Best pump for (really small) brewery - 1BBL

[Emian]

3bbl Brewery Pump and Hose Question

For those of you with small breweries, using the 1/8 HP pumps - Like March and LG, with 1" FNPT input and 1/2" MNPT - what size beer hose are you using, and how are you interfacing the hose with the pump?

Ian

[LeftTurnOnly]

Hi Ian.... We haven't ran it yet, but have a pump like you describe, and plan to screw in 1.5 inch tri-clamp fittings for in and out, and use 1/2 inch ID silicone tubing. If you had bigger tubing at least for the in side, you might be a little better off, but that's what we have at the moment. The fittings, you can probably get alot of places, but we got ours here...

http://www.brewershardware.com/Tri-Clover-X-NPT-Adapters/

Hopefully that works...
Kyle...

[NigeltheBold]

Hi Ian.... We haven't ran it yet, but have a pump like you describe, and plan to screw in 1.5 inch tri-clamp fittings for in and out, and use 1/2 inch ID silicone tubing. If you had bigger tubing at least for the in side, you might be a little better off, but that's what we have at the moment. The fittings, you can probably get alot of places, but we got ours here...

http://www.brewershardware.com/Tri-Clover-X-NPT-Adapters/

Hopefully that works...
Kyle...

I am running into a similar issue with this pump. I'll be purchasing it for a 2 bbl nanobrewery and I'll be using it for beer transfer as well as tank cleaning. All of the valves and fittings on our equipment is 1.5" tri-clamp. We were planning on using 1" ID hoses with 1.5" tri-clamp fittings on the ends. I wish the march nanobrewery pump had 1" inlet AND 1" outlet.

How can I make this work? Will we have to use 1/2" ID hoses instead of 1" ID hoses since the pump outlet is 1/2"? If so, all of the tri-clamp fittings will be too big (the tri-clamp fitting for 1/2" ID hose is smaller than the tri-clamp fitting for 1" or 1.5" ID hose).

[Matt Dog]

11/2" TC fittings come in multiple hose barb ID's. Just because the fitting is 1 1/2" doesnt mean the hose has to be 1 1/2". Look at GW Kent for examples. You can have a 11/2" TC to 3/8" barb for example.

[NigeltheBold]

11/2" TC fittings come in multiple hose barb ID's. Just because the fitting is 1 1/2" doesnt mean the hose has to be 1 1/2". Look at GW Kent for examples. You can have a 11/2" TC to 3/8" barb for example.

So you're saying I should make my own hoses using 1.5" tri-clamp fittings with 1/2" hose barbs, correct? In that case, what type of tubing would be best as a hose? I was looking at goodyear vintner's hose, but the smallest I could find was 1" ID.

Sorry for hijacking this thread. I may just PM Matt Dog with some questions if he doesn't mind.

[NigeltheBold]

I found some sanitary pumps on McMaster-Carr's website. They can be found here. Would one of these be good for a small brewery? They aren't self-priming, but they are sanitary and have pretty high flow rates. Also, how can I tell if these are variable speed pumps? If they aren't, is there any way to turn them into variable speed pumps?

[Thirsty_Monk]

I have one of them.
They are Thomson pumps and work quite well.
They are NON variable speed pumps and I use it as is.
When you wire it make sure you have correct pump rotation.