The Øl Rig

Dear beer lover,

I know you have been neglected lately with minimal feedback on the status of my semi-automated, all-grain, stainless-steel, digital thermo-regulated brewing system, but hopefully this blog post will make up for it. It is not for lack of wanting to share my progress with you (far from it as my colleagues and friends will vouch) but mostly due to a little hectic schedule lately.

I had in my mind that sometime towards the end of Q1 2012 I would be up and running with my brew system, and as we approached and past that date I decided to lock in a date for the first brew. It was May 6th - my birthday. It wasn't as though I had lost the passion for building the system over that time ... but I really enjoyed just doing a little bit each week and was really quite loving the journey and seeing slow but beautiful progress. Now that I have arrived at the destination, it is just as good as I had imagined and I can already see lots of small little tweaks to keep improving it ... so the journey will continue along for quite some pleasant time!

I must admit, the last 2 weeks before my birthday were busy with many small tasks needing to be finished (flaring and silver soldering fittings, bending tubing, welding some washers on to secure the kegs, etc etc. I still have a few additional tasks that I should do, such as mounting some wind-guards for the burners and tap in my brew system name plaque, but it is perfectly functional as it is.

So the system ... here it is. It was named "The Øl Rig" by Emma and I. Øl means beer in Norwegian, which is close sounding to "Oil" and then "Rig" as in "oil rig" which is very close to home with Stavanger being the capital of oil in Norway and also because in some weird way the brew system has some similarities to an oil platform. Emma kindly made up a plaque with "The Øl Rig" on it in stainless and went to the trouble of measuring it up to make sure it would fit on the frame or on the control panel. She gave it to me on my birthday. Good on ya em! Here it is on my control panel. I plan to put it on the frame some stage soon.

Here is a shot of the full system. For the photo, I just connected up some of the silicon tubing to give an idea of how the fluid gets transferred between the various keggles. The HLT (hot liquor tank) is on the right which heats up the water to the various inclusion temperatures. The MLT (mash and lautering tun) is in the middle and holds the crushed grain and recirculates to convert and extract the sugars from the malted barley. The BK (boil kettle) is on the left which boils the wort and takes the various additions of hops in addition to recirculating through the plate chiller for when I need to cool down the boiled wort to fermentation temperatures. I made lids for the kettles out of the old lids and welded on some handles from the original dip tubes. Nothing gone to waste.

Here is the control panel. I used illuminated switches which required a bit of wiring to utilize the illuminating function but add a bit of bling to the system. The STC-1000 temperature controllers which can be set to whatever temperature you want and then they open and close the gas solenoids to fire the burners when needed. I also added in some three way switches which allow a bit more flexibility and prevent the solenoids from opening if I don't want them open as well as allows me to open them without the temperature control as well. And some illuminated switches which control the two 809 March pumps for recirculating the fluids.

Here is a pic of the in-line Tee temperature thermistors. This allows me to recirculate the fluid and get inline and accurate control of the temperature. The Tees can be disconnected and used elsewhere (such as on the plate chiller or boil kettle) if required. Also I have my dial thermometers for secondary and additional temperature measurement as well as the valves and some sight glasses which give me knowledge of how much fluid I have transferred, boiled off, etc.

This is a pic of the big 20-tip jet burner. I hand carried these back from oz but it was worth it. These are beasts and pump out a lot of heat. I included a pilot light as well as a thermocouple pilot safety system to prevent release of gas if the pilot goes out. I put them on adjustable height shelves which has allowed me to change the distance between flame tip and bottom of the keggles (I was about 45mm too low to start with when I brewed on my birthday).

This shows the gas beam at the back of the system which holds gas under pressure (only 0.5 psi) and distributes it to the 3 burners. I have a ball valve for closing the system, then the gas pilot safety valve, then the solenoid and then the yellow flexible stainless tubing to distribute the gas to the burners.

Here is a front shot of the pumps. I bent some diamond plate over them to protect the pump motors ... plus it looks cool! Stainless valves on the pumps as well as camlocks for the tubing.

Here is the plate chiller. I looked at quite a few of these but this was the best by far in terms of value and performance. It is from duda diesel in the US and is amazing. Cooling water (just normal pot water in Norway) in and out at the top and the wort in and out the bottom. Simple. Cools 23L of wort from boiling to about 25deg in about 5 mins!

This is the internals plumbing in the boil kettle. Angled return valve to prevent oxidation of the hot wort as well as create a whirlpool to prevent the hot and cold break from being collected by the side pick up tube at the.bottom.

Here is an internal of the mash tank. False bottom in the ...errr bottom with copper pick up tube. This creates a cavity of fluid underneath the mash/grains which prevents them from being pumped/drained out and allows me to recirculate easily whilst direct firing the MLT.

Here is a pic of the fittings in the walls of the keggles. I was planning on welding these in ... but wasn't confident that I could do a job which would look ok. I was sure I could get a seal, but it might look a little rubbish. So I decided to silver solder these in. I created a flaring tool (using a sacrificial coupler and a bench grinder) and made up the device with some threaded rod and nuts and washers. Pulled the flaring tool through the hole I drilled with a step bit, then pulled a new coupler through. Used some brilliant stay-brite silver solder and liquid flux and then a propane torch to heat the coupler from the outside to melt a ring of solder on the inside. It worked perfectly and is extremely solid. Very happy with how it looks as well.

This is a picot the sight glass. Basically a stainless 90degree elbow compression fitting with some 3/8in OD polycarbonate tubing. Then the painful task of calibrating it liter by liter! Looks good and is very useful.

I hid the electrics in the bottom tubing of the frame and then distributed the wires out to the pumps and the solenoids. It keeps things nice and neat.

This is another pic of the gas beam with the 2 gas pilot safety systems and solenoids. The boil kettle has only a ball valve as it runs full time when it is being used.

I also bought a very good malt grinder. It is called a crankandstein and has 2inch diamond knurled rollers on it. It is a bare bones grinder so I needed to build a hopper and base for it. Made some uprghts for the sides out of some ply and bent some sheet metal to encase it all in. I then connect my drill to the half inch drive shaft and then grind away. Easy peasy!

Inside the hopper. I still need to finish this off and secure the hopper sides to the timber uprights ... but I was in a rush to get it ready the day before my birthday.

And upside down. This fits over my big 30L bucket which allows me to grind straight into the container which I can then pour into the mash run during "dough-in" (I love that brewing term).

The diamond knurled rollers. One is the drive shaft and the other is free rolling. I can adjust the gap as needed to ensure I get the correct grind without destroying the essential grain husks which act to filter the mash.

Here is some of my grains. Local suppliers make this a bit handy. Good quality grain from major suppliers as well!

So I have brewed my first all grain brew on this which was an All Amarillo American Pale Ale. I had some initial teething problems which I had feared had caused some issues, but I kegged and bottled this today and it tastes pretty good (even warm and flat) so am looking forward to the fist tapping in a few days! The issues I had were (a) grains clogging the pick up tube in the MLT (my pick up tube was too close to the bottom of the MLT) and (b) not able to control temperature of the mash as a result which I feared had caused some issues with the conversion of the sugars, and (c) the boil taking forever to get to temperature (my burners were far too low) which meant I had to shorten the boil and didn't get the evaporation I was hoping for. I didn't have the perfect time to take accurate gravity samples either so I was a bit unsure of my mash efficiency and resulting wort. I have been busy implementing a few changes which will hopefully eliminate these hiccups so the next brew will hopefully be smooth sailing.

Anyway, it has been great fun so far building The Øl Rig and now that I get to use it makes it very satisfying. Quality beer is one thing, but making quality beer yourself from scratch is a skill that I am loving learning.

Thanks to my darling wife for her patience with allowing me to build this and my darling daughter for sleeping through the grinding, welding, cutting, drilling, etc!

Cheers!