2 Tier Brutus Style Stand Build

Got started on my stand this week. I have all of my parts for the most part, and made a lot of headway with the fabrication.

The base of the stand is being built on a surplus forklift charger stand. Overall footprint is going to be 26"x36". I am building it as a two tier more to keep the footprint small than I am for the gravity feed, though I do see being able to gravity feed as a positive.

I will update as work progresses.

Charger stand that I am using for the base. I have two of these. Using one of them as a welding table, and the one in the background with all the crap on it is the one I am using for the brew stand. Side by side, they fit perfectly between the back bumper of my 1968 Bonneville and the garage door, which will be the storage spot when not in use.



Cutting up the metal. Thankfully I was able to borrow my neighbors chop saw. I in addition to the metal from the charger stand, I picked up a 20' stick of 2.5" square tubing, which is the same as the frame of the stand.



Frame for upper burner welded up.



Second stand is cut up, and the lower burner frame is welded up.



Fitting up the base. I am really enjoying having a nice flat table to work off of. As you can see, the lower burner frame is offset toward the front of the base. The upper frame will sit above the lower, offset to the rear, and be partially over the lower.



Base is tacked in place so that I can double check the height.



Prior to doing all of the final welds to secure the lower burner frame to the base, I flipped it over and stuck a keg on it so I could better visualize the overall height. This looks a bit low, but the whole thing is going on casters, which will bring it up 5" higher. This keg will eventually be my mash tun.



I went ahead this afternoon and got the lower frame all welded up. Hopefully I will get the upper burner frame welded up, and the burners all mounted tomorrow.

looking good. very beefy stand

Another example of a home brewer looking at something surplus and thinking..."Hmm, how could I use that?". Good job!!

Casters installed and everything leveled up. One side of the base is tweaked by about 1/4", so I just added a couple if flat washers and all is good. Going for pure functionality, not good looks.

I clamped the uprights in place for the upper burner frame. I think I have decided to offset the upper frame to the rear more than I originally planed so that it does not overhang the mash run or boil kettle. This may make the whole thing want to tip to the rear, but I can deal with that either with counterweight towards the front, or a leg under the back of the upper burner frame. I have some nifty extruded Alluminum that would make a nice support, just have to scheme up how to mount it.

On the uprights for the upper burner I decided to add a brace 1/2 way up. Not needed for strength, but it is a lot easier to keep everything square on the work table than it is with it clamped to the back if an awkward stand. This way I can square both upright to the rest if the stand as a single unit rather than individually.

Been a few weeks since I could work on the stand, but got a good bit done today.

I got the upper burner frame mounted, and also all of the burners mounted. Went the easy route, and it turned out pretty good. I just used some slotted steel, and tek screws. I spaced them from the frame with 1/4" nuts that I had laying around. Once the hardware is tightened up, everything is quite solid. I think the slotted steel was about $15.00 for 2 pieces, and I had quite a bit left over.







Next up was the gas beam, and mounting the control valves. I really should have taken better pictures, but didn't really think about it until it was too late. I used some more of the alluminum extrusions, which worked out well. The pieces I have included some nice stainless angled sheet, which I re-purposed to mount the gas beam





Made a very basic heat shield/drip protection for the gas manifold. The bends aren't perfect, but the best I could do with a work bench and 2 x 4.

To pick up where I left off so many months ago, I am finally finished. I would like to add 1 additional pump, which I plan to do as funds permit.

This is essentially a standard Brutus 10, with the HLT on an upper tier. The whole idea behind this is to make 1) a more compact stand, and 2) a stand that benefits from having 2 pumps, but does not rely on two. I should be able to do back to back batches without much trouble.

I was planning to mount the control box, but have decided to run it without mounting the first time or two. I have everything set up so that it can be unhooked quickly. I even used a surplus 3 phase twist lock plug I had to handle connecting both gas control valves. No possibility of getting the wires crossed up.

All that is left is to give it a test run without grain and it will be time to break it in.

Got the test run complete Wednesday night and got the PIDs tuned in. The HLT tuned in effortlessly using the auto tune feature, but I did have to play with the parameters of the PID on the mash tun. I did the test run in the mash tun with about 4 more gallons of water than will be used on brew day to emulate the extra thermal density if the grain. Not an exact replication for sure, but it should be close enough. Only issue I found was a slight leak in one of the gas fittings, and a small leak on the weldless port for the HLT probe. Both just required tightening. Hopefully be able to give it a true test run this coming Sunday.