Grain mill motor for $25

My trusty old wiper motor did the trick powering my grain mill but geez it was bloody slow. So after my dad told me he used a bread machine motor with great results I decided to spend a rainy Sunday in the garage modifying my grain mill and connected it up with an old bread machine motor.

So I purchased a bread making machine from gum tree for $20 and ripped the motor and pulley out.

Had a guard made up to cover the motor as its windings are all visible and didnt want to risk dropping something down on them. Added a switch and made some modifications to my existing mounting board to allow the pulley to fit. I had to get my mill shaft machined down to match the pulley but was able to get this done at work FOC.

Final RPM is around 160 rpm geared down from 1100 rpm from the motor so I have plenty of torque.

So a cheap ebay or gumtree motor seems to work quite well as a mill motor and you get both pulleys and the belt.

Here is a video of it in action making light work of my grain bill.

Grain mill motor

I've been using a drill to power my recently purchased grain mill but have been having mixed results. The drills speed is variable by adjusting how much you pull the trigger but only down to around 400 rpm. Because of this I've been having problems with stuck sparges due to my crush being too fine or having to mill at a larger gap of 1.2 mm but then suffering in my efficiency of only around 62%.

I couldn't afford a dedicated mill motor at the moment but I managed to score a wiper motor that a guy I know was using as a spit motor. It had a transformer to convert 240V down to 12V, a bridge rectifier to convert 12V AC to 12V DC and a switch all neatly housed in a steel box. I pulled it all out and mounted it on some board and connected it to my mill with a spider coupler. The board has rubber stoppers underneath and the whole thing sits on top of a 20 litre pail.

I haven't given it a test run yet but I'm keen to see if the constant speed of around 60 RPM will now allow me to set a smaller mill gap and hopefully improve my efficiency above 70% without risking a stuck sparge.

Hop spider

Here is my hop spider in action. Made with 3 long of coach bolts, some 100 mm PVC pipe, a large hose clamp and some paint strainer bags. I throw a stainless nut into the bag to keep it under the wort as the boiling action has a tendency to lift the bag to the surface. 

It certainly helps with my losses to kettle trub and I get a bit more precious wort into the fermenter at the end of brew day, but I have noticed a slight decrease in hop bitterness so need to allow for this when formulating recipes.

My latest Brew Rig

And finally on my quick tour through the brew rigs and setups Ive used since starting this hobby we come to my current setup.
I started with an old steel framed bench they were throwing out at work and turned this..

Into this..

The brewery controller swings out parallel with the stand on brew day, then folds back away as shown in the picture when not needed. My HLT is on the left, Mash tun in the middle and boil kettle goes on the right where the Mash tun lid is sitting. My pump is mounted to the bottom shelf and I have room for the storage of leads etc either side of the pump.

Its a great rig to brew on and I love the castors as I can move it in to the middle of the garage on brew day, which means any spills can be hosed out the garage and down the driveway.

New House..New Brew Rig Design

I moved house in November 2012 and the new house had a double garage, which meant more room for an upgraded brew rig setup. So I decided to give a 2 tier setup a go.
My HLT was on the first tier with my MLT and boil kettle on the second tier, and a pump below this.

Heres a panoramic shot of my setup. (Note the brew controller box that I was building at the time I took the photo...details on the build will follow in another post)

My first brewery

If I had started this blog when I first started brewing I would have a nice chronological order of my brew rigs as I updated them and added or improved them. Instead Im going to just do some catch up posts here outlining my brew rig setups since I first started.

My first adventure into all grain brewing was using the old faithfull Big W 20 litre pot and a Swiss voile bag. This method is called Brew in a bag or BIAB and is a great and cheap way for new or K&K brewers to get started in "All Grain" brewing.
My first brew was a Stone and Wood Pacific Ale clone and it turned out fantastic. I was immediately hooked on All grain.

I was then given an 18 litre urn so started doing BIAB in that. Eventually after reading about various systems such as RIMS and HERMS, 2V 3V etc etc I decided to build a simple herms system and setup a 3V brewery. This used my small 18 litre urn as a Hot Liquor Tank or HLT, an esky for my Mash tun MLT and a new 40 litre urn I had brought as my boil kettle.



Brew rig on stand showing my HLT bottom left, herms vessel bottom right, and mash tun and boil kettle on top shelf.