Why Bluto? Why 555? Why? Why? Why?

The Bluto 555 is the big cousin of the legendary Brutus Ten (may Lonnie Mac be pleased), so Bluto is just a play off the name Brutus, and the 555 is because the system is designed around five fifty-five gallon kettles. The reason I originally started thinking about using 5 kettles was so that I could have a dedicated (1) Hot Liquor Tank, (2) Mash Tun, (3) Lauter Tun, (4) Boil Kettle and (5) Whirlpool.

With such a system, you basically pump from one kettle to the next and each kettle performs its own function.  Once you move from one kettle to the next, you can start a new process in the first kettle, and so on, so that you have multiple batches going through the system simultaneously. I figured I could do 3 barrels in a single brewday that way.  The system could still be used like that (you need a special pump to go from MT to LT), but the more I thought about it, the less attractive the idea of moving mash to the LT and wort from the BK to the WP became.  It makes sense on a 30bbl system, but not so much when you're working with 1bbl.

At that point, I started considering the possibility of having 1 HLT, 2 combined MT/LT vessels and 2 combined BK/WP vessels.  This wasn't so far off from how I used to brew at the peak of my homebrewing.  I'd gotten to the point where I was using a single 30 gallon electric HLT, pumping the strike and sparge water up to 4 different mash/lauter tuns, and running off into 4 different boil kettles.

 

Brewing four different 10 gallon batches on a single brewday was alot of work, but the rewards of having a huge variety of beer on tap to share and appreciate with friends was worth it, plus the physical exercise was a really good thing.  I can remember some Saturday brewdays starting at 8 am and not ending until after 11pm.  They made for a really good night's sleep. Here are more pics of my Carter Street Basement Brewery (my kids called it the Dungeon).

So the issue in my mind then became:  I wonder if I can brew four different 1bbl batches in a single brew day and at the same time decrease the amount of work and length of time involved.  I figured it could be done with the same idea of using 5 kettles, two of which are combined MT/LT, two of which are combined BK/WP vessels and one of which is a HLT, the idea being to mash two different 1bbl batches, and as soon as the runoff from those mashes are complete, dump them and start two new ones while the first two batches are in the BK.

There's a few things I knew right away that I'd need to accomplish this: (i) very hot water on demand (with the HLT only being used to tweak the water to the precise temperature desired), (ii) automation control and (iii) an easy, back-sparing way to dump and clean the kettles.