work on the black pipe

I added some more pics to the Bluto 555 combustion gallery showing the process of putting thread compound on all the black pipe, tightening everything down in the proper configurations, cleaning it all up, and putting a couple of coats of high temperature/rust prevention paint on.  Up to this point, I've always had the pipes loosely configured in case I realized I needed to make a change, but that realization hasn't come, and now it's approaching the time to finally light this thing up.

I'm waiting on two more flexible connectors from Dormont, and once I have those installed, I'll post a pic of the entire gas manifold with a bit more explanation about the manifold.

thermometer calibration

My good buddy and fellow homebrewer Curt loaned me his very precise mercury thermometer a while back, and I attempted to calibrate the 5 Blichmann thermometers using water in a pot on the stove.  This was no problem with the water settled at room temperature and comparing the mercury thermometer to the Blichmanns. four of the five were off by either 1F or .5F, and I was able to dial them in nicely at 69F.  However, when I heated the water to boiling, the Blichmanns were way off.  I can't remember exactly how much off they were, but  I seem to recall as much as 5 or maybe 7 degrees.  I tried to let the water cool down to 152F (a midpoint temperature between the ranges favored by alpha amylase enzymes and beta amylase enzymes during mashing) and calibrate them  at that point, but I never could hold the water right at 152 long enough to do the calibration... too small a volume of water and no ability to fine tune the heat applied to it.

Isotemp Immersion Circulator

Later, as I was telling Curt about my experience, he said he had just the thing in his lab, and here's a pic of his assistant showing me how to set up their Fisher Scientific Isotemp Immersion Circulator.  It took about 20 minutes or so to get the constantly recirculating water temp up to 152F, but once it was there, it held the temp steady as long as I needed it.  Calibrating to 152 was really easy this way, and that has me thinking about how I can build my own do-it-yourself style Isotemp Immersion Circulator.

the burner apparatus

I added a few pics to the Frame Build Phase II gallery to show a little better how - what we call - the sliding burner apparatus works. This uses a quick position cam handle from McMaster Carr to make lowering and raising the burner a a fairly quick and easy 2-hand process. Being able to adjust the burner's height was necessary to accommodate the tippy dump swing radius, but it's also helpful to be able to control how the particular flame your getting hits the kettle.

upper position

lower position

There are a few more pics of the burner apparatus in the Frame Phase II gallery. You may notice the black piping is missing a couple of end caps. Putting goop on the threads, tightening the pipes down, and putting the black paint on them is one of the very last things I'll do prior to the first test batch, so the burners are just loosely assembled right now.

lots of stainless bolts, washers, nuts, screws needed

An accumulation of different sizes of bolts, washers, nuts, thumb screws, self-tapping screws, etc. just sort of happened during the building of the Bluto 555. This is just what I have left over. Lots of trips to the local bolt and screw store.

custom fittings for Blichmann sight glasses and thermometers

With 1-1/2" triclamp style butt weld ferrules added to the walls of the kettles at every hole, I needed some custom fittings to get the thermometers and sight glasses attached to the kettles again:

• for the thermometers, a standard 1-1/2" TC endcap drilled/tapped for 1/2-20 thread (this was simple)
• for the sight glasses, a custom machined fitting (all one piece, no welding, drawing here), drilled and tapped for a straight thread that is a little tighter than 1/4" npt (I didn't make a note of the specific thread, but can find out if someone really wants to know)

Since these are threaded, they're not sanitary, but the benefit is the ease with which they can be removed for thorough cleaning and sanitization, and then reattached (as opposed to having to having to practically crawl inside the kettles to remove/reattach the originals. Later, I'll post about the fittings for the main ports and the return ports because I'm actually still working on those.

modifying the kettles

One of the rules I came up with when thinking about the design of the Bluto 555 was to use all 1.5" sanitary clamp (aka, tri-clamp or TC) fittings, if possible, in every place fittings were required, the reason being that all manner of 1.5" TC fittings are very commonly sold by all the vendors of sanitary fittings such as St. Pats and GW Kent. The truth is that 3/4" fittings would have been perfect for most of this system, but 1.5" seems to be the only size available for some specialty fittings, and 3/4" and sometimes even 1" TC fittings either aren't sold or are out-of-stock alot of the time. (update: Stout Tanks and Kettles has them available. They also have some great kettles, but I don't think Stout was in business when I first started my project or I just didn't find out about the company until later).

So I took the Blichmann kettles, enlarged the holes in the side and added 1-1/2" butt weld triclamp ferrules. I also added a hole and ferrule to the lid for the float switch, and also near the top of the kettle wall on the right to allow for MT and WP wort return and to act as a sparge water inlet.

click for more pictures

My buddy Mike Chavez, who was Auburn's first commercial brewer, connected me with a sanitary welder in Lowndesboro who does alot of work for a Coca-Cola bottling plant. Sabco has a good write up here re: sanitary welding vs. weldless fittings.

Sanitary welds are designed for one purpose. . . namely 'aseptic cleanability.' Big words that simply say that standard industry cleaning techniques and chemistries must be able to remove all possible risks of infection.

I don't completely understand the reason, but sanitary welding involves backflushing the area to be welded with argon. You'll see later that I haven't been completely successful in making every single fitting and weld on the system sanitary, but the threaded fittings I had to use were kept to a minimum.

Here's a gallery of pics for the kettles, including some pics of the modification work.