BabaniaUSA1

From Southyeasters

The Second Brewery

With experience and hindsight now part of the arsenal I started out planning the next brewery. The first one worked well so most of what will follow will closely resemble the 40 liter SA brewery.

The changes:

1. Scale down to 20 liter - This will allow me to brew more often
2. Use Stainless steel brew vessels (Readily available in the USA)
3. Build the pump system and manifolds to be scalable to at least 300l
4. Use 2 in stead of 3 pumps. (Due to cost)

Progress:

Kegerator: May 1, 2010

Wanted proper taps on the fridge for a while but did not want to mess up the fridge since we’re moving and I’m going to have to get rid of the fridge. This compromise works well without messing up the fridge.

Left to right: Babania Breakfast Stout, Babania Amber Ember & Babania Blonde – all entered in the US Open

Mounted my counter pressure filler: May 3, 2010

My neighbour in Cape Town, Alf Paris, made the intricate part of the filler out of brass. I used this with 2 John Guest valves and held it by hand. It used to be a a wild ride with frequent beer showers. The latest improvement was mounting the filler and fitting 2 brass ball cocks. It's a pleasure to operate now!

Dial Thermometers on Mashtun and Hot Liquor Tank: April 1, 2010

I eventually got my dial thermometers from SA (Thanks Stephaan & Willa)
Installation was quite simple and can be seen in the photos below:

Trub filter in kettle: Mar 10, 2010

With 2 brews under the belt some fine tuning on the brewery.

A hops/Trub screen installed in the kettle.

This was easy and very effective:
1. Buy a hot water hose with stainless steel braided mesh cover
2. Cut off the ends
3. Clamp to a 1/2" copper T
4. Connect the T to your outlet without soldering it in place (Allows for easy removal for cleaning).

MashTun valve re-seal

Re-fitted outlet valve with large washer and seal to stop leak and cut valve handle to be able to close on flat surface.

The build

Feb 2, 2010

Just about ready for the 1st brew in charlotte.
Building the new brewery has taken much longer than expected. The availability of parts is amazing but so are the prices. If I have to compare the experience with SA it took far more ingenuity and improvisation in SA but was easier overall because one instinctively know where to find stuff and how to do things cheaper. Here everything is available at a price and homebrewing is so established that doing it slightly different makes it near impossible.

Manifold: 21/11/2009

To date bought the pumps, vessels, mashtun hoses and couplings. Most of the plumbing is done. Next steps are plumbing on the brew vessels and the electrical work.

The new manifold uses regular 1/2 inch valves with no restriction to accommodate flow.

Mashtun

You can use any comercially available cooler box with a drain hole or cut the drain hole yourself if you're a bit more adventurous. The one below is a 10 gallon rubbermaid cooler. It's the smallest size that will work if you plan to brew barleywine or imperial IPS/Stout.

Make a grid out of 1/2" copper tubing that fits in your chosen cooler box. The more tubing the better. I cut the slots on the first one I constructed with a jigsaw and used a dremmel on the second. Both are painful and can be dangerous. A standard hacksaw with a wider blade would probably be the best option but that would be too tame for me.

This water cooler will become the mashtun.

The new smaller mash strainer has slots spaced closer together.

The mashtun with valve and grid fitted

The standard spigot replaced with a proper valve

Brew Vessels

HLT & Kettle are both standard 36l stainless steel pots

Hole cut for valve ready for fitting

$20 + right tools and 5 minutes later the valve is fitted

Immersion Chiller/Hermes Coil

I use the same coil fitted with cam connectors for my HERMS in the Hot Liqior Tank and as an Immersion Chiller to cool the boiling wort in the brew kettle. This cools the wole batch at the same time and with 18degC water the 5 gallon batch cools to 55degC in just over 4 minutes.

3/8th copper tubing coiled around an HTH bucket for the cooling & HERMS coil

The cooling coil in the kettle

A couple of lessons learned:

- Don't plan to use electricity to boil if everyone else uses gas. The best price for a heating element resembling what I got for about R200 in SA is $170.00
- Never assume you will find Gardena type couplings with hose barbs. Garden hoses come with crimped fittings on either end so quick connects have threaded fittings.
- Don't ever try to explain what a flange nut for a bulkhead fitting is
- If you plan to spend less than $35 on a R105.00 thermometer get them from SA
- The best source for an electric element for your HLT is a "Spa Heater"
- Don't thing there are generic dishwasher pumps for under R230.00 available here. The very nice mag drive pumps set you back $120 a piece (hence only 2 pumps

Links

Babania Homepage
Babania's first Year of Brewing in South Africa
Babania's Brewing in Charlotte, North Carolina
profile on Ratebeer.com