Hi, New around here with some questions.

[Jeangtd]

Hi, My name is Jean, long time lurker, first time poster. Im writing from Bogota, Colombia and just wanted so say hi to all.

Im about 1 month away to opening my nano-brewery. I made the system myself, its a 3 vessel system, Im very very tight on cash so what I did was weld together 4x8 SS sheets into cylinders, and made the 3 vessels and 4 fermenters, all of them the same size, they are 48 inches high and 30 inches in diameter so thats about 149 gal capacity. on the kettles I welded the bottom in a thicker gauge sheet and put a legs on all of them, welded tri-clamp fittings and thats it. its a direct fire brewhouse, the mash/lauter tun is direct fire recirculating, Im going to start mixing by hand while I find the time to build a proper mixer. the fermenters are conical, but the cone angle is less than optimal but thats all I could fit in the warehouse because I couldn't afford jacketed conicals so Im making a very simple walk with an A/C unit and coolbot for the fermenters, ambient temp here is between 60 and 70 all year long so its not going to be too much of a hassle to keep fermenting temps under control for Ales with the walk in.

My initial plans where to bottle condition so I didn't make a brite, big mistake because the level of education regarding beer here is very low, and yeast in the bottom of the bottle is regarded as a flaw and people reject it. so I'm going to force carbonate in kegs and bottle using 3 counter pressure fillers. my plan is to run some pressure tests on a conical and try to force carbonate in it while I save up some cash for a proper brite.

Permits here are a breeze, yo just have to follow a strict set of guidelines regarding good manufacturing practices, like everything has to be food grade, the location of the warehouse cant be close to chemical plants nor dumpsters and just rules along those lines. the problem comes when you want to sell your beer, you need to pay 1000 bucks for very single label you make.

For pumps I got a chugger max to transfer wort and beer and a chugger to recirculate mash.

Im really not totally convinced with my false bottom, i think the holes are too big and too apart, Im attaching pics, let me know what you think.

[Junkyard]

no need to put a mixer on your mash tun, at 140 gallons mixing by hand will be plenty sufficient

looks like some pretty impressive welding!

The false bottom might work in a pinch but you would probably benefit from much smaller holes, and more of them.

for the conical temp control- another option is to jacket them with copper pipe, and then insulate around that. Or you could do internal coils and run glycol through them to cool your fermentation.

If you do a cold room for your fermenters, you should do a separate cold box for each fermenter, because each fermenter will be in a different stage of fermentation and will have separate cooling needs. I would personally suggest an internal coil cooling approach with an air conditioner or aquarium chiller as a glycol chiller. it takes up less space and costs less than cold rooms and cool bots ($300 per).

Best of luck to you in your brewing endeavors!

Whats your brewery going to be called out of curiosity?

[Jeangtd]

Its called "13 Pesos" theres a cute story behind it, Ill post it in another thread.

[mpilchuk]

Mash Tun

Concerning your mash tun, I have been exposed to a lot of non-optimum equipment and conditions where I currently work at. The best thing about working there is that I am forced to do things that I would not do if I had the choice of optimum equipment. What surprises me the most is that there is a high rate of success doing things that are not text book brewing. Don't count out your mash tun until you use it.

It may surprise you.

Cheers and good brewing.

Mitch

[Jeangtd]

Thanks Mitch, thats very encouraging.