Don’t Buy Solenoid Valves For Your Brewery!
August 19, 2010 9:41 pm [No Comments]
So, last night was the inaugural brew on the new brew system and until the very last step it went wonderfully. Unfortunately, the last step turned it into a total disaster.
I’ll do a full writeup once I stop weeping but the gist of it is that the hop and break crud from the boiler ended up clogging my chiller and about half of my valves. The chiller was clogged so bad it ended up taking me 3 hours to chill the batch down to pitching temperature. I didn’t find out about the valves problems till tonight when I tried to clean the whole mess up. One of my solenoid valves was stuck open by three tiny pieces of hop leaf.
So, tonight I cleaned the whole mess up, stripped it almost completely down and I’m now planning how to fix things. One of the things I’ll definitely need to do is replace any valves that might end up with crud passing through them with ball valves or motorized ball valves. I’m also going to need a filter system in place for the wort before it hits the chiller.
All in all, I am really happy with the brewery. Even though I had big problems for the most part it went really, really smooth. I have a few bugs to work out and then it’s going to kick major ass.
Brewery Work: Lots!
July 26, 2010 11:06 pm [No Comments]
Last weekend, the weekend before it and tonight have been very productive on the brewery build front. It’s getting very close to done. At this point the only thing I really have outstanding is valve wiring and final plumbing hookups. All the kettles have all their bulkheads installed and tonight I finished installing the heating element in the boil kettle and tested it.
I had to chase down some noise and interference throughout the control panel which was causing the LCD to scramble now and then. The pumps needed snubbers which I build from a 47 Ohm resistor + .1uF capacitor wired in series placed parallel to the hot and neutral on the plug of the pump. The solenoids all needed suppression diodes which I have been working on installing right into the coil head of each solenoid as I wire them up. 4 of 11 done so far.
Tonight after the final kettle work I spent some time heating water in various kettles and testing my heat exchanger. It seems to work pretty well although I am either having some pump priming issues or the heat exchanger is too restrictive. The flow is not very good through it. I am pretty sure it’s a pump prime issue. Tomorrow I am going to rotate the head of the pump to a configuration a lot of brewers are having success with and see if it helps. The result will have the inlet of the pump facing down and the outlet facing up. The idea is to have any air trapped in the head go to the top and be evacuated so the entire pump head can fill with liquid.
I am really hoping to be able to brew this weekend but it’s probably not going to happen. I need some final pipe fittings to get everything finished and the eBay seller I want to get them from is being slow to respond. We’ll see!
Lots of pictures to come – I’ve been too busy working on it to take any!
Brewery Work: Not Much
July 7, 2010 10:40 pm [No Comments]
Well, the long weekend and most of this week have been kind of a bust. I floundered around with getting the control panel painted and was never happy with the results. I finally decided to throw in the towel and get some professional help so now it’s in the queue at Seattle Powder Coating. I should have it back in 4-5 days. Unfortunately that is kind of holding everything up. The main things I still have left to do are:
- Build the second valve manifold.
- Build the kettle input manifolds.
- Drill the MLT and BK.
- Wire all the valves.
- Wire the temperature sensors.
Unfortunately I am kind of hesitant to do any of that until I know where the control panel is going to live, whether it works and how long cables will need to be.
So, I’m stuck.
I do have some parts showing up tomorrow I should be able to work on. I have some tri-clamp fittings coming that I am going to build into the HERMS coil so it’s easily removable and I have cable grips coming that will go on the valve side of the valve cabling. With that I will at least be able to wire the valves on one side and leave them long on the other. Once I have the control panel and decide where it’s going to live I can cut the cables to length and terminate them.
So, probably not too much going on for the next few days, but as soon as the control panel is back I expect to wrap the whole project up very quickly.
In better news, I did finish getting the stand put together and got the casters installed. So, it sort of looks like a brewery at least. And it rolls around the garage very easily 
Brewery Work: Front Panel
July 1, 2010 10:00 pm [No Comments]
Just a little bit of (perceived) progress tonight but it took quite a while. I got the four main rectangular holes done on the front panel. There are two more than I have not decided if I am going to use so I am hesitating on cutting them. I was able to do the three BTPD holes on my mill which worked really great. 1/8″ flat endmill, 12 IPM, 6700 RPM and .010″ DOC went through the .080″ steel just fine. Unfortunately the hole for the LCD was too far in the Y direction for the mill to get so I had to cut it by hand using my Dremel. That kinda sucked but it only really took about 20 minutes and it didn’t come out half bad.
Next up, I have to make a decision about the two remaining holes (probably yes), get those cut and then strip and finish the panel. Then it’s finally time to button this thing up. Can’t wait!
Brewery Work: Front Panel and Bottom Panel
June 30, 2010 10:06 pm [No Comments]
Got a lot of work done on the brewery tonight. I picked up some paint stripper from Lowes and set into the bottom panel with it to see if this ugly coating would come off. It came off nooooo problem. I’m intending to paint the whole control box gloss black. The paint stripper is nasty stuff. Ate right through my nitrile safety gloves and by time I realized all the fingertips on my left hand were burning and tingly. That sucked.
While the stripper was working I started laying out and drilling the front panel. I drilled all the major round holes and pilot holes for all the rectangular holes except two that I am not sure about yet. I’m hoping I can cut the rectangles on my mill but I am not sure if the whole thing will fit in there. That’s tomorrow experiment.
Finally, because I couldn’t stand it any more, I installed some of the major components into the front panel. It’s looking really great. I am super excited to get it finished up. Tomorrow I am going to get the rectangular holes started on the mill (hopefully), set to stripping the main box and get the bottom panel primed and painted.
The control box is turning out to be a lot more work than I expected, but it’s turning out really nice so I don’t mind. It’s bugging me that I still have not put power to a kettle but I think it will be worth it in the end. I want the system to look as good as it runs and I’m getting there.
