Equipment

Here's what I spent most of my day making, in preparation for Yard City Cask Fest: a Beer Engine.  No comments about my messy kitchen.

A Beer Engine is simply a self priming positive displacement pump that pulls beer out of a cask (or keg), while air is allowed into the cask to fill the space left behind by the beer you just pumped out. This is the traditional English method of dispensing "cask ale" or "real ale." The typical kegged beer dispensing system at every bar, pub, and tavern pushes beer out of the keg, through the beer lines, and out the faucet using CO₂ pressure. Cask ale is less carbonated than kegged beer, and often times served a little warmer (around 50­°-54°F).

Commercial beer engines cost upwards of $350, but you can build your own for right around $60. I followed the basic instructions found in Brew Your Own magazine, both the May 1997 and Jan/Feb 2005 issues. Essentially, you just build a box to house a hand pumped water faucet, like you might find in an RV or a boat.

I used the Valterra Rocket Hand Pump, which you can find online for $25-$40. I didn't want to wait around for it to be shipped, so I found it at the local RV parts store for about $40. I had some scrap oak-veneer plywood lying around and bought a few feet of beer line and a corny beer-out fitting at my LHBS. That, some screws and glue, and a few hours in the garage w/ my table saw and drill are about all it took. It was so simple that I won't bother to describe the construction. The pictures pretty much speak for themselves.

Click on any of the pics for a larger view. The dimensions of the box are 12" high, about 5 1/2" wide and 6" deep.  I definitely could have gone with a shorter box, as short at 5" or so.  I may actually cut it down at some point, but it will probably be clamped to a table at YCCF, so it may be just the right height.

I notched both the back of the tower and the base, so I can run the beer line out the back or the bottom.

I wanted to give a little more detail on some mods I've made to the brewing stand. The first is a mod I made before I ever brewed on it the first time but haven't specifically mentioned. When I first built the rig I had hard piping everywhere, even connecting to the brewing vessel outlets. It became obvious right away that hard connections to the vessels required tolerances in pipe cutting and soldering that are very difficult to achieve in a garage without any special equipment. So shortly after assembling the completed plumbing system I cut out sections of the hard copper piping below each outlet valve and replaced them with high temp thermoplastic tubing. This reduces stresses on the pump heads and eliminates the need to have everything perfectly aligned when assembling the rig. The flex tubing below the hot liquor tank, mash tun, and kettle can be seen in the picture at the left.

The other modification is that I finally added switches for my pumps. Up to now I've been plugging each pump into an extension cord to turn it on and unplugging it to turn it off. Cumbersome at best, and confusing at worst when I'd get cords mixed up and plug or unplug the wrong one. So I bought a 2-switch switch box with switches, three cord grip connectors, and a cord. The cord grip connectors thread into the switch box and have a rubber grommet and compression nut that squeezes the grommet around the cord where it passes into the box. The switches are regular light switches and the faceplate of the box has actuators that flip the switch on the inside of the box when you operate the lever on the outside of the box. I bought all this stuff at Home Depot for around $25.

I cut the plug ends off the pump power cords, drilled holes in the plywood bottom shelf of the stand so I could run the cords beneath it inside the framing channel, mounted the switch box to one of the vertical pieces of framing channel, and wired everything up. Here are some details about the wiring. There are 3 wires in the pump cords; black (hot), white (neutral) and green (ground). The power cord I bought has the same three colored wires. The hot wires are connected to the switches so when the switch is open nothing in the pump is energized. If you wire the neutral wires to the switches they will function and everything will seem alright, but in this case the switches interrupt the circuit downstream of the pumps, so there is live voltage in the pumps even when the switches are in the off position. This isn't a particularly safe way to wire a circuit. All 3 white wires get connected together with a wire nut. All three green wires, plus a 4th which is connected directly to the switch box, get wire-nutted together as well. The 4th green wire ensures the switch box is grounded and is necessary for safety in case something shorts out. Also, since the box is screwed directly to the metal stand, the entire stand is now grounded. If you are wondering about a GFI, the outlets in my garage are GFI protected, so I didn't see the need to add a GFI to this circuit.

The switches work great and I'm looking forward to my next brew day and being able to start and stop pumps with the flip of a switch.

It's been awhile since I posted any updates on the evolution of my brewing stand. I recently made a major conversion to a HERMS. If you're not familiar with HERMS, it stands for Heat Exchange Recirculation Mash System. Basically what it means is that there is a heat exchanger in the HLT which wort from the mash tun is pumped through during recirc to raise the mash temperature. The biggest reason I went with HERMS is that I was paranoid about using direct heat to raise mash temps because I scorched one batch really bad and completely ruined it. Since then, I've been so cautious about direct heat that temp steps take forever. Infusion isn't a practical option because the mash tun isn't big enough to add enough water to significantly raise the temperature of the mash, unless I'm brewing a particularly small beer (which I almost never do).

So, here's how I went about converting my rig. I made a coil from 30 feet of 5/8 inch flexible copper tubing. I wrapped the tubing around a corny keg to get the proper diameter. I then soldered 90 degree bends on the ends of the copper coil with short sections of rigid copper tubing that would connect to the fittings in the side of the HLT.

To drill the holes in the HLT I used a step bit or "Unibit." The secret to drilling through stainless steel is to go slow and keep it cool. If you go too fast and let the steel get hot it will harden and make it nearly impossible to drill through. I actually did the drilling over my deep sink and ran cold water over the bit as I was drilling the hole.

For bulkhead fittings through the HLT wall I used the weldless fittings that are commonly sold at homebrew shops and online. Since space inside the HLT to make connections was limited, I turned the fittings around from the typical installation so that the stainless steel coupling is on the outside of the tank and the threaded nipple is on the inside. Connecting the coil to the fittings was just a matter of using 1/2" female iron pipe to 5/8" compression fittings. On the outside of the tank I used a 1/2 inch 90 degree street elbow with a hose barb to direct the flow upwards at the outlet of the heat exchanger and just a hose barb on the bottom fitting for the inlet.

I've brewed in the converted rig once since conversion. It was a simple mash schedule - saccharification rest at 150 and mash out at 170. To raise the temp for mash out, I heated the HLT to about 180 and started recirculating. The temp in the HLT quickly dropped to around 160 and I had to stop recirculating to raise the HLT back up to around 180. I think there was temperature stratification in the HLT and although the thermometer was still reading around 180, the temp was stratified and the average temperature was lower. When I started the recirc, I also stirred the water in the HLT to improve heat transfer, which gave me a more accurate temp reading. Next time I'll time things better and ensure the HLT is actually at 180 before I start recircing, and I'll also keep a flame on it when I recirc to help keep the temperature up.

I'm already considering some modifications to my newly modified rig. The biggest being a bypass in the recirc line that would allow me to recirc w/out running the wort through the heat exchanger in the HLT. When I was trying to raise the temp to mashout on my last brew I stopped the recirc for a while to let the HLT heat faster. If I had a bypass I could have kept it recirculating while the HLT heated.

Finally, I wanted to mention another minor mod. I don't think I pointed out that I removed the hard-piped connections to the brewing vessels. I did this before I even brewed on this rig the first time. I simply cut out short sections of copper pipe below the valves on each of the vessels and replaced it with flexible tubing (high temp thermo-plastic tubing). Along with the HERMS conversion, I also cut out a section of the hard pipe that cross-connects the discharge piping of the two pumps. This section of piping allows the wort pump to pump back into the top of the mash tun as well as kettle. Having all the hard piping connections was putting stress on the pump heads, which are made from plastic, and I was concerned that over time the stress would crack the heads. One added benefit of some of the modifications I made is that the liquor pump now does not lose suction at low flows. For some reason, before these mods, if I throttled down on the discharge of the liquor pump it would end up getting air bound. If I kept the discharge valve wide open it pumped fine. This is backwards from what you would expect if the pump were losing suction due to cavitation, so the behavior was a mystery to me. In any event, after the HERMS conversion I was able to throttle the sparge water flow to a trickle and the pump never lost suction. It doesn't make sense that the HERMS conversion corrected the problem because all it did as far as that pump is concerned is add 30 feet of piping to the system, increasing the head on the pump. The same effect could have been accomplished by throttling a valve on the discharge, which is exactly the situation where the pump would lose suction. I think that putting soft piping in the cross-connect pipe is what fixed the problem. My theory is that the stress on the pump head was warping it slightly and that air was getting sucked in past the O-ring seal on the back of the head. Or maybe through a threaded fitting on the suction side of the pump (which didn't leak with static head on it, so I don't believe that was the problem). In any event, my theory may be way off base, but it's nice to be able to throttle the sparge water flow. Now I can match flows in and out of the mash tun rather than having to cycle the sparge water flow full on and off manually.

Here is a bar sink, and shelves for glasses, I installed in an old armoire next to my kegerator in the TV room. The plumbing for the sink was roughed-in several years ago when we built an addition to the house. The armoire is a freebie a friend gave us. Someday I hope to build a real bar, but this will work in the interim:

The armoire:

The inside of the armoire:

The sink:

I bought a new brew kettle from a guy who had to quit brewing for health reasons. It's a converted Sanke, but not converted in the way I usually see it done. The entire top was cut off the keg at the point where it starts to curve inward. This results in a little bit of lost capacity, but it also allows one to fit a full diameter perforated stainless false bottom in it (which this has). Another unusual feature is that the bottom rim was notched out and the spigot was welded to the curved part of the bottom. As a result, it takes a suction much lower in the kettle than if the hole were drilled on the straight side, which eliminates the need for a dip tube. It also has a thermometer installed through the side.

My plan is to use this as a mash tun and convert my current tun to a kettle. My current kettle is very beat up, so it will go in the scrap heap or be donated to a good cause.

Here are a few pics:

Here is my grain mill. It's a Valley Mill, which unfortunately aren't available any more. I wanted to go for simplicity and portability when I motorized it, so I simply made a base to hold the motor and mill that sits right on top of a bucket. When I'm not using it I store it on a shelf in my garage. The motor is from a ventilation fan and its best feature is a built-in switch so I didn't have to wire one up myself.

Click on the pics for larger views.

Left Side	Right Side
Top	Bottom

I inaugurated the new system yesterday at Big Brew. I brewed a Blonde Ale that is destined for a family reunion in July. Not a style I typically brew, but there will be a lot of people there from the Midwest who will need to ease into the craft beer scene. I'll post the recipe in a separate post.

As for the system, it worked great. There was only one minor problem, and it was operator error rather than a design flaw. When I started the recirc I didn't realize I had the kettle drain valve open and a lot of the wort ended up in the kettle rather than back in the mash tun. I just pumped it back into the tun and started the sparge. No big deal. Here is a pic of the proud papa (me) next to my operating micro-micro brewery:

I finished most of the plumbing today. After I fixed a couple leaks I was able to test all the pumping paths and everything works great. All I have left to do is to make a sparge ring for the mash tun and a whirlpool attachment for the kettle. Here are a couple pics of the latest progress:

The Stand

Pumps and Plumbing

Here's the latest progress on the stand. I haven't had time to work in it much lately. I attached the burners awhile ago, and today I mounted the pumps and started plumbing. No duct tape and baling wire, but the gas piping is held on with cable ties. I need to buy some clips for permanent mounting.

The Stand	Pumps and Plumbing
Top View	Burner Closeup

Here are a few more pictures of the progress so far. I have burners on order which should be here before the weekend. If all goes well, I could be brewing on this in a week.

Stand with vessels

Another view

Connection Detail