6 Guys Brewing

Today was the last push to get things ‘wet tested’ before we dumped some real cash into grains and screwed that up. The goals for this day were simple:

• Sand and finish the table
• Finish plumbing the sink
• Brew an extract beer to test the heating element

We started around 11am and sanded the table. This actually went extremely quickly (thanks Scott) and we were able to put a finish on the table by 1pm. This also gave us time to finish up the plumbing and by about 1:30 I was boiling water for the 5 gallon extract. The good news is that the heating elements and temperature were placed low enough in the pot that 5 gallons of water cover it nicely. The bad: I forgot to put in the dip tube and screen in the boil kettle before it got up to 170 degrees. So, out comes the water and the whole processes is started over again.

The boil actually went pretty well. The heating element (a 4500W ultra low density model) worked amazingly well and cleanup was almost easier than expected. I say ‘almost’ because I was dragging around this ridiculously long 10AWG power cable that was hard wired to the pot. I kept tripping over the damn thing and nearly falling on my face. This inspired me to go look for a water proof connector that would meet our application. Anderson Power to the rescue again. The SPEC Pak connectors are just what we need. They aren’t cheap, but they are completely water proof and use the existing power pole connectors we had come to know and love.

All-in-all, this brew day went off without a hitch. I kegged the American Amber yesterday and it’s good, but not remarkable. The OG was a little low, and the FG is a little high. 4.1%, if I recall correctly. I’ll give it another week or two to see if I really like it.

Before we did too much else, we felt we needed a place to put the shiny kettles that we just purchased.

In the forums we found a wide variety of setups and materials. Some of these can be quite interesting.  In general, there are 2 styles: ones that go up.. or ones that go out.  The vertical examples use gravity to transfer liquids from one or more vessels, eliminating the need for a pump.  We dismissed this early on, as then you need ladders to reach, stir, move, etc.  Personally it’s not worth the cost savings of a couple of pumps.  So we’ve decided on something that looks like a table.

When we were planning on working with gas, the sensible choice was to make the thing out of metal.  Although I found some people that mixed fire and wood, it didn’t seem to us to make a lot of sense. Stainless steel looks nice, but was very pricey. Regular steel was a good alternative, but we’d have to paint it.  We weren’t worried about the welding of the steel, since one of our guys is pretty handy with the welding rod.

However, once we settled on the electric route, we switched over to the idea of a wooden table. Personally we liked the looks of a wooden table better, and the materials were cheaper.  So a little time with visio later, and a trip to Home Depot, we were ready to rock.

The table that we made was sized to have room for all 3 kettles, with plenty of room for mounting pumps, values, hoses, etc.  We wanted it high enough off the ground to have a reasonable lower shelf, but not too high as there was going to be 20 gallon kettles sitting on top of it.  The same concerns about height were again valid, as we didn’t want to have a step stool here either.  Since we’re cheap, we also didn’t want to purchase anything longer than 8 ft lumber, so that basically constrained the length. We originally thought about putting the control panel on the table, but there was no good spot that didn’t get in way, look silly, or would have been too hard to use.

Here’s a pdf of the plan for the table.  As I recall, we made a few modifications from the original plan as we went (make it simpler).  I believe that I did incorporate them into the posted copy.

We are happy with the way it turned out..

Other pics in construction:  Gallery

Shopping List:

• 3x 2″x6″x8′ Pine
• 2x 4″x4″x8′ Pine
• 4x 2″x4″x8′ Pine
• 9x 1″x6″x8′ Pine
• 2 1/2″ Decking screws
• 6″ Carriage bolts
• Thompson’s Water Seal (multipurpose)

To finish it we debated on this for a bit.  We liked the wood look, so painting it was obviously out.  Staining was considered, but it didn’t seem to warrant it, since it’s only going to be work table.  Polyurethane was another thought, but the glossy finish was mostly undesirable.  I also wasn’t sure how it would deal with the heat of the kettles sitting on top of the finish.  The final decision was Thompson’s water seal.  This would give it water protection, but not change the look or properties of the wood.  We all think this was the right choice.

Even though we had a high level plan, it would take us several  more months to do too much about it.

In this time we started buying stuff, a process that was quite ad-hoc.  We did have a master shopping list, but in practice it wasn’t updated with all the items, or the final purchase prices.  As we figured out what we needed, someone would step up and order it.  As we had planned we split the purchases up between us, trying to spread the pain out; of course we also wanted to get going on the final result, so sometimes it necessitated someone to fall on the sword and just buy it. This was likely good, as no one us really know the grandiose total that we each have spent. Hopefully in the end it’ll approximate something close to equal for all of us.

Since we don’t have a up to date master shopping list, I can’t post one here.  Once we finish everything maybe we can pull together the complete itemized list.  If so, I’ll update this post.. so you can check back if interested.

Obviously the procrastinating part came about due to the fact that we never had all the parts that we needed, nor could we get the critical mass to work on it for too long and figure out what else was needed.  Darn you life & day jobs for getting in the way of Beer!

When we first started with the 6 guys brewery plan, bought a few shiny new kettles from Blichmann Engineering, and some of their other examples of brew-engineering (the wort chiller, and the autosparge). We were very impressed with them, and brewed a couple of batches before Christmas to get a feel for how they worked.  We knew that long term there was a lot more that we could do to automate and have better control over the process.

Faced with this task, we started to read, investigate, and shop around.  We started checking out various posts, plans, and ideas from various sites including a large number of posts from homebrewtalk.com

There we found quite a few possibilities, HERMS, RIMS, Brutus 10, Electric, Gas, PIDs, Brewtroller, BCS-460.

The first thing that caught our eye was the Brutus 10.  We liked the automation and control of the system, but the direct fired RIMS was a bit disconcerting.  In the past it we have found it hard to maintain control over the amount of fire that heated the mash and risk scorching the wort.

On another set of posts we found a plan for an RIMS with a electric heating element, in a configuration made out out stainless steel piping in what I can only imagine a pipe bomb looks like. We thought about a HERMS setup, but we didn’t care for putting another set of tubing for recirculation in the HLT, and appreciated the simplicity of the RIMS setup.

To control this all we found that a lot of people used standalone PID, or LOVE controls. They seemed to do the job, but weren’t very well integrated. The BCS-460 seemed like a cool choice, but the option that really caught our interest was the Brewtroller.   Being a bunch of engineers the micro controller route, especially one where we could impact the hardware and software design was very appealing.  The Brewtroller could control up to 4 PID heaters, all of the pump/value controls that we could ever want (up to 32), 8 temperature sensors, and other options such as  volume measurement.

For the RIMS heater, we planned on using a 120V 1500W  Ultra-Low density heating element.   The ultra low density element is important to avoid scorching the wort as it is recirculated. Coupled with the PID on the brewtroller, we could precisely control the temp of the mash, i.e. 150 degrees.

As we were planning all of this we intended to use natural gas with ASCO valves to control the heaters. The natural gas seemed like the obvious choice, given the availability, and common precedence set by others.   We knew that we didn’t want to use high pressure LP gas, in the typical BBQ cylinders, as they were expensive and inevitability they always run out a the most inconvenient time.

While we were working on purchasing the stuff that we needed, we re-thought the gas choice.  Going all electric seemed to make a lot of sense. One problem that we came across is that the appropriate gas burners were not easy to come by.  In addition we thought since we were already planning on using electric for the RIMS heater, it makes sense to use electric for all of the kettles.

With this in mind, we found out that using a 240V 4500W heating element could heat the HLT for a 10 gallon batch in a reasonable amount of time.  For the brew kettle 240V 5500W ULD element would be perfect for the boil. Again, the ULD is required so the sugars do not burn on the element. For the HLT, there is only normal water in there, so the higher density elements can be used.

Now that we have our plan, we need finish buying stuff..

In the days before we were the 6 Guys Brewing, most of us had brewed before.  Each individually, we had brewed a number of batches.  Some came out really well, like my smoked scotch ale, some were interesting – chicken wing beer?  The only thing consistent with these batches, was that they were not very consistent. The equipment that we used for these was various entry level setups from a variety of places.. a Mr Beer kit, a more advanced setup with actual glass carboys, a couple of assorted brew kettles.

After Jeremy & Travis decided to give all-grain a try with a couple of  converted coolers we found that all-grain was something that we could handle.  After a few batches, we discovered that we couldn’t do a 5 gallon batch with a large grain bill in a 5 gallon cooler.  We started to think bigger..

This is when we decided to join together, and we became the 6 guys. This way we could pool our resources, and get some really good equipment.   Our first piece of equipment was a couple of new kettles.  While we had heard stories of people converting 1/2 kegs into a brewing setup, we didn’t have access to used kegs, and we had become fans of the Blichmann Engineering kettles as of late, so we decided to get a couple 20 gallons kettles, and a 15 gallon kettle for the setup.

What is the first thing you do when you buy $1000 worth of kettles? Most people use them for brewing. Not us, we put holes in them (a couple of them anyway). The brew kettle and the hot liquor tank each had holes put in them for heaters and a thermostat.

These are only the beginning of what we had planned, and we will provide you with more information about what we created, how we did it, and why we did it, in posts coming soon.