Heat Exchanger

As a homebrewer you get used to building many of your own components. In fact that is part, if not most, of the fun in homebrewing. I am finding that commercial brewing is not that much different, and frankly I’m happy about that!

The project for last week was to build a heat exchanger to cool the hot wort down to fermentation temperatures. As the brewhouse is only 3.5bbl there wasn’t a need to get a large heat exchanger fixed in place. However, as most batches will be double brewed, I needed something that was independent of the brewhouse components such as the pumps. As expected, there wasn’t really anything turn-key and off the shelf for me to grab, so out came the graph paper (i.e. Illustrator) and a lot of tinkering to come up with Heat Exchanger v1.0, affectionally called “Hot Rod” (read on).

When you’re working with brewery components it’s invaluable to know a good welder, and I’m lucky enough to have run across Rod. He came up with the hand truck idea and welded the braces on for me. So I thought it only fitting to name the system after Rod, who coincidentally also builds Hot Rods… like the real ones.

The entire system is portable so I can wheel it out of the way when I’m brewing and pull it back in when I’m ready to chill. It has it’s own pump so I don’t have to rely on the vorlauf pump while I’m knocking out. It also sports it’s own trub filter and inline oxygenator as well. Plus… look at it… it’s all shiny and whatnot!

Next week’s project is to build a proper grain mill that will make milling of the grain a little easier. Back to Illustrator!