Brew Stand 3.0

For those that don't know me personally or anyone stumbling across this post, we moved from West Jordan, Utah to Clearwater, Florida in June of 2024. You might ask, why would someone move from Utah to Florida? Well, both my wife and I are originally from southern California and we were ready to live somewhere warmer (no snow!), closer to water, with an abundance of biking trails, and closer to Disney Parks. SoCal is insanely expensive, so here we are on the other West Coast in Central Florida.

For the big move, I managed to bring all the important things (kettles, fermenters, fermentation fridges, kegs, etc.) but my brew stand (2.0) was too large to fit; it got ditched at the last minute. No biggie, and I figured it was an opportunity to tinker with a new design. So that's the point of today's post, to introduce my brew stand 3.0.

Before we jump into 3.0, here's a brief summary of the first two brew stands:

• Brew Stand 1.0 - This was my original horizontal oriented stand inspired by the famous Brutus 10 style stand. It worked well but had a large footprint. The brew system was a traditional three vessel (Hot Liquor Tank, Mash Tun, and Boil Kettle) plus a dedicated standalone Heat Exchanger. Most HERMS systems use a coil submerged in the HLT, so the standalone Heat Exchanger was kind of my own take on a HERMS style system. Everything pre-boil was electric and controlled by a BCS-460 brewery controller. I had a sweet cold war era-looking control panel on one end. The boil used natural gas and there was a small burner I'd mounted in the stand. There were a few minor equipment changes over time, but I got pretty lucky in that it just worked really well from the start. Keep in mind, this was well before the concept of BIAB and well before any of the AIO systems available today.
• Brew Stand 2.0 - I didn’t ever get around to doing a post about this one. After I acquired too much crap in my garage, I wanted a brew stand with a smaller footprint than 1.0. I also wanted a larger burner that would allow me to get up to a rolling boil faster as I was starting to brew 10 gallon batches more often.
  
  
  I designed version 2.0 as a three tiered system with the HLT at the very top and centered in the frame, the MT was positioned on the middle tier and offset to one side, then the burner for the BK was on the bottom tier and offset to the opposite side. The pump and HEX were mounted to the frame beneath the MT, and the chiller was beneath the BK. I kept the same control panel from 1.0 and had it cantilevered off one side of the stand. This arrangement worked great and my only complaint was that it was a pain to fill the HLT. I usually used RO water, so I'd have to pump the water from my containers up to the HLT. Or if I was using filtered tap water, I'd have to climb up on a step stool to make sure I filled it to the right level. Other than that, the stand worked great and I really liked the positioning of everything. Also, the tiered approach was great because it meant I could gravity feed if needed (e.g. broken pump). 

Now we arrive at Brew Stand 3.0. As I mentioned, I had to leave brew stand 2.0 behind when we moved to Florida. My Florida garage is even smaller than my Utah garage, so I wanted to keep the footprint small. I was considering skipping the whole design and build process and just purchasing an off the shelf AIO system like a Grainfather or Blichmann Breweasy; that would have been the simple approach. The problem is I do like tinkering around with stuff and I really loved the system I'd built. I knew how to brew really well on my custom homebuilt system, I enjoyed brewing on it, and I felt like I really had everything dialed in. Also, if something ever broke, I knew exactly how to fix it. And since it didn't have any proprietary components, I didn't have to worry about what would happen if a company went out of business (e.g. Picobrew). So ultimately I decided to rebuild my old system rather than buy a ready to go brewhouse.

There were two significant design changes I needed to incorporate for 3.0:

1. While my custom built HEX had served me well, the copper coil was starting to show its age. Also, it was only 120v/2000w and struggled to raise the temps when needed (e.g. step mashes, mashout, etc.), especially on 10 gallon batches. I decided to change the design from 120v HERMS to 240v/3500w RIMS by adding a Blichmann RIMS Rocket coil to a Hop Rocket I'd acquired years ago. I'm hoping the additional power and direct contact nature of the RIMS will reduce rise time when needing to raise mash temps.
2. The other significant design change impacts the boil. While natural gas is available in parts of Florida, it's not super common like it is other places. I could have gone with propane but they can be noisy and there’s always the risk of running out mid boil. I decided to just go 100% electric since I was already upgrading the RIMS to 240v anyway. In this case, I went with a 5500w ripple element from Brew Hardware. 

Both of these design changes impacted my control panel. The old control panel was too small to hold everything I needed so I dismantled in order to reuse as many components as possible. I added controls for the BK plus higher amperage SSRs and the addition of contactors for the 240v circuits.  

One thing I forgot to mention re 2.0, the control panel hanging off the side of the stand seemed a little weird. It was in a good position most of the time, but sometimes it was awkward to reach. The panel on 3.0 is mounted on its own stand in order to make this system as flexible as possible. So if I need the panel in a different position on start-up versus during the boil, I can position it where needed rather than attached to the stand.  

Panel design is inspired by The Electric Brewery design, but a little more basic/simple. In fact, it uses a few parts I ordered from The Electric Brewery shop, including the heatsink, 40amp SSRs, and contactors. One of the biggest visual differences between mine and The Electric Brewery design is I'm not using panel mount receptacles for my power connections. Instead, I'm just dropping power cords with cord-end receptacles. Most cords are about 9' long, but the pump cord is a little longer because the cord on my March pump is pretty short.

As for the stand itself, as I mentioned I wanted to keep the footprint small, similar to 2.0. I also didn't want the issues I described above with trying to fill the HLT when it was positioned way up high on a top tier. I started doing some googling and came across a design that I was pretty familiar with, Morebeer's Tippy Dump. The Tippy Dump is really cool as the MT is held in a cradle. At the end of a brew session you grain out by simply pulling a pin and tipping the MT to dump out all the spent grain; no lifting required. I wasn't interested in trying to recreate a tippy dump mechanism, but I was very interested in the overall layout/orientation. The primary difference between it and my 2.0 system is that on the Tippy Dump, the HLT is located below the MT, meaning you have to have a pump to sparge at the end of the mash (I fly sparge). When I first built 1.0 I only had a single March 809 pump. I've since acquired two other pumps: 1.) a Little Giant 3-MD-MT-HC that I'm almost ashamed to say how little I paid for, and 2.) a Spike Flow pump that I won at The Beer Nut's Beehive Brew-Off as a Best of Show prize. Since there are no shortage of pumps in my brewery, I decided to go with an orientation similar to the Tippy Dump and put the HLT at the very bottom. 

The top tier on the 3.0 stand is for the MT and it's positioned 31.25" inches from the ground (including the caster height). The middle tier is for the BK and it is positioned 24.75" inches from the ground. This may be on the tall side for some brewers, but I'm about 6'5" so I don't have any issues reaching into the MT or BK. However, it's worth noting Morebeer's Tippy Dump includes a built-in step for shorter brewers. The bottom tier is for the HLT and it's 6.25" inches from the ground. Both pumps, the RIMS, and my counterflow chiller are mounted to the frame below the BK.

Other design elements that I wanted to mention:

• All steel tubing is 14 gauge. 1.0 used 16 gauge tubing which held up fine, but I found the thicker 14 gauge was easier to weld for a hobby welder like myself.  
• The base and uprights are 2" square tubing while the rest is is 1.5" (e.g. shelves, pump mounts, etc).
• I decided to try getting a little fancier on some elements. For example, rather than basic 90 and 45 degree through cuts, I incorporated some 22.5 degree notched cuts. This results in beveled outer corners for the top two tiers, minimizing the risk of catching a hip on the corner when you're maneuvering around the stand. I also tried to keep open tube ends to a minimum, so there aren't many tubing plugs. I'm hoping this reduces the chances of the steel rusting in the humid Florida environment.
• The top and bottom tiers use a sheet of 1/4" thick marine board (King Starboard) for the surface of the shelf/tier. I used similar material on 2.0 and really liked it; it's waterproof, easy to fabricate with normal tools, and it's low friction so even a very full and heavy MT can be easily repositioned. The downside is it has a relatively low melting point, so I can't use this material on the BK tier. Instead, I'm using rubber neoprene strips that are adhered to the painted metal tubing that constitutes the main structure of the shelf/tier.
• I've incorporated a few guides that prevent the MT from sliding off its shelf. Same for the BK shelf but the rubber neoprene is pretty grippy, so the guides are more for positioning than to prevent sliding. Most guides are simply made from 3/8" steel rod welded to the frame. After painting the stand, the guides were topped with 3/8" vinyl caps to ensure they don't scratch my kettles.
• There's a lot going on under the BK shelf/tier; two pumps, RIMS Rocket, and counterflow chiller, all within a space ~18.5" square. It's pretty hard to describe all the various angles, mounts, etc. I'll just say that the pumps were mounted high enough to provide good clearance all around but low enough to simplify priming efforts. I had to play around a lot with positioning to keep everything accessible and protected. For example, I didn't want any fittings extending too far outside the frame because I'm relying on the stand to provide some protection when I'm moving it around my garage.

For those familiar with the BCS-460, I used to use two elements to heat the strike water during startup; one in the HLT, plus the HEX element. I changed my system startup process so now it will only use the HLT element. This is because utilizing both the HLT and the RIMS at the same time risks overloading the main 30amp circuit that I use for my brewery. It will take a little longer to get to strike temps, but only using one element at a time will be safer. I'm not anticipating this being an issue as I typically fill my HLT the night before brew day and have it start heating the strike water very early in the morning. I also added a new process to the BCS for the boil. To accomplish this, I added a temperature sensor to BK. The temp sensor will read the wort temp in the BK. If the temp is below boiling temps it will fire the element. As the temp approaches boiling the BCS will cycle the power (built in PID) off and on. It will do the same to maintain the boil temp.  I'm hoping the more precise control will help avoid boilovers by not overheating the wort. 

That's about it. I've taken it through a dry run using water and everything performed as expected. Next up will be the inaugural brew session on 3.0, so stay tuned. Cheers! Below are more pictures of the Brewstand 3.0.