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  • Post mash single kettle all in 1?

    (this thread was moved from a previous sub-forum)

    Hey all, is there any reason we couldn't use 1 conical, jacketed, >15 psi rated unitank as a boil kettle, fermenter, and serving tank all in one? Indirect fire for heating during boil directly through the jacket, chilling with tap water through the jacket and then glycol, then ferment and carbonate in the same vessel and even serve from the same vessel.

    Some benefits are: cleaning 1 vessel, no need to clean and sanitize a pump and external chiller (unless you want to whirlpool, but shouldn't be needed with the conical except for post boil hop utilization), no transfers, dump hops/trub from boil kettle conical, less risk of hot side aeration, a bit less risk of oxidation, lots of backup HLTs, etc.

    I'm sure there's a good reason why this isn't done, just can't figure out why. Pressure rating of the jacket to deal with both heating and cooling jumps out as the first possible thing to me, but is there something else that's obvious I'm missing? These would be fermentors and serving vessels all in one so you'd need a lot of them, but not having to transfer or clean multiple vessels seems like a huge benefit. There is a similar concept, but it uses electric rather than the jacket for heating, https://brewhaequipment.com/products...system-package

    Outside of having equipment tied up for long periods of time, is it inadvisable to use indirect fire through a jacket? Or going from heating a boil to cooling in the same jacket? Would need to be able to vent the boil off as well.

  • #2
    The problem is the added cost to have each of your vessels with the capability to do it all and then have them sit, tied up, during the fermentation process. If you only plan on having one beer going at a time, you could do it. I wouldn't advise on direct heat, electric is the way to go for something like this. It would certainly be an unusual set up for a commercial brewery but maybe that works.

    What size are you considering?

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    • #3
      Originally posted by mswebb View Post
      The problem is the added cost to have each of your vessels with the capability to do it all and then have them sit, tied up, during the fermentation process. If you only plan on having one beer going at a time, you could do it. I wouldn't advise on direct heat, electric is the way to go for something like this. It would certainly be an unusual set up for a commercial brewery but maybe that works.

      What size are you considering?
      It would be 3bbl-5bbl, strictly taproom sales with 4 beers on tap, so would need 9 of these guys to make that work. Another option is to use separate serving vessels and just use these as boil, ferment, and brite. Electric would be the more intuitive way to go, though swapping them in and out and cleaning would be a bit more effort. I was imagining a somewhat mobile indirect fire source that could be hooked up to any vessel as needed, though I've not worked with it before.

      Was thinking of trying this out as a prototype, https://www.brewershardware.com/30-G...CAL30G-FJ.html

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      • #4
        Finally, a thread where my decade of writing code in my past life is relevant! Something I learned the hard way is that it is very nearly always better to use off-the-shelf solutions. They're never a perfect fit, and you understand all the underlying principles, so it's tempting to say "oh, this isn't so hard, I'll spend a little more effort, but it'll be a perfect fit instead of just being pretty good, and it'll be fun to work on!" What you're not taking into account is the years – in the case of brewing, decades – that other people have spent working out the kinks, solving the dumb little problems that you'd never even thought of just using the technology and which don't rear their ugly little heads until your efficient, elegant – dare I even say beautiful? – design fails catastrophically for no apparent reason.

        Clearly this isn't a universal rule – people have weird custom brewhouses they learn to operate consistently and reliably produce delicious beer all the time, and new brewing hardware like torpedoes and hop cannons came from somebody saying "what we have really isn't good enough, it's worth it to come up with something better, even taking into account all the debugging." But you have to ask yourself, are you here to invent a new brewhouse, or are you here to brew beer? Innovation is a fine goal if it's what you're after, but it's a long and dubious road to getting beer in folks' glasses.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by feinbera View Post
          Finally, a thread where my decade of writing code in my past life is relevant! Something I learned the hard way is that it is very nearly always better to use off-the-shelf solutions. They're never a perfect fit, and you understand all the underlying principles, so it's tempting to say "oh, this isn't so hard, I'll spend a little more effort, but it'll be a perfect fit instead of just being pretty good, and it'll be fun to work on!" What you're not taking into account is the years – in the case of brewing, decades – that other people have spent working out the kinks, solving the dumb little problems that you'd never even thought of just using the technology and which don't rear their ugly little heads until your efficient, elegant – dare I even say beautiful? – design fails catastrophically for no apparent reason.

          Clearly this isn't a universal rule – people have weird custom brewhouses they learn to operate consistently and reliably produce delicious beer all the time, and new brewing hardware like torpedoes and hop cannons came from somebody saying "what we have really isn't good enough, it's worth it to come up with something better, even taking into account all the debugging." But you have to ask yourself, are you here to invent a new brewhouse, or are you here to brew beer? Innovation is a fine goal if it's what you're after, but it's a long and dubious road to getting beer in folks' glasses.
          Hah, yeah, and looking back at old homebrew tinkering, it is a lot of wasted time and effort and 80% of the time doesn't work out the way you think. Above all is the quality of the beer, what I'm hoping to learn on a mini test pilot is if the benefits of not pushing wort through pumps all the time and being as gentle as possible with it (something Kimmich talks about, not sure I've heard it from others though). If that isn't the case, and it can't improve the quality of the beer, then the best option is the tried and true traditional system.

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