New Brewery Build

Comment by mattd2 on October 19, 2012 at 9:56am

So I have finally got round to actually do some more with this! I have my father in law coming round this weekend to see a brew so I needed to get some stuff together. So last night I rearranged my pump to include the PID thermocouple which is soldered in (lead free ofcoarse!) after the pump output. This now feeds back to the PID and controls the HLT/Kettle element. The temp probe will be used to set the HLT temp with the water recirc'ing for strick/sparge. Then the PID will be used to control the boil strength. Finally the PID temp will be used to monitor the temp when recirc'ing/whirlpooling/cooling. Well thats the plan anyway, I'll try and get some photos tomorrow night to update this a bit more. Cheers!

Comment by Michael van Wijk on October 19, 2012 at 10:12am

Looks good, where did you get your control box from? I'm after one to try and put together similar. Cheers

Comment by mattd2 on October 19, 2012 at 10:23am

Got it from a electrical suppliers on Hillside rd, North Shore, Auckland. Not sure if they are still around. I'll check it out tonight as I have some emails from them saved (hopefully!). It is just an IP65 junction box but does the trick.

Comment by Michael van Wijk on October 19, 2012 at 10:47am

Are they expensive? Was thinking of just getting 2 sheets of thick plastic and making a wooden frame. Would rather have a proper junction box though.

Comment by Vesku on October 19, 2012 at 11:22am

Looks good. Remember to calibrate the thermocouple. I've a few of them and biggest error has been 8C degrees! Another thing with these, some of them are not linear at all, almost unusable. I've bought them from several Chinese ebay sellers... PT100 sensors seem to be better, but ones I got had terrible cables that caused me a lot of extra work. The digital sensors are easiest to work with (18DS20) , very linear and calibrated to the perfection, but I don't know if there's PID's that take digital sensors?

How are you going to control the boil strength with the PID?

Comment by mattd2 on October 19, 2012 at 11:44am

Yeah calibrated it last night, didn't expect to see 4°C variation but now you have put my mind to ease Vesku. As long as it is linear in the 60-80°C range I'm happy. The PT100 also seem a bit nicer to install in pipework as a lot come with pipe threads (NPT though!). I have 2x 2kW elements in the HLT/BK so one is on a manual switch, the other is controlled through the PID in manual mode (usually around 50%ish).

The JB wasn't to expensive. I got it from a place in Auckland (I think they have 2 stores - North Shore and Manuku?). They also sell on TradeMe. 

Comment by Vesku on October 19, 2012 at 1:42pm

Yes, I remember the feeling when calibrating... Can this be true?!?!

For some reason, I've never had a great success when trying to measure temperatures inside a hose. No matter what I've tried, it's slow to react. When measuring at the end of the hose, fast reactions, all good, but when in the middle of hose and going trough the side wall things get slow. I don't know, maybe it's turbulence or something?

Comment by Nick T on October 19, 2012 at 2:26pm

I found that with the flow going away from the sensor (ie when I had it mounted in a tee junction) I got real variance, which seemed to calm down with the flow going towards the sensor, when I was calibrating my heat exchanger. I assumed it was to do with bubbles or something. Now seems to be a steady-ish 1.5-2 deg in the 60 - 70 range.

Comment by mattd2 on October 19, 2012 at 2:40pm

Are you guys talking about the temp actually jumping around by as much as 2°C? With it running last night it was pretty steady (+/- about 0.1°C) but this was going pretty quick so it would have been turbulent flow. I'll need to keep an eye on it when I slow it down next time.

Comment by mattd2 on October 19, 2012 at 2:44pm

Nick do you have any photos of your setup? What probes are you using?

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