Finally finished the brewing controller

[wjohnson12321]

Just thought I would share with you guys my finished brewing controller. It's only taken 2 years on and off to finish



The feeling of it firing into life for the first time was pretty nice

Obviously inspired by the ElectricBrewery.com, i'ts a baby version of their Electric Brewing Controller.

[Will12283]

I can only dream of something that nice. Good effort

[UpTheToon]

Very nice.

Where did you get the panel/box from?

We're definitely going to need an inside shot too

[Wonkydonkey]

Yeh they take a lot of time to make. On mine I did not fit the wires for the alarm, I'd be buggered if I'm going to dive in to wire it up now.
But it works and I got the hang of the timer, cos I got up the other morn to see it had been on about 1.5hrs and almost ready @62c shame I'd forgot to crush the grain the night before. Duh.....

[Hogarth]

Nice work. I've just made one myself and was amazed by how long it took. For weeks I seem to be spending all my free evenings with the crimping tool.

Is the ammeter useful? I thought about fitting one but couldn't decide if it was a practical addition or just a bit of bling.

[wjohnson12321]

The overall cost was actually a lot less than i thought! The box was from ebay and because the guy forgot to send the mounting panel or bolts he actually refunded me the full £50 it was supposed to cost. Biggest tip I would say with this kind of project is get the right tools for the job. Cutting through a fire proof steel box like this is bloomin hard going with the wrong tools. I've probably spent the most on drill bits, dremel bits and jigsaw bits!

It's nice to see the whole thing kick into life for the first time tho

[Fil]

Top Job, well worth the wait congrats..

[Wonkydonkey]

Nice work. I've just made one myself and was amazed by how long it took. For weeks I seem to be spending all my free evenings with the crimping tool.

Is the ammeter useful? I thought about fitting one but couldn't decide if it was a practical addition or just a bit of bling.

IMHO, I think the amp meter is a great addition, the reason is if your new to it. Ie your boiler setup. You can see what amps are being drawn. in my build I have a cheap dimmer switch (4000w) which I switch over to when I want to reduce the boil ( I use a pid for the mash temp and getting near to a boil without watching it all the time) then as I said switch over to the dimmer and dial in the amps that I'm happy with, ie not going to Boil over.

Others have said ( what I've read here and there) they just use the pid on a percentage menu, there's a menu in the pid somewhere that you can tell it to use 70-80% of the power or what ever. But the menu is APITA imho, and flicking around in the menu just as it's about to boil over, would result in a mess. That's why went for the dimmer and amp meter as well as the pid.

So it may be a bit of bling for some, but for Me in my set up I can just dial in any amps to fit the brew length on the boil. Which as it happens 60-65lt boiling I use 6-7 and sometimes 8amps on a 3kw helicoil, but can see it's getting the full 12.5amps when getting it up to mash temp and almost to boiling point.

Hope this helps.

[Hogarth]

Hope this helps.

It does. Many thanks. A pair of ammeters are now winging their way to me from China.