PCH Day One

Not much time to write as we’re getting ready to start day two, but I wanted to get my thoughts down so I can expand on this later.

We’re roadtripping down the Pacific Coast Highway from Seattle to San Diego and back. We don’t have much of a plan except to “See it all”, so that’s what we are doing.

Yesterday, Day One, we got up early(ish) packed the new Explorer full of roadtrip stuff and headed out. Our first destination was Astoria, OR and we made pretty good time there. Stopped in some small town in WA for a new sleeping bag and after driving in rain most of the way we hit Astoria around noon.

We stopped at the Wet Dog Cafe in Astoria for lunch and a tiny beer sample, crossed the Astoria bridge and back cause it looked cool, went and saw the house from Goonies and then hit the road.

Next up was Haystack Rock on Cannon Beach which was awesome. Just as we came around the curve for the town you could see this giant mountain of a rock looming from the ocean.

After an hour or two wandering the tidal pools around Haystack we jumped back in the car and made way for Tillamook to visit the factory where all our cheese and butter comes from. The factory was pretty awesome. One of the lines was pumping out 40 lb blocks of cheddar and it was pretty cool to watch all the industrial automation going on. We also picked up some fresh snacks and got to try “squeeky cheese” which is fresh cheese curds that for some reason squeek against your teeth when you chew them. It’s weird.

From Tillamook our goal was to head for Florence, where is where we are going to see some seals that live in caves, but first we decided to stop for dinner in Pacific City. We ended up at the Pelican Pub and Brewery which I will later write an entire book about. After that we were a little too tired and drunk to keep on to Florence. We ended up stopping at a really nice motel in Lincoln City, the Coho. We got a wide open ocean view and a great room for $100. This morning we got up early to get moving again and got to watch the moon, colored red by the clouds, set over the ocean.

Pictures and more words to come!

In which a blag.

This weekend has been super fun, and we’ve got fun stuff coming up and as always there’s been a ton of fun stuff in the recent past so I thought I’d write!

First up, brewery news. I’m super lazy and haven’t done shit. After the first mess of a brew I decided to get new valves, replacing the solenoids with ball valves. I’ve had the valves on my desk for like 2 months now and I got the cable I needed about 3 weeks ago and I just can’t find the energy to wire it all up. There’s so many little tiny wires to connect! Hopefully I get over the lazy soon, cause that brewery deserves to be used!

In electronics news, my BTPD kits finally sold out and I have been working on a new version. I ordered some LED modules from a company in China that I originally found on eBay and I am waiting for them to show up. They were way, way cheaper than Digikey, so if they turn out to be what I want and they actually work I will be able to drop the price on the kit quite a bit. I’m also redesigning it to be mostly surface mount and am going to try my hand at the reflow toaster method of surface mount soldering. My goal is to be able to do all the surface mount work in batches and then sell the boards as a “kit” which just means they need to solder on the LED modules and the headers or as a complete board for just a little more.

Also in electronics, I am checking out the ATmega32U4 which is a pretty badass little AVR. It’s a 32k mega with a USB controller built in. There’s an open source USB library for it so I bought a breakout board to play around with it. I’m also awaiting delivery on a Leaf Labs Maple, which is what I think is going to become my MCU platform of choice. The Maple uses a ST Micro STM32 MCU which is a SUPER badass little chip. 72MHz, DMA, tons of IO, tons and tons of peripherals including USB and the little things are only a few bucks. I think I’ll end up designing a little breakout board for them and doing more experimentation once I play with the Maple some.

So, I mentioned this weekend, which has been great. It’s been great because A Perfect Circle is playing three nights in Seattle, one night for each of their studio albums. We bought VIP tickets at the Showbox for the “Mer de Noms” night and the “Thirteenth Step” night. Those were Friday and Saturday and they were just great, great, great. I guess I don’t have much else to say about it. The music was awesome, the Showbox was awesome (as usual) and we just had a lot of fun.

One other awesome thing is that we finally decided to replace the slowly dying Explorer… with an Explorer! We have a road trip coming up and we were stressing over which car to take. My car was in the best shape but if we ran into any weather it would be a death trap. The Explorer would be ideal but it was on it’s last legs and might not survive the trip. So, last Sunday we decided to go look at a few new Explorers for the hell of it. We went to Kirkland Ford first cause they had advertised a 2007 that sounded perfect. When we got there they couldn’t find it so they showed us a brand new one but it was too expensive. Nice though. Then we ended up at Sound Ford of Renton cause they had a 2010 with 31k miles (clearly a fleet vehicle) that also sounded perfect.

I’m going to put up another post in a few days detailing my experience with Sound Ford of Renton so I’ll skip that for now. Suffice to say we found a perfect Explorer and bought it! It’s now sitting happily in the driveway on it’s new tires we picked up yesterday and is ready to ferry us to many fun new adventures. It’s a 2010 Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer Edition 4WD with a pretty sweet Black Pearl Slate (or something) and Tan’ish paint job and interior. It also has Sync, so we finally have a vehicle we can listen to all our music on. The music thing has been a major source of contention and it’s really nice to have.

In the process we traded in the old Explorer and Courtney’s Grand Am, so now the driveway seems much less crowded!

So that’s it for car news… what else?! We have an awesome vacation coming up but I will talk about that HIT BY HIT AS IT HAPPENS and afterwards, so I can’t say much there…

I think that’s all for now!

Brewery Work: Ongoing

I can’t bring myself to solder another valve connector, so it’s time to write.

After the initial brew which went poorly I decided to change some things in my design and fix up a few things that I had designed poorly while I was at it. This weekend I got the first batch of the changes done and I’m still working on it.

The main thing that needed to change was the need for a way to filter the wort as it comes out of the boil kettle and before it enters any plumbing, and I needed to change from solenoid valves to motorized ball valves where there is a chance solids will enter the plumbing. I ordered 8 motorized ball valves (MBV) to replace all the solenoids that come in contact with solids. Unfortunately the MBVs require 3 wires to operate and I had designed the control panel with 2 pin valve connectors. So that meant pulling the bottom panel and rewiring that whole thing. While I was at it I decided to change from 2 SSRs controlling a single hot leg each to 4 SSRs controlling all four hot legs. I also added a loud buzzer, moved the BrewTroller and relay board to have more room to work and cleaned up a lot of the wiring. For electronics, left to do is finish wiring the new valve connectors and retest all of the control panel logic. I also need to wire all of the valve status LEDs, which I never got around to doing before.

Since I was making so many changes I decided to make some plumbing changes as well. The biggest change is that I re-routed the HLT output through the HEX so that when I begin my sparge it will flush the HEX with clean, hot water. That will help with cleanup and will save some wort that was otherwise being lost. I also added dump valves right at the kettle exit for all three kettles to make cleaning easier and I am putting a purge valve right at the pump exits to make priming easier. I also have plumbing slated for H2O input, so I can ditch the hose for filling and I am going to move the MLT heat sensor to the output of the MLT instead of inside the kettle. I got some really weird heat readings last time and I think it was due to uneven heating in the mash.

Finally, for filtering, I ordered a Hop Stopper which is a giant mesh pancake with a dip tube in the middle. I have the Hop Blocker from Blichmann, but it just plain doesn’t work very well. Part of that is due to my lack of whirlpool at the end of my brew, but it’s also just too coarse for pellet hops.

Additionally, the guy who is doing The Electric Brewery posted his info on how to make Blichmann style weldless fittings and I promptly ordered the parts from McMaster to do that. I wanted to do it myself but it probably would have taken some experimentation and he did it for me. So far I have installed one set and they are way, way more solid than what I was using. Haven’t tested for leaks yet but it looks great and I bet it will be leak free.

As for the first brew, I kegged the beer last week and have been drinking it. It’s not great, but it’s not bad. According to my hydrometer and refractometer it’s only about 3.2% ABV. I think that the temperature readings I was getting were way off and I ended up cooking the mash way too cold. I also failed to take good reading during the mash so I didn’t catch the error. Brewing is apparently not like riding a bike. I have forgotten quite a bit.

So, that’s the update. I am hoping to brew again next weekend with all the upgrades in place and hopefully things will go much more smoothly!

Don’t Buy Solenoid Valves For Your Brewery!

So, last night was the inaugural brew on the new brew system and until the very last step it went wonderfully. Unfortunately, the last step turned it into a total disaster.

I’ll do a full writeup once I stop weeping but the gist of it is that the hop and break crud from the boiler ended up clogging my chiller and about half of my valves. The chiller was clogged so bad it ended up taking me 3 hours to chill the batch down to pitching temperature. I didn’t find out about the valves problems till tonight when I tried to clean the whole mess up. One of my solenoid valves was stuck open by three tiny pieces of hop leaf.

So, tonight I cleaned the whole mess up, stripped it almost completely down and I’m now planning how to fix things. One of the things I’ll definitely need to do is replace any valves that might end up with crud passing through them with ball valves or motorized ball valves. I’m also going to need a filter system in place for the wort before it hits the chiller.

All in all, I am really happy with the brewery. Even though I had big problems for the most part it went really, really smooth. I have a few bugs to work out and then it’s going to kick major ass.

Brewery Work: Lots!

Last weekend, the weekend before it and tonight have been very productive on the brewery build front. It’s getting very close to done. At this point the only thing I really have outstanding is valve wiring and final plumbing hookups. All the kettles have all their bulkheads installed and tonight I finished installing the heating element in the boil kettle and tested it.

I had to chase down some noise and interference throughout the control panel which was causing the LCD to scramble now and then. The pumps needed snubbers which I build from a 47 Ohm resistor + .1uF capacitor wired in series placed parallel to the hot and neutral on the plug of the pump. The solenoids all needed suppression diodes which I have been working on installing right into the coil head of each solenoid as I wire them up. 4 of 11 done so far.

Tonight after the final kettle work I spent some time heating water in various kettles and testing my heat exchanger. It seems to work pretty well although I am either having some pump priming issues or the heat exchanger is too restrictive. The flow is not very good through it. I am pretty sure it’s a pump prime issue. Tomorrow I am going to rotate the head of the pump to a configuration a lot of brewers are having success with and see if it helps. The result will have the inlet of the pump facing down and the outlet facing up. The idea is to have any air trapped in the head go to the top and be evacuated so the entire pump head can fill with liquid.

I am really hoping to be able to brew this weekend but it’s probably not going to happen. I need some final pipe fittings to get everything finished and the eBay seller I want to get them from is being slow to respond. We’ll see!

Lots of pictures to come – I’ve been too busy working on it to take any!

Brewery Work: Not Much

Well, the long weekend and most of this week have been kind of a bust. I floundered around with getting the control panel painted and was never happy with the results. I finally decided to throw in the towel and get some professional help so now it’s in the queue at Seattle Powder Coating. I should have it back in 4-5 days. Unfortunately that is kind of holding everything up. The main things I still have left to do are:

  • Build the second valve manifold.
  • Build the kettle input manifolds.
  • Drill the MLT and BK.
  • Wire all the valves.
  • Wire the temperature sensors.

Unfortunately I am kind of hesitant to do any of that until I know where the control panel is going to live, whether it works and how long cables will need to be.

So, I’m stuck.

I do have some parts showing up tomorrow I should be able to work on. I have some tri-clamp fittings coming that I am going to build into the HERMS coil so it’s easily removable and I have cable grips coming that will go on the valve side of the valve cabling. With that I will at least be able to wire the valves on one side and leave them long on the other. Once I have the control panel and decide where it’s going to live I can cut the cables to length and terminate them.

So, probably not too much going on for the next few days, but as soon as the control panel is back I expect to wrap the whole project up very quickly.

In better news, I did finish getting the stand put together and got the casters installed. So, it sort of looks like a brewery at least. And it rolls around the garage very easily 🙂

Brewery Work: Front Panel

Just a little bit of (perceived) progress tonight but it took quite a while. I got the four main rectangular holes done on the front panel. There are two more than I have not decided if I am going to use so I am hesitating on cutting them. I was able to do the three BTPD holes on my mill which worked really great. 1/8″ flat endmill, 12 IPM, 6700 RPM and .010″ DOC went through the .080″ steel just fine. Unfortunately the hole for the LCD was too far in the Y direction for the mill to get so I had to cut it by hand using my Dremel. That kinda sucked but it only really took about 20 minutes and it didn’t come out half bad.

Next up, I have to make a decision about the two remaining holes (probably yes), get those cut and then strip and finish the panel. Then it’s finally time to button this thing up. Can’t wait!

Brewery Work: Front Panel and Bottom Panel

Got a lot of work done on the brewery tonight. I picked up some paint stripper from Lowes and set into the bottom panel with it to see if this ugly coating would come off. It came off nooooo problem. I’m intending to paint the whole control box gloss black. The paint stripper is nasty stuff. Ate right through my nitrile safety gloves and by time I realized all the fingertips on my left hand were burning and tingly. That sucked.

While the stripper was working I started laying out and drilling the front panel. I drilled all the major round holes and pilot holes for all the rectangular holes except two that I am not sure about yet. I’m hoping I can cut the rectangles on my mill but I am not sure if the whole thing will fit in there. That’s tomorrow experiment.

Finally, because I couldn’t stand it any more, I installed some of the major components into the front panel. It’s looking really great. I am super excited to get it finished up. Tomorrow I am going to get the rectangular holes started on the mill (hopefully), set to stripping the main box and get the bottom panel primed and painted.

The control box is turning out to be a lot more work than I expected, but it’s turning out really nice so I don’t mind. It’s bugging me that I still have not put power to a kettle but I think it will be worth it in the end. I want the system to look as good as it runs and I’m getting there.

Brewery Work: A Few Holes

Welp, I started today thinking I would be able to build the entire control panel for the brewery but what I ended up doing was cutting 6 holes. I realized I had no good way to cut the large diameter holes in steel for the receptacles until I remembered… hey, CNC mill! So I spent like 6 hours watching the mill pocket out a few large holes.

Let’s just revisit that… “pocket out a few large holes”.

Something seems wrong there.

Pocket… out…

Pocket.

Courtney and I were just sitting on the couch when I realized that I spent hours watching the mill grind a bunch of metal into dust instead of having it run a few simple contours which would have taken like 20 minutes. I have no idea how I missed it. At some point in the day I decided, “Hey, I’ll just use the circular pocket wizard and let the mill do the work!”

So stupid.

Anyway, here’s some pictures. Here’s to hoping tomorrow will be far more productive.

Brewery Work: Mostly Electrical

This weekend I did lots of work on the brewery. I built a 25 foot, 6 gauge extension cord that will carry 50 amps at 240 volts. That cord serves two purposes. One is so I have an extension cord for my welder, and the other is so I can plug in the brewery anywhere in the garage I like. I also replaced one of the 3 wire 240 volt receptacles in the garage with a new 4 wire one which is required for the brewery. I’ll be using 120v and 240v in the brewery and the 4 wires will get me that.

I also finished wiring up the HLT and got it all waterproofed. I believe I now have a pretty safe vessel for electric heating. The whole thing is well grounded and electrical connections are all secured in a weatherproof junction box. The HLT has a 10 foot, 10 gauge, 3 wire power cord terminated in a NEMA L6-30 plug which will go to a matching receptacle in the control panel. Eventually.

I also did some pump testing and tested my HERMS coil for watertightness. All looks good there. The March pumps are a pain in the ass to prime but I think that when I have my solenoids all wired up I can nearly automate it. The first solenoid off the pump will be for draining (by design) and now I think I will also use it for priming. Opening that solenoid will let the head of the pump fill without having to push any pressure.

I also spent a bunch of time this weekend modeling all of the components that will be used in the control panel in 3D using SketchUp. I did this so I can build a full model of the control panel before I start cutting into the box. I don’t want to make any mistakes here. So far it’s looking good. My SSR heat sinks will have to live under a few shallow components but they should have plenty of breathing room.

So, all in all, very productive weekend! I am waiting for some replacement parts for the control panel and a whole batch of stainless steel nipples to plumb all my manifolds. Those will all be here this week and then things will move fast. I am really hoping to be able to fire the whole thing up this weekend!

Here’s some pictures from the work this weekend. I’m using a new (to me) WordPress plugin called Slickr-Flickr and it seems cool so far.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention about the extension cord. After I wired the plug and put it all together I tested each wire with my volt meter as I always do. Except this time I found a short between a hot leg and neutral! Turns out the little metal pressure plate in one of the terminals had a sharp edge and when I closed the plug it cut into the wire next to it. Lucky I tested it. Most likely it would have just flipped the breaker, but it’s a 50 amp breaker and I don’t like the idea of a 50 amp short!