Yuri's Brew Yurt (Hut)

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I'm brewing!!! 15 gallons of my sweet stout. Strike water is nearly up to temp. Things are going fine so far. The control system is VERY rough, but it works well enough to brew today.
 
I'm stoked...I can sit here at my desk in the house and monitor the temp via a remote desktop connection. Here's a pic while I wait to dough in:

firstbrew.jpg
 
Yuri_Rage said:
I'm brewing!!! 15 gallons of my sweet stout. Strike water is nearly up to temp. Things are going fine so far. The control system is VERY rough, but it works well enough to brew today.
Click to expand...

Very cool yuri. Are you going to video document and post to youtube?


Joe
 
Yuri, you may have talked about this before, but why'd you go with the copper-in-PVC chiller design instead of a traditional counterflow chiller, a plate chiller, or even a Chilzilla-type? Any comparison in terms of its effectiveness versus the other chiller options?
 
Yuri_Rage said:
Nope...hydraulics are way too complicated. I want 30" of travel at a minimum, meaning either a really big cylinder, or a really big lever. The winch and a single pulley should work just fine. I can easily do pullups on any single rafter (tested), and my weight is roughly equivalent to a full fermenter. So far, this project screams $15 hand winch...

EDIT:
Fingers...ever use a "come along?" You can move a surprising amount of weight using only the mechanical advantage supplied by the gears in a hand winch. I've moved thousands of pounds of car/boat/tractor/etc onto trailers that way. A single fermenter will be child's play in comparison.
Click to expand...

Check HArbor Freight for an inexpensive electric winch
 
the_bird - I went with the PVC chiller design because I've seen it in action, and it works nicely. I HATE the cheap CFC that I bought a few years ago (it's put together pretty poorly), so this was my attempt at an upgrade. I like how compact it is. I'll let you know how it works soon!

As for the beer transfer from the fermenter...solved! I'm going to use a modified Sanke keg for my fermenter (not quite done yet), and I'll just do a pressure transfer. No need for hoists, winches, etc.

Today's brew: so far, so good! It's very much a pilot brew. My good scale's batteries went dead, so I measured the base grain on the bathroom scale (rather than weighing it a pound at a time on my smaller scale). So, efficiency is a bit of a WAG. However, it appears that I'm slightly ahead of the planned 75%. Conversion was complete after about 20 minutes, and I started the sparge around 30 minutes. You'll get a kick out of my solution to not having plumbing (pic below). I did about a 60 minute fly sparge, using steam to instantaneously heat the cold sparge water contained in the Corny keg. I thought it was just going to be a workaround until I bought an RV hose long enough to reach the hut, but it worked so well, I'm not sure I'm going to change a thing! ...unless I decide to plumb the hut someday...

The sparge setup:

noplumbing.jpg


Steamy goodness:

sparge.jpg
 
So, I just joined the boards tonight.

Yuri,

Your one of the reasons I joined. I have been lurking around for about 2 weeks and just couldn't stand not being able to post. I showed your brew hut and new brew setup to the misses tonight. To my supprise she said, you can do something like that here. :rockin:

Anyways, very nicely done. Very clean, and a true DIY right to the bone. I can't think of anyone who powder coats thier own parts. My knowledge of polyurethanes doesn't quite help me. Not too much in this hobbie.

I think you have a really sweet setup going on. I like the tippy dump. I think the steam is a bit too far for me, just don't trust the pressure thing. I know that I have more pressure in my kegs when they carb, but they aren't hot.:) Never the less I will continue to follow along. I am sure the thread is about done though. I hope not, but the hut is complete.

:mug:


Is there any interferance(sp) with the tippy dump and the hard plumbing to the kettle?
 
I have to remove the hard plumbing to dump the mash tun. It's a very simple process. In fact, cleanup went very smoothly.

The chiller was less efficient than I was hoping, but it's adequate. With only 20 lbs of ice (oops...meant to get another bag), the wort was chilled to 100 degrees F, and the reservoir wound up quite hot. So, I'll pitch in the morning.

Assuming my grain bill was accurate, I got about 85% efficiency (per BeerSmith). I'll run some numbers through Kai's spreadsheet to see how I'm doing at each step.

All things considered, it was a pretty fun first run!
 
Yuri_Rage said:
I'm stoked...I can sit here at my desk in the house and monitor the temp via a remote desktop connection.
Click to expand...

You SHOULD be stoked! Hell, I'm stoked FOR you! :D

Did you already post about the remote desktop connection that you're using to monitor from the house? I'd like to learn more about how you set that up...

-Tripod
 
The remote desktop setup is a very simple VNC scheme. Linux Mint/Ubuntu has a VNC server built in under "Menu -> Preferences -> Remote Desktop." OS X has a built in VNC client, but it's painfully slow, so I've been messing with Chicken of the VNC and JollysFastVNC. JollysFastVNC is the winner so far.
 
The (rough) numbers are in: 85% efficiency into the kettle. I lost a bit during both conversion and lautering. I likely rushed both steps, since I started late in the day (25 minute mash, one hour fly sparge to collect 17 gallons). I'm reasonably happy with 86% lauter efficiency, but the 86% conversion number is a tad low. In any case, the numbers are quite encouraging, and I'm fairly sure I know where I need to improve the process.
 
Yuri_Rage said:
OS X has a built in VNC client, but it's painfully slow, so I've been messing with Chicken of the VNC and JollysFastVNC. JollysFastVNC is the winner so far.
Click to expand...

WOHOOO! I'm green with envy. :ban:
What a sweet setup, and it looks great and works great. What more can you ask for except more carboys! :rockin:

Being the old school guy, I would just do a SSH connection and tunnel the X11 display.

I'm really glad you got this in operation and shared it with us. Thanks Yuri.
 
Dude, your project is like the energizer bunny, it keeps going..........
Awesome stuff, keep sharing.
 
Kauai_Kahuna said:
Being the old school guy, I would just do a SSH connection and tunnel the X11 display.
Click to expand...
I've been SSH tunneling when I want to do some real work, but unless you know something I don't, SSH requires a separate X session. So, I can't mirror/control the active desktop display without using VNC. Because I'm using the USB serial port to monitor data, I can only have one instance of the monitor process running, and I want to be able to see it whether I'm inside the brew hut or sitting in the home office. I may use Apache and a dynamic web page at some point, but for now, VNC is the solution.
 
Home Brewing Wiki said:
With today's highly modified and thus enzymatic strong malts, the mash is generally converted after 15-30 min based on the rest temperature. Lower temperatures mashes convert slower than higher temp mashes of the same grist (see The Theory of Mashing for further details). Most brewers do however mash 60-90 minutes to ensure complete conversion and for the time it gives them to heat the sparge water for example. It is always a good practice to check for conversion of the mash with an iodine test.
Click to expand...

That's it in a nutshell. See here. Using steam to almost instantaneously heat my sparge water means I can start sparging as soon as conversion is complete. An iodine test at 20 minutes was negative for starch. I suspect that conversion was not quite complete (per the numbers from Kai's spreadsheet), but it was close. I will likely do a longer rest during my next brew session, but it's not necessarily required.
 
I know eff is a couple of different things.

Do you know what your lauter eff was?
How tight of a fit is it?
I am courious about that false bottom. I haven't been on the borads long in the home brew relm. I have also taken the last year off of brewing due to a remodle. I have never seen these bottoms before. Did they come out in the last year?
 
Yuri_Rage said:
The (rough) numbers are in: 85% efficiency into the kettle. I lost a bit during both conversion and lautering. I likely rushed both steps, since I started late in the day (25 minute mash, one hour fly sparge to collect 17 gallons). I'm reasonably happy with 86% lauter efficiency, but the 86% conversion number is a tad low. In any case, the numbers are quite encouraging, and I'm fairly sure I know where I need to improve the process.
Click to expand...
Allow myself to quote...myself.

The false bottom works great. There are pics/info throughout the thread.
 
I can't take credit for the link. I stole it from someone, probably from HBT. But I do like these fittings. I see them used in commercial settings often and have wondered why we (homebrewers) have not taken to them. I see the Tri Clover clamps often viewed as a "better" quick coupler, but these look to me much easier to use and sanitize.

Any input on this type of fittings?
 
I used to use camlock fittings all the time when I sold ready mix chemicals. I chose to go tri-clover on my new build. When the gasket seats against the male fitting they can be a PIA to get the ears closed tight. I didn't use silicone gaskets though. That could make a difference. They were rugged did last a long time. Never had a failure in 10 years of using them.
 
RonRock said:
Have you considered "Snap Lock Couplers" rather than unions for the removable hard line?

http://proflowdynamics6.reachlocal.net/modules/store/-Stainless-Steel_C68.cfm

These look pretty cool to me. I wonder why they aren't used more often by homebrewers?
Click to expand...

It seems as though more of us are. I ordered 16 males and 12 females. He said he has had a run on them since the HBT posts started. They are sold out of the 1/2 male. He had 18 coming this week when I ordered 16 of them.

He said most of the people buying them right now are homebrewers.
 
Check your local rubber/plastics supplier in your area. You can usually find them there. In any material needed, they sell food grade hose and the fittings to go with it.
 
Here's a screenshot of my web-based monitor (rough hack so far). This thread was the inspiration.

brewhutgauges.jpg


I'm using a terminal emulator to dump Arduino's serial output to a text file. Then I use Ajax/PHP to read the data contained in the file and display it on the canvas gauges. It's a bit inelegant, but it works fine over the home LAN.

I tried the PHP serial library, and it didn't work at all. I could open the port, but reading from it was problematic at best (EDIT: Those issues were most likely because the latest Linux kernels have an FTDI driver bug. Compiling a new FTDI module improved things considerably. However, I've decided to abandon PHP for now in favor a simpler, faster XML file transfer).
 
I had some great success with the software tonight. Arduino is outputting XML, and the web script is down to a single Ajax request for a small XML file rather than several asynchronous requests for data from a PHP script. The webcam image refreshes every few seconds. I'm not entirely sure that the webcam is useful, but it looks nice.

brewhutscreenshot.jpg
 
Yuri_Rage said:
I had some great success with the software tonight. Arduino is outputting XML, and the web script is down to a single Ajax request for a small XML file rather than several asynchronous requests for data from a PHP script. The webcam image refreshes every few seconds. I'm not entirely sure that the webcam is useful, but it looks nice.

brewhutscreenshot.jpg
Click to expand...

That is RAD!:rockin:

Even if the camera is not that useful it definatly has the cool factor going. I am really starting to think that Phase 2 of my build might have to be pc based operation. Seeing some of these threads lately is inspiring. Just need to get it complete and running first then plan for phase 2
 

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