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!

Getting Stuff Done!

Emma and Cami have been at her parents 40th Wedding Anniversary party today and all reports were that she was simply a darling willingly giving everyone cuddles! Proud of my little girl and a big congrats to Ann and Nigel on their party (actual date is in March). Whilst they were partying, I made some good progress on my brew rig!

I spent today welding up the frame. The main challenge was getting everything square as no one wants a wonky brew-stand. Lots of G-clamps, ratchet straps, rubber mallet-ing, set-square checking, and re-checking after tack welding one side was needed but I ended up with a superbly square frame tack welded up today! 

Next task will be to weld the frame out which apparently needs a bit of care as it will tend to warp if you weld all from one side so lots of back and forth-ing from side to side and up and down will be needed. 

Hardest part was at the start when trying to get the first leg square. Finally achieved it but it took some time.

Here is the frame in place with the kegs resting on top. I also bored some holes into the front lower brace which will hide all the electrical cables to the pumps and the gas solenoid valves. It should be nice an neat and tidy. 

After the frame is welded out then it will be a matter of fitting all the items in place (eg. Burners, solenoids, valves, pumps, control box, etc. Then the keg modification will follow! 

Cheers and Beers!

Back in town!

Hi everyone. Sorry for the radio silence but we have been in oz since before Christmas and Emma and Cami are still there and coming back next Friday (YAY!!!!) but I have been here alone with Cooba for 2 weeks now. We had a great time in oz catching up with family and showing our precious little Cami off! Em still has the camera so we will post an album when she gets back and you can see how she has developed. For me, being with Cami pretty much 24/7 was just awesome and made the trip so very special for me. I really feel we bonded so much and she is at a stage where she is interacting so much more all the time. I remember Emma telling me about a book she was reading whilst pregnant that some Dads have an instant connection with their baby whilst others grows over time. I think I fit into the latter and that is not taking anything away from the love that is so much there from the start, but I feel that everyday my love for Cami just grows so much that it is hard to know where it is all coming from! Maybe also the fact she is very clearly saying "Daddy" has helped ... poor "Mummy" is beaten by "duck", "bird", "tree" and probably many more words soon! Here is a bit of a quick photo snapshot of some of the things that we got up to. These are only some of the pics on my iPhone so don't get offended if your photo isn't included yet.

Cami became addicted to ice (the healthy variety) and just loved standing at the "esky" sucking on cubes all day long! 

 We visited sim and Clare and had a lovely visit to Flynn's vineyard in Heathcote. I highly recommend the MC Shiraz!

Cute pic of Eliza, Cami and Em in the cubby that Zac put in for the girls.

Cami spent a LOT of time in the car seat traveling around and visiting everyone.

Cute smile again in our apartment kindly lent to us by Kat and Tim (friends of Dicko and Em).

Relaxing at St Kilda beach on a beautiful sunny and warm day.

How babies should eat! Nude and al-fresco!

Cami had her 1st birthday Party 1 mth early in oz, but had a great time with all the kids and adults! here she is with her special birthday balloon from aunty Sam.

With Daddy during lunch at Claypots (Emma's and my favorite restaurant) with aunty Emma as well.

 We headed across to Perth for 3 days at the end of my trip for a work meeting. Here we are at il-lidos in Cottesloe for dinner watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean whilst Cami was babysat by my old boss Joce and her daughter Eloise.

We snuck in a quick visit to Little Creatures brewery in Freo. Had a few pints of their single batch beer Big Dipper which was an amazing hoppy IPA. Took a pic of the description of the LCPA for some good recipe stealing ideas!

My first weekend back in Stavanger and the forecast was pretty good so we organized a quick ski trip into one of the turistforening hytte - Kvinen. Chuck, Blue, Rayray and Rob joined Coobs and me.

Unfortunately Coobs broke his "thumb" claw on the trip back and had to have surgery to remove it and the other one. He has been stuck inside all week with a bucket on his head which is lucky for him as it has snowed quite a bit at home and been very cold this week.

Lots of snow in the mountains. We had to spend a fair bit of time digging out the cabin to get in and the snow was pretty much up to the roof as you can see from this picture of the snow up past the window in one of the bedrooms. 

 This was our fridge. Just open the front door and leave the beers in the wall of snow!

Now the real reason for this blog post! I have been able to get stuck into a little work on my brewing machine in the last week. Mostly working on welding up the gas beam. Here I am leak testing it. Needless to say there were a few pinholes and I needed to grind back a few spots and reweld. I need it to be completely gas tight as Propane will go through this beam (even though it is only at 0.5psi I don't want to risk any leaks)!

Using my beer gas and regulator as the leak testing system and pressure gauge. 

Soapy water checking for leaks.

This was the final leak path and now it is all pressure tested at 40 times the working pressure! Tomorrow I will start with tack welding the whole frame/stand up and then I can start piecing it all together. Good stuff! Nothing better than playing with power tools and having a beer at the same time!

Cami ... and welding!

No, Cami hasn't learnt to weld yet, but I thought I should mention my beautiful daughter and show her off to the world, at the same time as talking about the progress on my semi-automated brewing machine.

I have been on solo night duties for the past week as we are trying to get Cami settled into a sleeping routine and get used to settling herself back to sleep when she wakes rather than needing a feed from Emma. So waking at 2 or 3am and being up and down a few more times for the rest of the evening is taking its toll especially when you are busy at work. But I shouldn't complain as I have a very beautiful daughter and Emma has had to put up with the lack of sleep for the past 9 months (I did help her a bit on difficult nights but she definitely has had the lions share of sleep deprivation).

Anyway, here is a cute video of Cami on a lazy Saturday morning (a hungover one for Emma).

Anyway, regarding my brewing machine, I have achieved a bit this week but also had some setbacks. When Emma was out last night enjoying a night out with some of her fellow mums, I celebrated a night alone with a lovely sleeping Cami by enjoying some home brew whilst playing with power tools (always a good combination). I decided to drill the 22mm holes in the gas beam where the gas will come and be distributed to the different burners. I used a "step bit" for this task which is a lot easier than a large drill bit, but it is still bloody hard especially on 3mm thick stainless steel which is tougher than nails. So I managed to drill the holes which needs lots of lubricating oil on the bit as well as a slow speed to prevent the stainless from heating up and becoming so hard that it can't be drilled through. There is also a fair kick when the bit bites in to the metal ... luckily no spilt beer! So I managed to get all 4 holes drilled and enjoy a few home brews as well.

Here is the gas beam with the holes drilled.

Today I also managed to tack weld the top part of the frame together which is more difficult than it looks as you need to ensure everything is flush and square. Once it is all welded out there is no turning back so it is essential to get it right. Lots of G clamps, set squares, ratchet straps and leveling aids!

Here is a pic of the top frame when tacked together and also some video of me doing some of the tacks.

Maybe I can blame it on the lack of sleep, but I realized today that I actually cut the gas beam and the other long horizontal 20mm too short (pity it wasn't too long). Lucky I have sufficient spare steel tubing to be able to cut some more but will need to do this with my grinder and a cutting disc as I only hired the metal saw for 1 weekend. Oh well, not the end off the world but certainly a bit frustrating.

Till next time - cheers and beers!

Welding, pumps, and solenoids ...

I bought my welding machine last week! I splashed out on an ESAB MIG unit (very reputable brand). The 3 options available were a normal stick/arc welder, a MIG unit, or a TIG unit.

For stainless welding TIG is generally considered the best, but this requires 2 hands coordinating the arc and feeding the electrode in. It is also generally considered the hardest to do well and since I am not even a welders a-hole, I figured to steer away from TIG. They can also be quite expensive machines.

The other end of the scale was a normal stick welder. You can get these units reasonably cheaply and you can get stainless Electrodes with flux on the outside, but it can be challenging to get a decent weld unless you have a heap of practice (welding is an art!). For stainless, stick welding doesn't necessarily provide great shielding gasses from the flux (compared to MIG and TIG) so there is a risk of corrosion creeping into the weld as well.

So the other option was MIG. MIG actually isn't the most recommended type of welding to use for stainless as it generally requires a specific blend of shielding gas (either very expensive tri-mix or a combination of argon and CO2 in roughly 98:2 ratio) and these gasses can be expensive. It also is said to be not the best on thin walled steel such as my kegs so that put me off a bit, but when all things were evaluated, I went with MIG. The main reasons I went with a MIG are that even a welders a-hole can generally get decent looking welds with a MIG unit, I can get reasonably cheap argon in disposable bottles from a shop nearby, you can use pure argon and get reasonable welds (even if they are higher than wider in general), the stainless qualities can be retained, and if you get a good unit, do plenty of practice, know your settings of wire speed vs voltage, weld in a special way for thin materials (focus the heat onto the coupling rather than the thin walled keg) then you should be able to do ok. It is also a good unit to use for general fabrication work down the track. From what I read, you generally get what you pay for with MIG units and the cheaper ones will give you a lot of grief with wire feeding, so I got a very reputable ESAB machine - Origo C141 to be precise!

So I got the welder, got some argon shielding gas with regulator, some stainless wire spools, welding helmet, and all the other necessary stuff and lay down some welds tonight for the first time. I didn't focus on anything critical or that will be on full view, and the welds were ok I guess, but I just welded up one of the brackets that will support one of the burners. I think for my first welds they weren't too bad and I think all the research I put into welding (wire speeds, gasses, push vs pull technique, whip vs weave, weld fit up, tip stick out distances, tip clearances, etc etc) will pay off.

I also picked up my awesome pumps for the system today as well as my gas solenoid valves! The pumps are the brewers standard March pump! These are the 809-HS pump and are a food grade, magnetic drive pump that will be responsible for transferring and recirculating various fluids from and between the different keggles. The solenoid valves will open when told to by the temperature controllers and let gas to the burners for heating the HLT and MLT. They are a NC (normally closed) valve so that they only need to be energized when gas is needed for burning.

So all in all, even though no major progress has been made on the brewing system, I feel as though there is really not much stopping me now from getting this beast on the road. Once I have done some more practice welds on less critical items, I might start tack welding the frame together and get that done before trying out some welds on the keg lids to ensure I have the wire speed and voltage correct to avoid any blow-outs on my precious kegs!

My ESAB MIG unit

The disposable argon gas bottles. Hopefully these will last a decent amount of welds.

My welding station ... with keg stool of course!

Not bad for my first welds.

The other side of the fillet.

My beautiful magnetic drive March pumps - the brewers standard!

My solenoid valves - clever things!

Brew system continues ...

Some progress has been made this week on my brew system. I have been doing a lot of extra research much to Emma's annoyance (welding methods and systems, welding gas types, where to get gas, welding wire selection, ways to flare a coupler into the keg, distance of burners from keggles, etc etc etc). It is really fascinating how much information is out there and how complicated you could make it if you wanted! I think the important thing I need to remember is that I am not building a space station so I need to come up with realistic yet robust systems for the brew setup. Saying that however, I have decided to improve on a number of features that other systems have out there and effectively take the best from the rest! But doing it in a reasonably straightforward way!

Anyway the main progress this weekend has been the cutting of all of the framework stainless steel. I hired a big metal saw from "the neighbour" (Naboen.no) which is a really cool rental place which has heaps of cool manly tools! I picked it up on Friday arvo and today got all of the cutting done. It was a very cool tool and managed to slice through the stainless like butter without imparting too much heat into it (which can ruin some of the stainless qualities). One of the improvements over other systems has been to mitre the top corners. This will give me a nice smooth top surface for the kegs to sit on, and it looks cool also. I also cut all of the legs, the support beams, and the second shelf frame work which includes the gas beam. I haven't started to weld it up yet but most of the hard work is done and the metal saw gave some really nice clean cuts as well (which should help a lot with good joint fit up during the welding process). I also cut some scrap sections where I can practice my welding on before hitting the frame itself.

One other improvement over some systems will be the ability to change my burner height. From what I have been reading there are many different opinions regarding how far away the burner tips should be away from the bottom of the kegs. So I have included a shelf system for the burners which will allow them to be adjusted reasonably easily (I.e. no welding required to change height).

The other good stuff that arrived this week was the two Honeywell pilot lights (I only need these on the automated burners under the HLT and MLT (the boil kettle is best to be manually controlled to maintain a rolling boil). I will install these into the adjustable shelf for the burners when I get the burners. I also received my neat little temperature controller (STC 1000). This allows me to set the target temperature of the HLT or MLT and then the STC 1000 sensor will measure the actual temp and if this is lower than target it will then open the solenoid valve to the burner and presto - the heat will go up.

The hired metal saw from Naboen

Some of the legs and horizontal supports

How the top of the brew system will look with the nice mitred corners

The front section and how it roughly goes together (if you have a good 3D imagination)

Some rough preliminary thoughts on how to mount the control panel

Will need some plate I can attach the electrical enclosure onto (food for thought)

These will form the basis for the adjustable height burners

Quick 3D autocad sketchup for confirming all the lengths for the cuts today

The pilot burners

The fancy digital temperature controller and sensor (I need 2 of these to control both HLT and MLT temps)