• BrewPot

Brew Pots

I learned the hard way that my threshold of pain was about where the hydrometer tube started to melt.

One of the first things you notice when moving from kits or PartialMash to all grain is the need to scale up your boil capacity. My first all grain attempt was on the kitchen stove and although it turned out ok in the end, the stove just doesn't cut it. In any case I needed a big stockpot.

See also:

• compact and simple BrewPotStand I made.

• a homemade CounterFlowChiller

• The MarchPump setup I use.

For those in Melbourne Geordi Stainless Sales have a big range of stainless fittings and components. Their prices on the web aren't that great but if you take in a bottle of your homebrew you might qualify for the homebrewers discount.

50 Litre Converted Keg

This brew pot wasn't a planned thing, I hadn't had my 40L aluminium stock pot for long when I saw one of these kegs in a scrapyard for $55 and figured "why not". I have heard of people getting them much cheaper than that.

I cut the top out with an angle grinder and cutoff wheel. Its not that hard. Various other means have been reported but my guess is that this is the simplest and easiest method with equipment you are likely to find in a home workshop.

The fittings on the outside.

I have been converting all my tubing connections to pushin style (see also BatchSparge and CounterPressureBottleFiller). These connectors grip the outside of the tube so there is no barb inside to restrict flow which is noticeably faster. I found this particular pushin at the Purple Pig but since then I have found other styles such as Legris and John Guest which look nicer and marginally cheaper.

The pickup tube is intended to:

1. Mimimise trub pickup. After whirlpooling, the theory is that there is a cone of muck in the centre of the pot, the end of the pickup tube is as far away from that as you can get.
2. Allow me to drain almost to the bottom without the need to tilt the pot. The end of the pickup tube is a few centimetres lower than the tap flange.

Here is a picture (reminiscent of those Loch Ness monster photos) showing the middle of the cone appearing as I pump the wort out of the kettle. See, whirlpooling really works This hop pellet residue and hot break material.

And the pickup tube on the inside. Without this there would be many litres of dead volume. Even using this pickup tube you need to make sure your outlet (including whatever tubing you attach to the hose) is well below the level of the pickup inlet and that it doesn't leak air.

The seal is formed with a stainless steel flat washer squashing a fibre washer against the inside of the keg, tighted with a nut. The compression fitting is added later, it doesn't contribute to the seal, it simply holds the pickup tube in place. It needs to be up tight enough to avoid air leaks when the wort level drops below the spigot so the flow continues.

After adding a sight glass to my HLT, I decided I couldn't live without one on the kettle. For the HLT I used 9.6mm OD polycarb tubing and turned it down to 8mm to fit the metric pushin fitting I had. This has left the wall thickness a little thin for my liking so for the kettle I went down a size to 6.3mm OD polycarbonate tubing and then turned it down to 6mm to fit the pushin. No troubles there. Due to the narrow tube I thought I might have trouble with bubbles getting trapped in it. During the calibration there were a few issues but on brewday it all went fine.

Experience has shown that the small inside diameter (3mm from memory) of this tube is too prone to clogging from hop and break material. Even for clean water, steam bubbles are slow to dissipate making accurate readings difficult.

I replaced it with this baby. I wouldn't go out and buy this but since I acquired the PFE tubing and the swagelok compression elbow I thought I may as well use it. The PFE tubing can easily stand the temperature (I have been using it to transfer boiling liquids), is very clear and nothing sticks to it (like teflon).

40L Aluminium Stock Pot

My first brewpot was a 40L aluminium brew pot I bought from Hotel Agencies in Fitzroy. It cost me $109 inc GST and if it had not been for the fact that Allquip were renovating at the time I would have gone for one of their stockpots (eg the 36L WSS36 Stainless Steel for $127). I have also seen 50 L stainless steel pots for $115 at larger Asian grocery stores and if you want to go bigger, up to 100 L for $245. The latter seem to be made of very thin SS.

This is now used as the HLT (Hot Liquor Tank), ie the hot water for mashing and sparging.

The outside tap arrangement is like so (see taps).

The pickup tube:

The flange nut (Bunnings) simply wedges a fibre washer against the inside of the pot. I also taped the threaded brass tube that everything screws onto with teflon all the way along, someone told me that avoiding direct contact between dissimilar metals reduced the galvanic effect.

Sight Glass

I have just added a sight glass to the HLT. I used polycarbonate tubing from (Profile Plastics) since it can handle about 135°C (from memory) and it is rigid. 2 metres of it cost me $10. Update: this would have to be one of the single most useful additions I have made to my brewery recently.

The polycarbonate tubing is pushed into a pushin 1/4" elbow. The tubing I had was too big to fit elbow I had so I had to turn down the end a little. It is probably simplest to buy some polycarbonate tubing then take it to your friendly fitting supplier to find one that fits nicely.

Here is a closeup of the fitting that the sight glass is pushed into. It is a bulkhead style fitting. Although the lighting is not great, you should be able to make out an o-ring embedded in the fitting. All you need is a back or lock nut to hold it in place.

This particular brand of fitting is Legris which I bought from Pneutech. They are not stainless but FDA approved.

This kind of fitting is generally a lot easier to get hold of but is a pain in the arse to fit to a boiler due to the tapered thread and is designed to screw into a female fitting.

Note that you can also get flat/parallel thread fittings which are not specifically bulkhead fittings. If you can't get bulkhead fittings, then at least get the parallel style.

When you are calibrating your sight glass, make sure the pot is level before you start.

Taps

I have bought a couple of these taps:

from Industrial Fittings Sales, Unit 1/17 Tower Crt Noble Park 3174, 9706 3133 for $10. They also have lots of other fittings and taps, including stainless steel.

To attach this I use teflon tape on the thread, a flanged brass nut (Bunnings) and a single fibre washer on the inside (bunnings have blister packs of these). If you can't get the flanged brass nut, get a 20mm stainless steel washer (I found some at Cost Less Nuts and Bolts - Ringwood). The flanged nut is the key, a) it has more thread length so it works well with teflon tap, and b) the flange stops the fibre washer from getting chewed up. It would probably even work with an o-ring.

Gas Burners

The burner I am currently using (with no plans to change) looked like this out of the box:

This is a high pressure LPG unit complete with high pressure regulator and pilot light. You can find how it is currently mounted in the brew stand at BrewPotStand.

This was after chasing a tip by JasonY at aussie homebrewer for an Aussie gas burner supplier: Gameco. They have natural gas and LPG varieties such as:

and

(59MJ). I called Graham at Gameco and found out some other bits of trivia:

• For homebrewing he suggested a Model HP-200LP high pressure, 82MJ burner + hose and high pressure adjustable reg for around $160 might be the go. Would have to check out how low it will go before committing. Apparently if you drop into their office (at least at Preston) they will fire one up for you.
• LPG will do 50MJ/kg/hr. Eg a 9kg tank should run a 30MJ (eg 3 ring) burner flat out for about 15 hours.
• Cast iron burner approximate ratings:
  • 3 ring 30MJ
  • 4 ring 59MJ

Also I visited Techrite in Springvale. One of those 32 jet Mongolian wok burners is an impressive beastie. The guys down there are very helpful.

paul sorenson