My new Contraption

[beerGuardin]

A contraption I have been building for a few years now. Finally had some vacation and spent it tinkering and building. Not an original idea by any means. Someone else coined the acronym SIMM (steam infusion mash mixer. http://www.spykman.com/simm/simm.html)

This is a mash tun with an automatic mixer and steam infusion for temperataure maintenance. I have only tested it with water and it seems to be able to keep temperature pretty constant. I can't wait to use it! Finally, back into all grain after a long hiatus.....

http://picasaweb.google.com/morrison.pa ... directlink

[maltbarley]

Very cool! I suppose the temp controller is next weekend?

[lexuschris]

Cool contraption! Steam-tech, I love it!

Looking forward to a report after your next batch!
--LexusChris

[dhempy]

Aha .. another enginerd in our midst ... be sure to bring a propeller hat to the meeting so that we can have our breakout group.

Very cool device indeed.

How does the ash do for staying clean?

Dan

[JonGoku]

What keeps the motor/lid from turning instead of the paddles? You said you tested it in water, but obviously the resistance of a proper mash would be much more then just water. I'm pretty sure you've thought of it, but just in case you hadn't, you might want to do something before you test it with a mash. One idea is you could make two groves in the lid that correspond with the groves you made in the keg top and insert some flat scrap metal like illustrated below.

[beerGuardin]

Very cool! I suppose the temp controller is next weekend?

Thanks! Actually its not too far off. maybe another overtime shift and Ill be able to afford it. The plan is to buy a micro controller that I can program with my computer. That way, I can play around with motor control and temperature control as well as being able to track temperature vs. time on my computer!

Cool contraption! Steam-tech, I love it!

Looking forward to a report after your next batch!
--LexusChris

Thanks! Im looking forward to trying it out as well. Just need a day off......

Aha .. another enginerd in our midst ... be sure to bring a propeller hat to the meeting so that we can have our breakout group.

Very cool device indeed.

How does the ash do for staying clean?

Dan

Big time! Actually I made the lid out of a big hunk of oak I had lying around in my dad's garage. I then treated it with mineral oil. Shouldnt be too hard to keep clean.

What keeps the motor/lid from turning instead of the paddles? You said you tested it in water, but obviously the resistance of a proper mash would be much more then just water. I'm pretty sure you've thought of it, but just in case you hadn't, you might want to do something before you test it with a mash. One idea is you could make two groves in the lid that correspond with the groves you made in the keg top and insert some flat scrap metal like illustrated below.

Thanks for the idea. The thought had crossed my mind, but I havent given it any serious thought. The oak and the motor together weigh about 5 pounds. If the torque load from the mash still overcomes the friction from the lid on the first batch, Ill probably just put something heavy on the lid and fix it later. Definately an important consideration that would be enough to piss you off without good forethought.

[brahn]

Thanks! Actually its not too far off. maybe another overtime shift and Ill be able to afford it. The plan is to buy a micro controller that I can program with my computer. That way, I can play around with motor control and temperature control as well as being able to track temperature vs. time on my computer!

Now you're talking! Which micro controller are you looking at?

[backyard brewer]

Thanks! Actually its not too far off. maybe another overtime shift and Ill be able to afford it. The plan is to buy a micro controller that I can program with my computer. That way, I can play around with motor control and temperature control as well as being able to track temperature vs. time on my computer!

Now you're talking! Which micro controller are you looking at?

Take a good look at the BrewTroller. It's based on the Sanguino and is an open-source home brewery controller. The only thing lacking at this point is data logging but Matt, the coder, is working on that. The thing is very impressive and he plans on adding steam specific modules to it.

http://www.brewtroller.com

You can even store several recipes on it now. It stores hop schedules just an amazing array of features and like I said, all the code and hardware is open source.

[beerGuardin]

Now you're talking! Which micro controller are you looking at?

Im looking at getting one of the parallax basic stamps (http://www.parallax.com/) and then programming the contorl algorithms into it. I think you can control multiple things with it as well. For my purposes it would be motor and temperature control. Probably motor first because it is relatively cheap, and at the very least have a temperature vs time plot as a record for each recipe, then I can look at my computer screen and not keep bending down to try and read a thermometer.