Giant homebrew system?

Hi all, I want to put together a large system that consists of:

1) A 50 gallon pressure cooker with electronic temperature controls
2) A mechanical stirring arm
3) A water pump for wort recirculation for the mash
4) A pulley system for lifting the grain container

So here's the thing, considering that I'm trying to emulate what I do with a 6 gallon electric kettle, are there any factors that I am overlooking?

I'm worried that the wort recirculation will not be as efficient, but to me theoretically the system would produce a similar quality beer. Any thoughts?

1) What am I missing here that you want a 50 gallon pressure cooker. For what?? I can't even imagine how expensive that would be.
2) A mechanical stirring arm, while not impossible, would be very difficult (assuming you're talking about stirring grain). Would need a fairly powerful motor securely mounted to the kettle itself.
3) Pumps are easy
4) Pulley system would need a frame about the whole stand. Is this such that YOU can lift it? Where are you lifting it to?

Sounds like you have a fairly advanced system in mind but zero specifics. Every brewery performs differently. Just upsizing a system doesn't necessarily produce the same results.

1 - I'm thinking you would want a steam generator, I don't know if there is such a thing as a 50 gallon pressure cooker.
2 - It can be done, you would need a powerful gear motor to do it. Larger micro's use this so I would contact someone like Glacier Tanks and ask them about that sort of thing or fab it up yourself as that is 3/4 the fun of homebrewing.
3 - Chugger or March 809...or if you are talking about a 3bbl system you can check out Morebeer Pro for larger pumps or again another professional brewery supplier.
4 - Swing arm pulley would work well, just need to get one sized to meet the needs of your mini crane needs.

I'm sorry, I should have been more supportive. However, before launching into a big system, understand that the costs go up exponentially. Going from a 6 gal kettle (5 gal batches?) to a huge system like that requires more than just a few kettles. For small batches you can lift and move things. Big batches, not so much. Take any cost estimates you have, double it, then add 50% and you might be getting close. Start looking at equipment and running through in your head how you would use it and what extras you'd need. Specific questions will get you the best results.

Good luck!

1) A pressure cooker works a lot like an electric kettle. I mean really, it's just a pot with a lid that heats water to a specific temperature. I could leave the lid on to heat up the water, and keep it off when mashing and boiling. Industrial kettles for kitchens do in fact exist, and I could probably get a 50 gallon one for a reasonable price (under $3000). The brewing machinery that I have been eyeballing costs $15,000. So if I can get an industrial pot that works in a similar way, then I am saving quite a lot of money.

2) The stirring arm could be problematic, but I'm sure there must be some kind of industrial stirring arm available (for bread making or the like).

3) The pulley system would probably consist of a frame on wheels, so I could lift the grain from the ground to the pressure cooker, and vice versa.

In any case, I'm mostly worried about the mashing and efficiency. My thinking is that if I continually recirculate, it might work like a fly sparge.

Also, don't gear your next brewery to replicate results of the last one. It's not going to be the same anyway. Design your system to make the best beer possible. There's always room for improvement.

I still don't think you should be looking at a pressure cooker. The closest I've seen in the few minutes searching is over $8000 just for the pressure cooker and you're never going to pressurize it (not for brewing anyway). A steam heated kettle would be a different story. They have lids.

mpcluever said:

I'm sorry, I should have been more supportive. However, before launching into a big system, understand that the costs go up exponentially.

Click to expand...

My options right now are to buy a professional brewing system that costs between 15k and 24k, or looking into similar industrial machines that perform the individual functions and using them together. Blichman Engineering makes brewing kettles that cost $800 dollars, but since I'm going to be putting this together in Spain, I have to use machines that comply with Spanish industry standards.

In other words, if I can save myself 5-14k then it might be worth it.

Is this homebrew or a small commercial brewery? If it is homebrew, it may be worth it to you for you to engineer your own equipment. If it's a commercial venture, (having never gone pro), $24,000 sounds really low.

Again, I don't mean to sound critical, but when people start talking about spending huge amounts of money on a system, I just want to make sure they're weighing all the options.

I would bet that most breweries close to this size do not have an automated mash stirring system. As to the pulley system, are you planning to lift dry grains or the entire mash tun with wet grain? I would think that either way could be accomplished easier than a pulley system.

Why are you brewing such big batches?........................ You need to look into the Groen electric steam kettles if you are serious about this. The inline steam kettles do not come with steam source and buying/building a steam source can be very pricey and dangerous.

The idea is to launch a nanobrewery and do it without risking myself too much financially. $24k is fairly cheap for a brewing system true, but then you go into buying the kegs, the bottling machine, the label machine, and reforming / renting a space to produce. I may only have to spend $40k sure, but every little bit helps.

What would you suggest instead of the pulley system for removing the mash tun with wet grain?

I'd consider the electric steam kettle option, but I am not sure if something like that exists in Spain.

If you want to launch a nano, go check out probrewer.com I think you will find that it is set up more for what you have in mind.

Have you looked for used systems? Typically one can find used systems from other breweries that either went belly up or expanded, that might be the way to go.

I might consider a tippy system where the mash tun pivots to allow easy dumping the grain.
I have a 25 gallon mash tun, and I just use a large grain scoop to scoop it into buckets. Larger than that, a small shovel might work well.

That much wet grain hanging from a chain would be pretty awkward to work with aside from simply setting it on the floor and then you're still left with scooping it out.

I "try" to follow the KISS method. Keep It Simple Stupid. For my homebrew, I can handle a bit of complexity that if it fails, I don't brew for a month while I fix it. In a commercial setup, reliability is everything. It has to work every time, over and over. Complexity costs money up front and money when it breaks down. I'd just say, make darn sure you cannot live without something before you buy it and then rely on it.

Again, I'm no expert, but have built a large homebrew setup. I think a mash stirrer is probably unnecessary, and I'd consider all options before trying to swing a full, wet, mash tun around the room.

I went to the local industrial grade kitchenware store and they have 200 liter gas powered pots (where the flame is applied to the bottom of the pot) for about 5000 dollars. If you look up "marmita fagor" in google, you can see what they look like. Anyway, the machine had these characteristics:

Stainless steel construction.
Capacity: 200 liters.
Compensated with folding lid snap flanges.
Stainless steel burner controlled valve.
Hot and cold water filling tap .
Draining tap.
Overpressure safety valve.
Power: 23,000 kcal / h (26.75 kW).
Dimensions: 850 x 900 x 750 mm.

Now, this is really just like a big version of my electric kettle and costs 1/4th the price of a microbrewery system. This is a commercial system so it would be reliable, and complies with state standards. Is there any reason why it shouldn't be as effective?

Have you looked into the 200 litre Braumeister? I've got the 20L and love it! Check out the Speidel Braumeister thread here on HBT, I'm pretty sure there's a guy(s) that have one in use as a nano in Europe.

The 200L braumeister though costs upwards of 15k, and will only hold so much grain. This is to say that I could only make a 5 to 6% alcohol beer. There is another system called slowbeer that would allow me to put in more grain and produce a stronger beer, which I could then dilute in order to produce more volume. But this system is over 20k. And as far as I can tell, the two systems consist of exactly the same kind of machinery that I can get for 5k. So what would spending the extra money get me?

A stainless tank manufacturer just confirmed that an off the shelf boiler like the one here:

http://www.fagorindustrial.com/upload/productos/grupos/catalogos/es/900_marmitas_es.pdf

would do the trick. So it looks like that is what I'm going to do.

Why do you need off-the-shelf kettles? If you know how to fabricate metal, lots of people here use stainless steel 50 gallon barrels for 1 BBL batches. Each one would come in much less than $1000.

You don't even have to fabricate the kettles yourself. Buy the fittings and have a local welder do everything custom. Almost always going to be cheaper than buying off-the-shelf and you'll get everything you want, exactly the way you want it. That's how my 3bbl system is getting built. Won't be as fancy as a commercial pilot system, but it'll get the job done for quite a bit less.

The thing is though, in Spain, to make a nanobrewery you need equipment that complies with state standards.

So get the standards and get your fabricator to follow them- trust me, they've made things to tighter spec for more difficult customers before. If they have an engineer on staff he can even write you up some certifications. And if the Spanish regs are so tight, they're probably not going to be too keen on repurposing other equipment.