The Brutus Brain and Skeleton is being pieced together!

I received some goodies in the post yesterday. For those of you interested I received a White-Rodgers 764-742 Gas Pilot Safety Valve (thermocouple operated). This will form part of the brain of the brew system and will provide a good safety system. As the burner system will be automated and will automatically fire the burners when there is a drop in either hot liquor tank (HLT) temperature or also for a drop in the Mash & Lautering Tun (MLT) temperature then I need to make sure that when doing this outside (also for safety reasons with the LP gas) that if the pilot light blows out it will shut off the gas supply to the burners. Therefore I have also ordered some good pilot burners (Honeywell Q314A) and a thermocouple to go with the gas pilot safety valves. These will arrive in the next week or so.

Here is a picture of the gas pilot safety valve.

I have also today gone and picked up some other important parts. The first one is a bunch of fittings for the brewing liquid system. I plan on welding (using a new MIG system) the 1/2" pipe couplers onto the side of the keggles (the BK, MLT and HLT) which will allow me to add various fittings and parts to my keg. The main fitting will be the drain which will include the ball valves. On the MLT I will also include a Tee piece which will allow me to fit a thermowell inline into the system so that I can plug in my thermosensor in-line and have accurate measurement of the wort as it is being recirculated through the RIMS system. This thermosensor will feedback info to the temperature controller and fire the burner under the MLT if the temperature drops below the necessary mashing or sparging temperatures. Easy-peasy!

Anyway here are my stainless fittings (316 stainless no-less!!) which I picked up from Maritim.no down here in Stavanger. Got a very good price on them too!

Here is how the Tee system will be setup with the pipe couple on the end welded onto the keg for the MLT. On the other end at the tee will be a 1/2" thermowell which will measure the mashing temps "in-line". I will then drain or re-circulate from the bottom of the Tee back into the MLT or when I am sparging straight into the BK.

The other thing I picked up today was the skeleton of the system! This is some lovely polished 304 stainless steel which will be cut next weekend (using a hired steel cutting saw). I plan on mitering the top corners for the frame so that it is a nice and flush surface for the kegs to sit on. The rest will be plain square ends. I haven't decided whether to include a gas beam into the system yet or whether I will just have it plumbed externally and secure the plumbing to the frame. I'm leaning towards a gas beam but haven't yet concluded on the final set up for the gas system. So the steel you see on my car roof is 18m of 304 stainless box section (50 x 50 x 3mm) as well as some flat bar which will be used to create an adjustable burner shelf so i can adjust the flame height/position once I see where it fits best. All exciting stuff I can tell you!

My lovely 304 stainless!

I have also decided on what MIG system I will get. It ain't cheap but it's a he'll of a lot cheaper than any other decent MIG system and will provide sufficient power to weld the 3mm wall of the frame. I'll include an argon gas shielding system and for the couplers on the kegs I will have a system to purge the back of the weld with argon to ensure no rusting as a result of the welding process. I'll show my lovely welder when I get it. If they have it in stock next week I may end up being able to perform all my cuts of the steel and start with some trial welding! My lovely steel supplier also threw in a stainless wire brush for polishing the welds after MIG-ing. Champ!

Beer on!

Brutus is Born!

Ok, for those non-drinkers out there (a) you will have to be patient over the next couple of months and (b) I don't really like you anyway. I have officially started a project which will consume a lot of my time, thoughts, dreams, energy and money and I hope will give me great satisfaction over the coming years.

The project is to build a sem-automated, all-grain, stainless steel, gas-fired, safety-controlled, RIMS (look it up - highly interesting for beer geeks) brewing system. I have been spending an inordinate amount of time (much to Emma's annoyance) researching how I should go about this. There are quite a lot of different set ups that many fellow beer geeks have made over the years (why are a lot of home brewers engineers?) but one in particular which has been copied, modified and built on over the years is Lonnie Macs Brutus 10 system. I have been researching this system quite a lot, I bought his plans you can buy from Brew Your Own magazine and from reading forums (mostly Aussie Home Brewer and Home Brew Forum).

I have decided to create a system using the best of a number of systems. My main criteria for this system are to have it as stainless steel system where possible, capable of doing 2 batches at once (38L), an automatic temperature controlled system for the HLT and the MLT through use of digital temperature controllers and thermistors through thermowells, pilot lights for the automated gas burners with auto shutoff valves if pilots go out, plate chiller, robust magnetic drive food grade pumps for recirculation for the RIMS as well as for transferring between HLT to MLT to Boiling kettle as well as for the plate chiller for the cold break (more beer geek talk), and a sexy control box/panel/system!

So anyway, the project has started in earnest. I have been in contact with the brewmaster from the Stavanger brewery (Lervig Aktiebryggeri) who gave me some kind pointers as well as offering some kegs for free (unfortunately they were only 30L kegs in Stainless and 50L in aliminium), as well as the main boutique beer pub in town (Cardinal), but I finally got in touch with Ola Vaaland from Bryne ølutsalg (any beer lovers in Stavanger should go there - very impressive - even managed to find a slab of VB there!!!) and Ola found 3 stainless steel 50L kegs for me and put them aside for me. I am planning on converting these into the keggles (keg turned into kettles) which will form the basis for my starting HLT, MLT and boil kettle. I will likely invest in a 70L boil kettle down the track but at least this is a start point. Oh yeah, one of the kegs is about 1/3 full of Tou beer ... It's going straight down the drain!

Kegs picked up tonight waiting conversion to keggles

VB slab ... in Bryne?!?!

I have also been ordering lots of parts for my gas setup. 2x gas pilot safety valves, 2x thermocouples for the valves, 2x solenoid gas valves for automatic control of the gas to the burners, and a few fittings and things.

I plan on getting my stainless steel square hollow section from a fabricator I know through work. Other stuff I will get locally and may even manage to sneak some pumps and Mongolian jet burners in my luggage when coming back from Oz in January!

Anyway, I want to try and document my build as much as possible so will blog regularly about it. Any comments are obviously welcome and I am sure that Cami will have some special apprentice cameo's during the build as well. For now however, it is just getting a few of the bits and pieces together and when it comes to the build I will post a lot more. I will probably start most of the build after I get back from oz in Jan.

Pic of Cami to show I haven't gone completely brewing mad!

Wish me luck!!