Anatomy of an up-cycled Brew Stand

A couple of weeks ago I had a friend over for a brew session. He asked me some questions about my brew stand and about how much I have invested into it. I really had never added it up, but I figured it was much less than an off the shelf brew sculpture with similar specs.

There are a small number of commercially built brew stands out on the market. These come in various designs, but they are all pretty costly. They range from around $2,000 to $5,000. My favorite is probably Morebeers tippy dump system. In stainless with all the bells and whistles the price comes in at over $6,000 for the 20 gallon version.

I guess the main thing I would point out about my brew stand is that it is completely weldless. It is also pieced together out of a number of parts. The idea behind this post is to explain all of those parts, and try to put a price to them all.

The base of the entire stand is a heavy duty "Gorilla" rack from Costco. It was actually a gift, but I will list the price to include in the total. I use two shelfs, the bottom and top. For the third shelf I just run a single bar just below the level of the burners. It's maybe 7 holes up from the bottom of the rack. This is just to add some stability

The only real modification to the rack was a set of caster wheels I picked up for cheap at a local industrial surplus store.

For burners I used one Blichmann floor burner for the boil kettle. The burner and stand for both the HLT and MLT was originally a two burner cajun cooker cart. It was also found at a surplus store. The cart was actually two pieces. I basically discarded everything but the top section with the burners.


Here is what it looked like out of the box:

Everything else on the stand consists of gas piping, and 110v solenoids on the HLT and MLT. In addition there is a tankless water heater and three stage water filter bolted to the side of the rack.

Here is a good picture of the stand and the main components just discussed. The picture is a little old. At the time I was using a PID, and only the large boil kettle is still in use. In it you can see the blichmann and the remains of the cooking cart.

The burners are all hooked up to a single propane tank. The HLT and MLT also have standing pilots and needle valves to adjust the pilot size. Here is a close up look at this set up. You could forgo the main red valve since you have the normally closed solenoid, but I like it for a quick shut off ability.





My first attempt to add everything up I came in at just under $3,000 for everything except the computers (tablet, laptop) that I use to run the BCS since those things are not dedicated to the brewery. I also did not include my grain mill, fermenters, kegs, etc. It's just the items connected to the stand. This is not bad considering the size of the kettles and that it is completely digital.  It's half the price of Morebeers single tier digital 26 gallon set up.

Part	Price
Heavy duty rack	150
Blichmann floor burner	150
two burner cajun cook stand	60
Solenoids	65
Gas piping, valvles	120
Hose, cam locks	100
Morebeer 26 gallon HLT, MLT,  Kettle, sparge arm	1300
March Nanobrewery pump	350
Plate chiller	80
BCS 460	180
Wiring, temp probes	100
Water filters, parts	85
Tankless water filter	200
	$2,940

Tankless Water heater

Pretty much my current setup.

UPDATE: Here are some close up pictures of my favorite brew gadget, the LPG tankless water heater.

Gas Connection to heater

Gas connection at heater

Flexible pipe connection