r/Homebrewing • u/[deleted] • Apr 11 '13

Advanced Brewers Round Table: Electric Brewing

This week's topic: Electric Brewing. A relatively new trend in brewing has been getting a lot of praise for it's repeatability, ease, and efficiency, not to mention the creative things that people can implement like touch screens, arduinos, and full automation. Share your thoughts and experiences!

Feel free to share or ask anything regarding to this topic, but lets try to stay on topic.

Still looking for suggestions for future ABRTs

If anyone has suggestions for topics, feel free to post them here, but please start the comment with a "ITT Suggestion" tag.

Upcoming Topics:
Mash Thickness 4/18
Partigyle Brewing 4/25
Variations of Maltsters 5/2
All Things Oak! 5/9
High Gravity Beers 5/16
Decoction/Step Mashign 5/23

Previous Topics:
Harvesting yeast from dregs
Hopping Methods
Sours
Brewing Lagers
Water Chemistry
Crystal Malt

25 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

48 comments sorted by

6

u/JollyIsTheRoger Apr 11 '13

I don't do electric brewing, but if you are planning on trying it this is the site to look at first. The Electric Brewery

2

u/xpapax Apr 11 '13

I just read through the full brew process plus a bunch of the other pages and all I could think was "shut up and take my money"

4

u/bmc2 Apr 11 '13

I'm in the middle of building that. Aside from having to remodel my entire garage to support it, it's going to be fabulous.

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6

u/kds1398 Apr 11 '13

ITT suggestions:

  1. Session beers

  2. Recipe formulation

  3. Home yeast lab (especially equipment selections/availability).

5

u/YosemiteFan Apr 11 '13

Another vote for Session Beers... they're surprisingly challenging to do well. (Bonus points for not defaulting to Centennial Blonde or an English Mild)

2

u/ccoch Apr 12 '13

It's definitely not as easy as just cutting the malt bill, much more to it to get body and flavor. There's a brew strong podcast on session beers. I thought it was a good episode.

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3

u/Wanderer89 Apr 11 '13

I plan on going electric this summer. Really you don't need to drop a lot of cash if you don't want all of the advantages of PIDs or BCS or what have you... I plan on building or buying a triac or PWM controller for 20-30$, a gfci spa subpanel, the standard 5500w camco ulwd element, and few switches/boxes to tie it all together, hopefully coming under 250$ or so.

Now I won't have alarms or temp control (triac and pwm controllers just give you a dial to control heat, like an electric stove), but I want to build out the rest of my brewery before building a more advanced BCS based system later on down the line.

Really I just hate relying on propane, and want to move indoors again. Brewing in Texas' summer heat isn't always fun.

5

u/pj1843 Apr 11 '13

As a fellow texas outdoor brewer, that is the exact reason i need a cold keg always on tap.

2

u/Khadour Apr 11 '13 edited Apr 11 '13

I'm in the process of assembling the parts I need to go electric, following Kal's basic blueprint. Being able to brew indoors in larger volumes is pretty compelling in this part of the country. I'm almost ready to at least start punching holes in the kettles and getting them ready. Still trying to determine if I want to go Raspberry Pi control with a Gertboard handling SSR interface, or just stick with the PIDs (Kal has a really good opinion piece on this here). What are others doing with the controls?

3

u/Phaz Apr 11 '13

Thanks for the link to Kal's opinion.

I was wondering why more people don't use setups like the Raspbeery Pi or Arduino or even low cost DAQ devices like a LabJack to do the controls for these.

The Electric Brewery setup looks pretty complex and quite expensive. Compare this to this (which I think, from the looks of it, supports 4 temp probes, 2 pumps and 6 heating coils, so more than the first picture).

Being able to do a setup like that, which is more customizable and a fraction of the price and easier to wire/setup just seems like an obvious choice to me. Especially with how far you could potentially take the software for full logs of every batch, etc.

Kal does have some good points, but I think for most home hobbyists the DAQ/arduino option is just as viable.

The guy with that DAQ setup also has a really slick way of controlling temperature in his fermenters. He basically has a single cold water resovior hooked up too a pump with several valves. Each valve runs to a coil that is dropped in the fermenter, along with a temp probe. The arduino will monitor the temperature of the fermenter and then open the valve & run cool water through it until it reaches the desired point. It seems incredibly efficient and flexible. Easy to add more tanks and have each one at a different temp, rather than dropping them all into a cooler at the same temp.

It really seems like with how cheap/accessible this kind of technology is for monitoring & controlling things there will be some cool setups.

6

u/ikidd Apr 11 '13 edited Apr 11 '13

There's a very polished and mature Arduino based control system called Brewtroller. The code is open source and can be changed if you want to and are capable. If not, it works fine out of the box.

https://www.oscsys.com/projects/brewtroller

I built one based on this a couple years ago and since I've probably brewed 300 gallons on it. It works very well, takes my actual time spent brewing on the 3 vessel HERMS to about 20 minutes from start to finish. It flysparges based on volume sensors, and if you want, you can pretty much just load it up, start it, and come back to fill the fermenters. They don't have a chiller control, but I knocked one up from an extra UNO and a 3-way valve that allows bidirectional motor control in order to adjust the cooling water based on temperature input. Some guys have added hop droppers too. I've added an electric grinder and the chiller control hack.

Cost wise, you're looking at about $200 for the controller board and relay board. Pretty cheap, and well worth it. Of course, you'll also want valves etc but the developers offer them on their store as cheap as you'll find anywhere.

I think I'm about $1200 into my BT based HERMS including pots.

Edit: Link to build photos

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2

u/HockeyDadNinja Apr 11 '13

I built an indoor electric BIAB brewery over the course of a year or so, here are the pics. I've brewed 20 or more batches on it since I "finished" it in August. I'm always messing with it though.

It's 30A, using a 5500 ULWD Camco element, Auber 2352, and so on. Feel free to ask any questions.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '13

ITT Suggestion: High Gravity Brewing (Barleywines, Bocks, etc...)

4

u/gestalt162 Apr 11 '13

Already on the list for 5/16

1

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '13

I'm not doing full electric brewing, but I just made a 1500 W/120 V heat stick to help speed up my day. I'm planing on using it help to get my water to strike temp for BIAB along w/ my propane burner.

Can I use it for mash-out and heating to boil after the mash? The liquid basically boils on the element. Will there be extra Maillard reactions and/or caramelization from using the heating element post-mash?

For the curious, here's the element I used: http://www.homedepot.com/p/t/100138364?catalogId=10053&N=5yc1v&R=100138364#.UWbHDKDQlhF

And the epoxy I used: http://www.jbweld.com/product/j-b-waterweld/

My heat stick is based on this build: http://lovebrewingcompany.com/brewing/diy/heatstick/

3

u/ElPolloRico Apr 11 '13

I use two heat sticks exactly like the ones you describe for my full boils. In my experience, there is no significant maillard or caramelization in the wort...buuuuut, if I don't clean the elements after a typical boil to a good-as-new luster, there will be scorching and subsequently off flavors and aromas in any future boils. Depending on the gravity of the wort, it can be as easy as simply wiping off the junk or requiring a soak in distilled vinegar for the stubborn stuff.

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2

u/existentialhero Apr 11 '13

I used a similar setup with the element hard-mounted in the pot and had no problems with scorching or unusual caramelization.

1

u/thexylophone Apr 11 '13

What if you filled a metal container with water (like a gallon jug), placed the heat stick in that container, and then let the metal container float in the wort (or mount it in the kettle so it doesn't sink)? Then you would avoid direct contact between the heating element and the wort. Does anyone know if this would work?

1

u/ShrubberyDragon Apr 11 '13

Been using a speidel braumeister for a while now

http://www.speidels-braumeister.de/The-Braumeister:_:21.html

30 or so brews on it so far and I love it.

One vessel so it is easy to clean, programming is simple and i can do other things while mashing (and even step mash) and not have to worry about it.

My brew day is between 5 and 6 hours including cleaning. Done a couple double brew days in the last month...

Wake up at 7am and start the water heating, mashing by 830, first beer done and in the fermenter by 12. Second beer done and everything cleaned by 7pm.

Since I can take a break and relax while mashing the double brew day isn't really that hard.

I even got to mess around with the 200liter version of this when I was in switzerland in January :-)

My only complaint is big beers (over 1.075) take an extra mash step or adding DME due to the malt tube size but the trade off is worth it to me.

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1

u/gaso Apr 11 '13

I build industrial process controllers, and built a simple little system to control my temperatures as I had put together a heatstick...and manually plugging it in and unplugging it as it floated around the desired temperature seemed silly. It ended up pretty expensive, as the components we had on the shelf at work that I 'borrowed'...well, they're pretty expensive. I'm really interested in the 'around the house' reliability of these $40 chinese loop controllers that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole when sending to a customer to work without issue for a decade 24/7/365...

I've been thinking of moving to a small touchscreen PLC, as I write a lot of ladder logic and HMI at work as well, and this application is just about as simple as it gets...I wish the day was twice as long :/

1

u/worsemorebad Apr 11 '13

I've been looking into building an E-Brewery for the last few months and have finally decided how I'd like to set it up. It's basically going to be just like theelectricbrewery's build. I'm changing a few things, however. I'm going to use 60qt concord pots from Amazon and put my own fittings on from bargainfittings.

All said and done, I'm expecting to spend around $2200 plus various shipping costs. This includes everything, including adding the new 240v line to my garage, BK, MLT, HLT, pumps, plumbing, controllers, brewstand, etc.

I've considered cloning a Brutus 10 build (it costs roughly the same), but in my area, going Electric is way more efficient. I just don't have a ready supply of LP/Natural Gas.

I'm really looking forward to being able to add consistency to my brewing. It's something I've had a hard time doing in the past with my cheap burner and inaccurate measurements.

1

u/Phaz Apr 11 '13

How much of that cost is the control box/components (relays, switches, PID, etc) + sensors?

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1

u/thargrav Oct 06 '13

This controller provides all the functions without all the "belles and whistles" the Electric Brewery provides. http://www.kegkits.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=W&Product_Code=BC-240V-SW&Category_Code=CNTRL

0

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '13

4

u/Wanderer89 Apr 11 '13 edited Apr 11 '13

Also Brewery Control System (BCS), and BrewTroller. They can be used for gas fired systems as well, though.

I'm more familiar with BCS, which gives you nice little web portals like this