Article

DIY Electric Brewing

Many homebrewers start their adventure with the kitchen stove or a turkey fryer pot and propane burner, coupled with a cooler converted into a mash tun. It worked for Charlie Papazian, it worked for John Palmer, and it has worked for thousands of homebrewers across the country. These systems are often cobbled together from this, that, and t’other. Some look very nice and finished, while others are quite crude. They do, however, share some common drawbacks: An open propane burner loses 50–80% of heat to the atmosphere; propane cannot be used indoors due to carbon monoxide issues; it is difficult to keep a consistent mash temperature without constant fiddling; and gravity is not the most convenient way to move a batch from here to there if it’s larger than 5 gallons (19 L). Over the years, a large body of shade-tree wisdom has been shared that alleviates many of the symptoms, but the core issues remain.

Necessity, mothers, and invention collaborated, and electrically-powered tools entered the homebrewing scene. The introduction of a small centrifugal pump meant that brewers could start planning for bigger batches without having to consult with a structural engineer to design a safe three-tiered tower that would allow for half-barrel kettles to all flow downhill. Pumps also accelerated the development of recirculating wort during the mash.

Development proceeded in dribs and drabs until 2009, when Kal Wallner developed and published his design for a PID-controlled system at TheElectricBrewery.com that used specialized water heater elements installed in a kettle. To put it mildly, Kal pretty much started a revolution among homebrewers singlehandedly. His book, The Complete Guide to Building Your Brewery sparked a forum dedicated to electric brewing on HomebrewTalk.com (HBT), which at the time of this writing, has over 145,000 messages in over 8,500 threads. Hopheads around the country started talking about SSRs (solid-state relays), GFCIs (ground-fault circuit interrupters), and PIDs (proportional–integral–derivative controllers) as much as they were talking about IBUs, ABV, and pH.

Electric brewing can be done indoors as long as you have an exhaust fan of some kind. The heating elements are surrounded by wort, so every kilowatt-hour consumed is directly applied to the job at hand. No more forking out $25 for a Blue Rhino tank in an attempt to heat Duluth, Minnesota in January. Perhaps the biggest benefit is that mash temperatures can now be held to +/- one degree, across the entire mash rest period, and it can be done with very little intervention from the brewer. The benefits to electric brewing are tremendous. It gets even better when you have a digital thermostat controlling your fermentation temperature. No more sketchy batches because someone left the blinds open in the living room.

Most of today’s electric brewing is centered around a 2–3 vessel system with electric heating elements and some kind of mash recirculation system. There are plenty of variations, but we’ll spend the balance of this article focusing on the most common system design.

Inside a completed brewstand control system enclosure.

As with all stories, it’s never all sunshine and roses. A loss of control over electricity can hurt or kill you, and it’s not as polite as propane, with its lovely sulphur-based alarm smell. You can’t see electricity coming. Without proper grounding and circuit protection, you could wake up in an ambulance, or worse. If you turn your back to it, it will find every resistive connection it can and start making copious amounts of heat in that connection. Enough to start a fire and turn your brewery into a smoking ruin.

Mixed in the 145,000 messages in the Electric Brewing forum on HBT is Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates. There is some outstanding information, some recycled information, and some information that came out of the south-facing end of a northbound intact bovine creature. Navigating the rocks and shoals of information on electrical safety in the brewhouse requires information, a little understanding, and a lot of caution. That’s not to say that the subject is unapproachable without a heavy theoretical background.

There are some basics that are important to know (grounding, wire sizing, breaker selection, etc.) and some techniques that need to be used (proper crimping, separating power and signal wires, etc.). Most importantly, you need a decent common sense filter and a healthy dose of caution. If, after reading the rest of this article, your gut still tells you that you are not destined to be the next Nikola Tesla, you can still enjoy the benefits of electric brewing, but the most important technique to learn is the preferred method for writing a check for a standalone system like Picobrew or Grainfather, or a turnkey system from a reputable manufacturer like Blichmann Engineering or Ss Brewtech.

What we’re going to do for the remainder of this article is take a look at the steps involved with getting ready to DIY an electrical brewery, and a closer look at some of the important things that are most often overlooked or done just flat wrong. Towards the end, we’ll lift up a corner of the curtain, and take a quick peek at the next revolution — automation. The subject of electric brewing is, of course, much more complex than can be laid out in one article, and Kal’s book mentioned earlier is a great reference to dig deeper on the subjects we’ll address here.

Planning

Without a doubt, this is the most important part of your journey to becoming an electric brewer. Not only do you have to make some decisions about what your new rig needs to be able to do, you have to learn about the parts you’re going to need to build with, how to build something safe, and how you’re going to go about fixing it later. There’s really a lot to learn before your wallet comes out. In broad strokes, these are the steps needed:

1.  Learning
2. Specification, round 1
3. Block diagram/functional description/flowchart
4. Detailed schematic
5. Bill of materials
6. Sourcing/purchasing

The first thing you need to do is some research. Start with learning about the various kinds of brewing rigs that are suited for electric brewing on the homebrew scale. By “homebrew scale,” the implication is a rig somewhere between 21⁄2  to 31 gallons (9.5 to 117 L). Any smaller, and you might as well use your kitchen stove or a countertop appliance-style machine. Anything bigger than a 1-bbl rig is going to mean a substantial dedicated electric supply and a matching cash layout.

You will need to decide whether to use a BIAB (brew-in-a-bag [basket]), HERMS (heat exchange recirculating mash system), or RIMS (recirculating infusion mash system). There are arguments for and against all three systems. Educate yourself and make an informed decision about which will best fit your brewing style. The “show us your rig” threads on the Electric Brewing and Automated Brewing forums on HBT are a great source of inspiration and BYO has published many articles over the years on the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Next, you’re going to need to know more about the kind of control system you want to use. A lot more. There are some starter links at the end of this article, so grab a bag of carrots and start going down some rabbit holes. Learn about PID controllers, SSRs, PWM (pulse-width modulation), hysteresis, 4-20mA control, and a host of other terms that you’ll discover. PID controller-based systems like Kal’s design depend on individual components to perform the various functions. Automated systems use a low-cost microcontroller and some software to emulate the functionality of the standalone equipment. Another type of automated system uses a small computer called a Raspberry Pi. There are advantages and disadvantages to each type of system that you’ll have to take into consideration and make a decision about how you want to control the various controllable bits in your system.

Save some energy, because you’ll need it for your deep dive into single-phase household AC power and how to use it safely. Depending on the basic batch size of your new rig, you’ll need somewhere between 20-65A of single-phase 120/240VAC power. That’s more than enough juice to help you meet your ancestors if you’re not careful. Again, there are some starter links at the end of this article, but the first step is to understand the four basic measurements, and how they relate to each other. They are: Volts, Amperes, Watts, and Ohms. There is math involved with this bit of learning, but it’s the kind of math you probably finished up with by the time you finished your sophomore year of high school. Here’s a quick preview:

• A Volt is the basic measurement of electric potential. If electricity was water, voltage would be the pressure. Volts (V) can measure direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC). Your car uses 12VDC from a battery, and an outlet in your living room uses 120VAC provided by your local
electric company. 

• An Ampere is the basic measurement of how much electrical current is flowing through a circuit. More current at a test point means that more electrons are flowing past that point. If electricity were water, amperage would be the rate of flow. A typical living room outlet can support up to 15 Amperes (15A, or 15 Amps) of current. A household dryer uses about 30A of current.

• A Watt is a unit of power defined as a derived unit of 1 joule per second, and is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. Multiplying the number of Volts by the number of Amps will tell you the number of Watts (W). A 15A, 120VAC circuit is capable of delivering 1800W of electrical work. The math holds true in reverse. A 100W, 120VAC light bulb uses 0.83A of current.

• An Ohm is the basic measurement of electrical resistance. It’s the drag that slows the flow of electrons through a circuit. More Ohms (Ω) of resistance means less current flow. The restriction of the flow creates heat, which is really a number of Watts of work that are lost instead of doing the work that you want it to.

That is a very basic view of the fundamentals and is not enough information for you to begin planning a system. You still need to learn about safety, grounding, overcurrent protection, ground fault protection, conductor sizing for a given load and distance, and many other things. Most big box home improvement stores sell books that cover DIY electrical improvements; one of those books is a good place to start.

WARNING: Unless you are a documented, certified electrical expert, you should have a documented, certified electrical expert review your entire design before you start building, and again before you plug it in.

Once you feel you have a clear understanding of brew rigs, control systems, and electrical fundamentals, you are ready to move on to developing your preliminary specification. Start with a blank sheet of scratch paper and a pencil. Draw your kettles and begin adding the pumps, valves, chillers, heating elements, hoses, temperature sensors, and any other hardware you’d like to incorporate into your system.

Make sure you understand the flow of liquids and try to anticipate everywhere the liquid can possibly go, depending on the various valve configurations. Get a good eraser. Play with the sketch until you think you have everything sorted out, then take the time to make a more careful drawing. Once you have the drawing refined, write a description of the system to help keep your design work on track. It could look something like this:

“A 30-gallon/114-L three-vessel HERMS system, with two 120VAC pumps and six 24VDC electric 3-way valves. There is a 5500W stainless ripple element in the hot liquor tank and boil kettles. There is a temperature sensor in each kettle, and a fourth sensor in the output of the HERMS coil. A counterflow chiller is plumbed into the output of the boil kettle. The system is controlled by an Arduino MEGA microcontroller with WiFi connectivity to a PC running BruControl as a front end. The heater elements are controlled by SSRs and the valves and pumps are controlled by a bank of 10 SPDT relays with 12VDC coils. All plumbing connections are via 1⁄2-inch NPT TC fittings connected via 1⁄2-inch silicone tubing.”

Now that you have a pretty clear idea of what it is that you want to build, it is time for you to start in on the most difficult part of the project. You need to take your idea from the concept stage to a detailed plan from which you can build your system. Whoever coined the phrase “the devil is in the details” was a smart fellow and deserving of a hoist of the glass when you pour the first pint from your new rig.

Now is the time for you to specify and source every single piece of your system, from the casters on the stand to the last bit of hose. There are three documents that you will need to create. The first is a detailed plumbing diagram (also called a Piping and Instrumentation Diagram, or P&ID) that shows every single connection in the system. It has to be complete enough for you to count each component, right down to the last o-ring and hose clamp.

The second document you will need is a schematic diagram of the electrical system. Each connection on each component has to be accounted for. Everything you will be sourcing has diagrams available on the internet that shows all of the part’s connections and what they are for. Your job is to draw a picture of each and every connection in the system. It’s easier if you break it into two separate drawings; the first for the main 120VAC power and how it will be connected, controlled, protected, and grounded. The second is for the low-voltage control wiring that will handle the temperature sensors, relays, and microcontrollers. 

Unless you are a credentialed electrical engineer or journeyman electrician with several years of experience in process control, GET HELP! There are lots of online forums with experienced guys that are pretty open to helping, and a few bucks to a local licensed electrician to look over the safety aspects of the design wouldn’t hurt, either. It will take a lot of time to get it right, but it’s essential to get it right. Troubleshooting a problem a year after you finish the project will be nearly impossible without a detailed schematic.

The last of the three documents you’ll need is a detailed bill of materials (BOM). The BOM is your shopping list. Every part number, the quantity of each part, and where you will buy it from needs to go on that list. An Excel spreadsheet is a good way to build your BOM. It’s also a good place to build your budget and track the money that you’re spending.

A final note on materials: There is a very clear correlation between price and quality. When you are sourcing electrical components, be aware that cheap components available from some overseas sources can have internal bits that are not rated for the current they claim to be able to carry or are an outright counterfeit of a quality manufacturer. Make sure you allow enough room in your budget to get suitable, rated, UL-listed components.

Assembly

When all of your parts arrive, the temptation to grab a drill and get busy will be strong. That would be a mistake. The old carpenter’s adage about measuring twice and cutting once applies here. Set up a mockup of the mounting panel from your enclosure on your workbench. Take some time and test fit all of the equipment before you start making shavings. Make sure you have enough room for the bend radius of your larger wires. Make sure you have enough clearance inside the enclosure for all of the stuff that will protrude into the back panel area. One trick is to cover your workbench with brown kraft paper and sketch the dimensions of the enclosure and door on the paper. The components you want to use will have the dimensions available online.

When it comes to the part where you need to cut holes, either in your kettles or in the enclosure, you might consider taking the pieces to a local sheet metal fabricator. They will have all of the proper cutting tools that will punch the right size hole without distorting or chewing up the metal. If you have the experience and the proper tools, by all means have at it.

The same holds true for the main electrical outlet for your new rig. A licensed electrician will be able to specify the correct equipment, pull a permit, run the feed cable, install the proper GFCI protection, and leave you with a nice outlet that’s just the right size. This is one area where DIY-ing it is not recommended. Without a permit, there can be problems with Code Enforcement, selling your house, and even home owners/renters insurance if there is ever an accident (even without being the source).

The rest of the build will be up to you. Take your time, especially when routing and securing wires. The time you spend at this stage will pay huge dividends when you go to make a change later or try to isolate an intermittent problem.

When you have finished assembling everything and have made notes and corrections so that your schematics reflect what actually exists, you are still not quite ready to plug it in and start brewing your first batch. You need to do a final quality check. Use a multimeter to test continuity on all of the high voltage and low voltage wiring. Something that is supposed to be hot should not have any continuity to ground. Also test to verify that every piece of metal in the system from the enclosure to the kettles to the stand has continuity to ground. Test as much as you possibly can before you plug it in. Your final set of checks should be to brew a couple of batches of water. This will test all of your plumbing connections and liquid flow assumptions. 

Now it is time to tighten everything up and enjoy the first brew. By being careful and documenting along the way, you will be enjoying more consistent, accurate brews than you ever thought possible.

Automation

Over the last ten years, accessible automation has grown by huge amounts. It has also reached homebrewing and is quickly becoming the next step for many electric brewers. The benefits of automation are easy to see: Precise temperature control and recipe progression is all handled by easy-to-develop scripts. Timing of rests is dead-on accurate from batch-to-batch, and the brewer’s time is freed up during the brew day, which very often leads to improvements in domestic bliss. Perhaps the biggest improvement is that since every brew is consistent and repeatable, it allows for documentation of the effects of a single, controllable change in the recipe. Being able to change just one variable at a time leads very quickly to improvements in the quality of the product. Anyone considering adding automation to their process should take a look at what BruControl offers. The flexibility and capability of that system is far ahead of any other automation product.

Conclusion

Brewing with electricity opens up the possibility of tremendous improvements in the quality of your homebrew. However, it is not a simple undertaking, and can be hazardous. Take your time with research and planning, and get help when you get into an area where you’re unfamiliar.

Helpful Resources:

Issue: March-April 2020