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Home Photo Galleries Equipment Galleries David LaMotte • Cardiff, New South Wales, Australia

My homebrewery consists of a 60-liter boil kettle, 50-liter mash/lauter tun and a 30-liter grant (boil kettle). A stainless steel stand holds the mash tun, pump, filter and heat exchanger, with the boiler free standing at the end. The heart of my system is the pump (0.5 HP 90 liters/minute), filter and heat exchanger.

<p>The immersion heater used to heat water and boost wort to boiling.</p> <p>The filter consists of fine mesh inside a stainless termite mesh tube held in place by a hose clamp. I slipped a length of plastic hose over the stainless tube to give the clamp something to bite on. The tube is attached to a socket welded into the keg wall via a 1/2-inch brass compression fitting. This is the only brass or copper part of the system and has had the surface lead removed with a hydrogen peroxide/vinegar solution.</p>

Boiler Top and Heater
<p>Filter body showing plate exchanger at rear and inline temperature gauge on outlet.</p> <p>The plate heat exchanger is made from plates of copper sheet covered with stainless steel. A series of hard piping and ball valves allow the pump’s output (either wort or water) to be pushed through the filter or circulated through a series of hoses. I have a variety of output hoses, which connect either to the post chiller or directly to a ball valve and length of stainless pipe, allowing me to pump wort without splashing.</p>

Filter
<p>The pump output is directed to either the filter or various hoses by a series of ball valves. </p> <p>A 2.5-kilowatt immersion water heater has greatly reduced the length of my brew day by allowing me to crush the grain, measure the liquor into the mash tun and add the sparge water to the boiler the day before.</p>

Piping
<p>The ice bath cools the wort further than the heat exchanger is able to. </p> <p>I do not pump directly from the tun but let the wort flow by gravity to a lauter grant. When the grant is full I use my pump to move the wort to the boiler. Finally I pump the wort through the heat exchanger and directly into my fermenter — an 80-liter “corny” keg. I had an additional gas fitting welded into it, which allows me to inject oxygen at the beginning of fermentation.</p>

Post Chiller
The stainless steel brewing stand holds all the brew equipment.

Stand


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