Designing my brew sculpture

[johnc66]

Don't know if you need this or not but i saw this on B3's web page, they have plans for some of their sculptures

http://morebeer.com/search/102335

[Dave the brew guy]

I have been thinking how i want to design my brew sculpture, bu have a few ?'s. I am thinking of doing a two level sculpture where the hot water tun is under the mash tun, and gravity fed out to brew kettle then pumped through a counterflow chiller after boil. My question is for sparging. I do not have a pump or sparge arm yet, so im not exactly sure on how they work, understand yes, how well no. After youve sent your mash water up to the tun, and mashed out, doesnt the pump push too much water through the sparger or can that be controlled by other means. In my ever running mind it seems that the pump would push too much water too fast through the sparger (rotary style say like phils sparge arm), and just blow all your sparge time away. I guess my question is, is there a way to control how much the pumps pump out. Does this make any sense to anyone else but myself?

You mean something like this?

I'm using the flea-bay pump and a phil's sparge arm. I'll be replacing the arm with a home made manifold soon as a step towards adding HERMS to the system. I usually sparge a 5.25 gallon batch for 35-40 minutes, getting even flow in and out of the mash tun is pretty easy but it becomes a PITA if I try to go any slower than that.

[Petedadink]

mine I picked up at morebeer for cheap. It was in the %50 off rack, It had been dropped and couldnt sell as new. Maybey I just got lucky.

[Crut]

Don't know if you need this or not but i saw this on B3's web page, they have plans for some of their sculptures

http://morebeer.com/search/102335

I saw those, but fortunately I was raised country and designing/engineering/rigging is one of my best assets. I didnt feel like buying a set of plans, and still have to do all the work. My sculpture is coming along well, similiar to the pic posted above. I now have adjustable wheels installed, handles on it, my friend is giving me a couple 1/2 BBl's for free for it, and maybe a couple pumps. I just purchases another turkey fryer for it for the burner, just a couple hoses and hookups and should be brewing soon. I wish i had my camera to post some pics. all in good time my friends

[Crut]

finally got my cam back so i snapped a few of my sculpture progress. Its still in rough shape, but mostly done. This is all done with an old steel shelving unit, and misc angle iron and steel parts that i found laying around the family property and barns. Like stated in other posts, its not the prettiest thing. I plan to paint it still, but gotta get some tubing for water lines and the rest of the kegs for brewpots.





Adjustable wheels stolen from the lawnmower-set them down to wheel around, lift them up to lay it on the ground and brew







The Round plate on the back will be for the LP tank, still needs the frontmesh grate cut, and a pump space made.

[Crut]

Shes finished, this is a trial run on some mead we made. At this point i didnt have my other burner working right so it was only a single burner, now theyre both up and running, and will be utilized this wed for its first official brew batch.

[SlowFoxBird]

That's awesome!! Love the lawnmower wheel idea! I am going to steal that if I can figure out how to do it with pneumatic tires. I have a crappy backyard.

[Crut]

The wheels work awesome. One person can move it anywhere. I plan to paint the wheels with some Krylon Krome just to be a redneck brewer;) After all, it is a scrap iron brew sculpture. I made it on a limited budget, all the metal i found around the property and did the welding myself.
I hooked the pump up to a lightswitch for on and off and hooked up a little red light to it as well so the light comes on when the pump is on in case you forget to turn it off. The big test is tomrrow with a 10 gal batch of pumpkin spice ale. Wish me luck!