Homebrew Drool Systems – Fully electric, bottom-drained, HERMS system
Joel Simard • Gatineau, Québec
My brewing system is a fully electric bottom-drained, single-tier HERMS system. Both the hot liquor tank and the kettle are each fitted with a 5500 watt water heater element powered with a 30 amp dryer outlet. The mash is steadily held within 0.1 ºC (sorry, I’m from Canada!) of the targeted temperature using a PID made from an Arduino microcontroller, which monitors the wort temperature at the exit of the hot liquor tank. My control panel has two more controllers monitoring the water temperature in the hot liquor tank and in the kettle. Using another Arduino microcontroller, I also programmed a countdown timer to help keep an eye on the time of the various brewing steps. All of the components of the control panel are powered on 12V DC to limit the usage of high voltage to a bare minimum in the panel.
While designing my system, I went with an unconventional approach and decided to reverse the kegs and connect a 2” tri-clamp on the spear connection of the kegs. This eliminates dead space, maximizing every drop of water used during the brewing process. This also makes it easy to clean the vessels without any heavy lifting. After about a year of use and fine tuning, the system has been able to achieve an extraction efficiency of up to 90-95%. The same tri-clamp fittings are used for the elements and the sight glass mountings, making it easy to take apart the system for maintenance.
The biggest challenge after choosing to go with the reversed keg route was to find all of the hardware enabling me to do so. Back in 2016 when I was designing and assembling the parts to complete my project, my local homebrew shop did not carry tri-clamp fittings (to this day, they still don’t carry the 2” version) and very few Canadian online brew shops carried them, making access to parts very difficult since they were often out of stock.
During the design process for the stand, I quickly decided to work with pressure-treated wood instead of steel since I do not have access to an arc welder. Another restraint of the bottom drain design was to build a stand that grants easy access to all of the valves and other hardware under the vessels, while still being able to steadily hold near 16 gallons (61 L) of hot water. The usage of 4”x4” lumber might have been a little bit of an overkill, but at least I can be sure that my stand can withstand whatever load I throw at it.
As an engineer, my favorite part of the brewing hobby is definitely designing my custom equipment and tools. One of my most recent additions is a water flow meter that precisely calculates the amount of water used. It’s a simple tool designed with, you’ve guessed it, another Arduino microcontroller. This small addition makes my brew day much easier, since I previously had to haul buckets of water over to fill my hot liquor tank and my mash tun.
I could have decided to take the easy route and bought myself an already designed system from one of the amazing manufacturers available nowadays, but I really love figuring things out on my own and building my own approach to a problem. I even fashioned my own recipe-designing software. Designing your own equipment really helps you during future troubleshooting, and it gives you an incredible added amount of pride with every pint you pour.
