HLT1 to HLT2 before starting the sparge or plan on lifting it up.    The last issue I had was will I blow myself up with the propane tanks in-between the burners but the heat shields did their job.

The information attained from the wood stand lead to the creation up above and it became a mammoth stand, made from bed frames, two pumps, and on its first maiden voyage did not have any hiccups. I learned a few lessons during construction of this: 1.  I am not a welder (I did a nice bead 1/4" from the spot it should have been and couldn't tell) now if I could see with a welding shield on I might be a damn good welder, but that is not the case, so it was a good thing my brewing buddy KJ could weld.  2. Just because it looks good on paper does not mean the end result will look just like it, which means go with the flow.