1 barrel brewery, line size

[Glousterbrewing]

Hi
I have a sanitary process welding company, and weld daily with stainless. I have all of my tanks for a 1bbl pilot brewery. This will have Cip oeuvre for cleaning when done brewing. All the cleaning lines will be 1.5" tube with ferrules. I need your knowledge on what size line on the wort side. Everything will be hard pipe and isolation valves. I thought if I used 1.5" on all could you throttle the wort size with a valve, after the pump? Also any pump recommended?
Best regards,
Glousterbrewing

[Glousterbrewing]

Help,

Hi
I have a sanitary process welding company, and weld daily with stainless. I have all of my tanks for a 1bbl pilot brewery. This will have Cip oeuvre for cleaning when done brewing. All the cleaning lines will be 1.5" tube with ferrules. I need your knowledge on what size line on the wort side. Everything will be hard pipe and isolation valves. I thought if I used 1.5" on all could you throttle the wort size with a valve, after the pump? Also any pump recommended?
Best regards,
Glousterbrewing

I noticed that it seems nobody comments much? My next question is there a site that does?

[GritCity]

I would say it depends on your pump and your ferrule size on the tanks. You could go as small as 1/2'' or even up to 1.5'' even though that's overkill. I have a 1'' piping on my 1/2bbl pilot but that's only because I already have a ton of 1/1.5 fittings everywhere so it makes things a lot easier. I run those homebrew chugger pumps with t.c. fittings and they handle 1'' just fine. But realistically, 1/2 or 3/4 is all you really need along with an appropriate pump.

After re-reading your post, yes, just run 1.5 and use a valve to throttle the wort side after the pump. That is what I do on my 1''. I use a ball valve for better control but that also means I need to disassemble that valve on occasion to monitor cleanliness. A butterfly valve just doesn't give me enough throttle control for vorlauf/sparge.

[Jer]

It's a small forum, don't be insulted if you don't get a response right away.....it's not that no one responds, but rather just that they right people haven't responded yet.

I've been running a 1BBL for 2 years now. I started with 3 kettles and 6 ferms from Bru-Gear - all 1.5TC's, added a 68gal Stout BBT later, and lastly a 50gallon SSBrewtech BK just a couple months ago to allow for bigger batches (Mash+Sparge from a 30 gallon MLT can be > the MLT size, it just took me a while to realize that...).

The brewhouse is plumbed with mostly 1/2", but I do have some 3/4" feeders to the water and wort pumps from the HLT and BK. The feeder to the HERMS pump is 1/2, as I don't want to pull too hard from under the false bottom anyway.

I've made myself a manual keg washer, and the feeders that run from the kettles to the cart are 1" braided line to feed the big pump. The washer is built on a stainless cart, and there's a 1.5" out for the CIP ball.

The 'transfer' lines that I made up to go from the chiller to the ferms on a brew day, or from ferm to ferm, or ferm to BBT, are 3/4". I did that for faster t/f's, more flow for filtering, and lotsa flow for CIP.

Most of my plumbing on the hot side is NPT. All the lines get a hot flush, PBW, and blown out after a brew day. Everything past the chiller is TC.

Chugger or March 809's or 815's are fine in the brewhouse. GET THE ONES WITH THE CENTER FEED HOUSINGS!!! I had a terrible time with losing prime with the side inlets. Put a priming valve on the outlets of all of them. If you want to spin a CIP ball, you'll need a bigger pump - I think they need about 40GPM. I have a CIP ball for the BBT and I've used in on the ferms a couple of times, but on the brewhouse its more trouble than it's worth. Just reach in, scrub it, hose it out, and shop vac up the remainder. I do have a chugger MAX, and it gives a good spray from the CIP, but it's not enough to spin the ball.

I think SSBrewtech is coming out with a pump. They're customer service has been amazing. March has been good. Chugger has been downright offensive to deal with. I'd rather not ever give them another dime.

Most of the brewhouse is ball valves, but I do have 1.5TC butterflies to feed the keg washer. I have blichmann G2 linear flow valves for really feathering the flow for HERMS and t/f to the boil kettle to control the negative pressure under the false bottom, and also on the flow for the chiller. They were a great addition, especially on the chiller, to really fine tune the flow.

1.5TC's, I would say, are the easiest to find and adapt to and from (especially when you consider cost). I'm in Canada, so getting most TC's involves either importing or a trip across to MT. Amazon and eBay can get some of the bigger stuff to your door for cheap (1" barb-TC, etc). I got a lot of pieces from morebeer, stainlessbrewing, brewhardware, brewershardware, etc. Figure out how many clamps and gaskets you need, and double it.

Hope that helps....

Cheers.

-Jeremy.

[Glousterbrewing]

Thanks

I would say it depends on your pump and your ferrule size on the tanks. You could go as small as 1/2'' or even up to 1.5'' even though that's overkill. I have a 1'' piping on my 1/2bbl pilot but that's only because I already have a ton of 1/1.5 fittings everywhere so it makes things a lot easier. I run those homebrew chugger pumps with t.c. fittings and they handle 1'' just fine. But realistically, 1/2 or 3/4 is all you really need along with an appropriate pump.

After re-reading your post, yes, just run 1.5 and use a valve to throttle the wort side after the pump. That is what I do on my 1''. I use a ball valve for better control but that also means I need to disassemble that valve on occasion to monitor cleanliness. A butterfly valve just doesn't give me enough throttle control for vorlauf/sparge.

Thank you for your knowledge,it is a big help.

[Glousterbrewing]

1 barrel

It's a small forum, don't be insulted if you don't get a response right away.....it's not that no one responds, but rather just that they right people haven't responded yet.

I've been running a 1BBL for 2 years now. I started with 3 kettles and 6 ferms from Bru-Gear - all 1.5TC's, added a 68gal Stout BBT later, and lastly a 50gallon SSBrewtech BK just a couple months ago to allow for bigger batches (Mash+Sparge from a 30 gallon MLT can be > the MLT size, it just took me a while to realize that...).

The brewhouse is plumbed with mostly 1/2", but I do have some 3/4" feeders to the water and wort pumps from the HLT and BK. The feeder to the HERMS pump is 1/2, as I don't want to pull too hard from under the false bottom anyway.

I've made myself a manual keg washer, and the feeders that run from the kettles to the cart are 1" braided line to feed the big pump. The washer is built on a stainless cart, and there's a 1.5" out for the CIP ball.

The 'transfer' lines that I made up to go from the chiller to the ferms on a brew day, or from ferm to ferm, or ferm to BBT, are 3/4". I did that for faster t/f's, more flow for filtering, and lotsa flow for CIP.

Most of my plumbing on the hot side is NPT. All the lines get a hot flush, PBW, and blown out after a brew day. Everything past the chiller is TC.

Chugger or March 809's or 815's are fine in the brewhouse. GET THE ONES WITH THE CENTER FEED HOUSINGS!!! I had a terrible time with losing prime with the side inlets. Put a priming valve on the outlets of all of them. If you want to spin a CIP ball, you'll need a bigger pump - I think they need about 40GPM. I have a CIP ball for the BBT and I've used in on the ferms a couple of times, but on the brewhouse its more trouble than it's worth. Just reach in, scrub it, hose it out, and shop vac up the remainder. I do have a chugger MAX, and it gives a good spray from the CIP, but it's not enough to spin the ball.

I think SSBrewtech is coming out with a pump. They're customer service has been amazing. March has been good. Chugger has been downright offensive to deal with. I'd rather not ever give them another dime.

Most of the brewhouse is ball valves, but I do have 1.5TC butterflies to feed the keg washer. I have blichmann G2 linear flow valves for really feathering the flow for HERMS and t/f to the boil kettle to control the negative pressure under the false bottom, and also on the flow for the chiller. They were a great addition, especially on the chiller, to really fine tune the flow.

1.5TC's, I would say, are the easiest to find and adapt to and from (especially when you consider cost). I'm in Canada, so getting most TC's involves either importing or a trip across to MT. Amazon and eBay can get some of the bigger stuff to your door for cheap (1" barb-TC, etc). I got a lot of pieces from morebeer, stainlessbrewing, brewhardware, brewershardware, etc. Figure out how many clamps and gaskets you need, and double it.

Hope that helps....

Cheers.

-Jeremy.

HI Jeremy
Sounds great, my tanks have 1.5" tri on all, so this should work. Cip lines I will have a separate pump for cleaning. I'm posting a print of my system before building maybe you could look at it.

Regards
Mark

[Jer]

HI Jeremy
Sounds great, my tanks have 1.5" tri on all, so this should work. Cip lines I will have a separate pump for cleaning. I'm posting a print of my system before building maybe you could look at it.

Regards
Mark

Sure, I'd be happy too. I'm far from expert and making my own mistakes as I go, but I sure have made a lot of them!!! There's no shortage of very helpful people on here with 100's of years of combined experience.

I'll try and shoot a walk through video of my setup if you'd like.

You called this a pilot brewery - does that mean you have a big one already and this is your tester, or are you starting with this one?? Mine has been a complete start from scratch. In January of 2015 I didn't know that the "M" in MLT meant, and I sure as hell didn't understand partial pressures of CO2..... well, that's not true, I did, but I just hadn't thought about it since 1995-96 when I was in undergrad....

-J.

[mmussen]

A good rule of thumb - particularly for cleaning - is to make sure that your line size is the same ID as the stainless hardpiping on your brew system. Cleaning cycles are designed to run with a specific minimum flow rate, and if your using smaller lines off the pump than the stainless lines you're going to have a very hard time getting the flow rate up high enough for a good cleaning everywhere

[wailingguitar]

I wouldn't go under 1" hose using 1.5" triclamp. My 2bbl fermenters actually came with 2" bottom outlets which we reduce to 1.5" to match. I run out of my pilot (1bbl) brewhouse with 1.5" hose feeding the heat ext, then 1" (with 1.5" triclamp) to my 2bbl firms. Using my the heat ex from my big system (10bbl) I can knock out 1bb in 5 minutes.

[Jer]

I wouldn't go under 1" hose using 1.5" triclamp. My 2bbl fermenters actually came with 2" bottom outlets which we reduce to 1.5" to match. I run out of my pilot (1bbl) brewhouse with 1.5" hose feeding the heat ext, then 1" (with 1.5" triclamp) to my 2bbl firms. Using my the heat ex from my big system (10bbl) I can knock out 1bb in 5 minutes.

Yes - as long as you have the HX capacity to do that. I have 2 inline counterflow chillers, and I'm pretty sure that if I fed them with a 1" line of hot wort I'd have to throttle it back to less than 1/2" rate anyway.....we can cool about 1gallon per minute when the groundwater is in fall/winter mode.

3/4" and 1" (and 1.5") barb's and NPT adapters are definitely harder to find, and more expensive, than 1/2". If you're in the pro realm/mindset, then no biggie, but if your trying to stay as economical as possible, then 1/2" is fine. It doesn't take THAT long to t/f 25 gallons of wort in a 1/2" line.

Great point on the soft line/hard line sizing. That makes perfect sense. If you don't fill the hard line, it's not gonna CIP properly.

-J.

[Jer]

HI Jeremy
Sounds great, my tanks have 1.5" tri on all, so this should work. Cip lines I will have a separate pump for cleaning. I'm posting a print of my system before building maybe you could look at it.

Regards
Mark

One other thing that crossed my mind Mark is that I know that you CAN hardline the whole system with your skillset and equipment, but have a good think about how that my be restrictive for shuffling kettles around, etc. I'm not sure that I'd hardline mine even if I could. I've made so many additions and hose swaps and new circuits over the past 2 years, I can't imagine if that meant a trip to the machine shop everytime.

Just a thought.

-J.

[Glousterbrewing]

Sure, I'd be happy too. I'm far from expert and making my own mistakes as I go, but I sure have made a lot of them!!! There's no shortage of very helpful people on here with 100's of years of combined experience.

I'll try and shoot a walk through video of my setup if you'd like.

You called this a pilot brewery - does that mean you have a big one already and this is your tester, or are you starting with this one?? Mine has been a complete start from scratch. In January of 2015 I didn't know that the "M" in MLT meant, and I sure as hell didn't understand partial pressures of CO2..... well, that's not true, I did, but I just hadn't thought about it since 1995-96 when I was in undergrad....

-J.

I worked for a large brewery in Cleveland and was installing the new piping. I was asked on building a pilot system for them, so I started. The project stopped when the new guy was hired. I was let down after having 10 years of work for them. I feel I need this project started back up and finished. I'm not wealthy but have the tools and knowledge for a hard pipe system. I thought maybe I could sell these in stages for others. The systems out now seem very expensive for what you get. I feel I could offer a lot more for less. I just don't have enough knowledge on small systems. I can't thank everyone enough here.

[Jer]

More than happy to help you with what I think is useful for a high-end home system/entry level nano....

I'll go shoot a video here in a bit....

[Glousterbrewing]

1 barrel

More than happy to help you with what I think is useful for a high-end home system/entry level nano....

I'll go shoot a video here in a bit....

Great, I'll look forward to it

[RipRap]

I run a 3bbl nano. I have some hard piping on the wort side which is all 1". Most of my transfer hoses are 1/2" and I use one 3/4" silicone hose for the inlet side of my pump. I use the march "nano" AC-5 pump which is the same as the Chugger MAX pump. My spare pump is a small chugger pump (same as march 809). I use a ball valve on the outlet of that pump to regulate flow.

For cleaning I use that same AC-5 pump and 1" hoses which is the minimum that is required to turn a spray ball in my brite and fermenters.

Hope this helps and good luck.