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In this Discussion
- CothermanDistilling September 2014
- crozdog September 2014
- Drunkas September 2014
- FullySilenced September 2014
- grim September 2014
- jasse September 2014
- Jung September 2014
- Law_Of_Ohms September 2014
- Lloyd September 2014
- olddog September 2014
- punkin September 2014
- rossco September 2014
- Smaug September 2014
- Sunshine September 2014
Comments
That Glacier one looks like it's 8 feet tall, vs the SD which is a much more manageable 5 feet. If you aren't going to have an auger, looks like a whole lot easier to lift and dump into the SD design with those lift up lids.
yeah, I like the motor on top too, seems inherently better for the inevitable leak... I will be dumping sacks from the pallet on the forklift most likely.. I have seen some with lauter rakes that assist in removing spent grain... googling, I find a copper dragon ;-)
The Brewhouse Plant | Copper Dragon Brewery
Only real problem is that with a 1000l still and something like a 2000l cooker (why not?), to run both simultaneously you are going to need a serious boiler. This is wellll into the 1m+ BTU category.
Would you use gas on your large boilers over there or would you use power ??. I don't know what the costs are over there grim but I know its alot cheaper in my part of the world to run power over gas and I live in the dearest state in Australia for power and it just so happens to be the most dearest place in the world for power as well.
http://www.stilldragon.com.au/
@lloyd, IMHO, there are already a lot of suppliers of brewery components and turnkey systems. If I were SD, I'd be looking to expand the offering to the current consumer base rather than compete against established suppliers to the craft brewing industry.
The Sabco Brew magic is $$$$, the brewmeister is $$$. Lots of guys have made their own 2 & 3 vessel setups out of kegs or other containers. I don't think it would be hard for SD to develop a 3 vessel rig complete with RIMS / HERMS & pumps. The components could also be offered separately so people could upgrade bits of their system when they can afford to rather than only being able to buy a complete system.
Like you are doing at present there is a lot of work happening on the automation front.
A 3 vessel rig is pretty simple - if you look at the "brutus 10" design you will get a good idea of what is needed
Build Brutus Ten (PDF)
Commercial power out where I am is about 13.5 cents USD per kWh, it's much more expensive than nat gas. Something like 2-3 times more expensive per equivalent unit.
Issue with electric at this scale is you most certainly need 480v heavy power. Expensive to provision if you weren't lucky enough to already have it on site. Electric steam boilers like Sussman also very expensive.
There is a new entrant into the all in 1 brewery market BrewEasy @ Blichmann Engeneering
brewmagic is $7-10k, the 10bbl premier is probably $100k if someone made a distillery aimed 7bbl system for $30k, that would hit a spot in the market that was not being sold to...
also, brewmagic may be $$$$, but it has a proven track record, it has been the startup system of more small brewpubs than any other system...
Can I see BrewDragon on the horizon?
StillDragon has recently brought a 1000L steam boiler with 12" still head from the typical $75,000 USD to less than half of that price and done it with advanced technology that no-one else can offer. Because SD is distillation.
It took awhile for us to get there. We have taken everything one step at a time and we have a very solid base. I'm sure everyone knows by now that other companies have had to lower their prices or look silly against our model of delivering the goods at great prices but it is the truth, we breed our own competition by releasing great new products... yet they are confined to our pricing. They cannot get our products to their customer and earn their dime while copying our products. So most don't try.
I'm not saying we can do to beer what we have done to distilling but if time permits we will stick our toe in the water and if we do I expect a few folks that sell beer equipment at vastly inflated prices will be nervous.
More than one still vender charges "everything they can get" instead of what is the best value.
the other area SD could get into is automation, and I will stand up again for an automation system being something you can sell to a person running a pot, dash, ace, up to the biggest column SD makes.... or a brewer... I like all the features of the BCS-462, If I could build one like that with more choices in analog I/O, I think the distillers would beat a path to my door... but creating a platform like that that is a continuous software project. Also any controller housing will have to be continent specific...
I'm using Omega Ethernet PID controllers and their control kit to build an HTML-based control page that can be accessed from an iPad or other tablet. Nice thing is that you can control them from the pid unit itself, or through the web pages. It's just simple set point control and monitoring, nothing fancy like running through a set program.
Omega CNI16D53-EI for the PIDs (dephlegmator and product condenser) - 0-20ma output for use with proportional valves, not solenoids.
Omega DP41-B-4R-EI for high accuracy temp/alarm (post dephlegmator vapor temp and product temperature, 4-wire RTD)
The cool thing is that I can hang up a couple of cheap 24" TVs an a Chromecast to show the webpage and have them display the relevant temps and set points, even a graph of the temperatures over the run.
Thanks for the info... assuming the EI at the end is the ethernet? edit - $300 and $700 are a tad expensive..