Story and pictures by Randy Mosher
Republished from BrewingTechniques' November/December 1997 issue.


You too can piece together your own automated 15-gallon brewery from junkyard parts and scrap metal.

For more than five years now, I've been working toward my goal of constructing a fully robotic brewery capable of operating in outer space, controlled through telemetry from my personal ground station. At this point, I am one two-thousandths of the way to completion. But let me assure you, the brewery, Earth-bound, is fully functional and capable of providing a lifetime of brewing if I choose to stop right now. The important thing is that the lessons I have learned on the first 0.05% of this fantasy project have been by far the most important ones. I thought I'd share some of them with you.

My Buckapound Brewery
I use a three-vessel configuration comprising a dedicated mash kettle, a lauter tun, and a boiling kettle. The mash and wort boiling kettles are of conventional junkyard design, albeit copper-bottomed and fitted out in a fairly complex way. The lauter tun is one of my more recent projects and is made of rolled sheet metal. I also have a hop percolator (my term of choice for a hopback), a grant to collect the runoff, several pumps, and a modicum of electronic measurement and control devices. I usually ferment in glass carboys, but recently I built a 12-gallon unitank from an old milk can. I built all this equipment myself, with a little help here and there from my local stainless steel surgeon. A "buck a pound" is literally what I paid for it, having rescued the parts from meltdown at scrapyards and surplus shops wherever I could find them. Here's some of what I learned in the process of souping up my home brewery.

House Rules
"You're not going to pay a lot for this brewery": You have to be willing to take an opportunistic (read: flexible) attitude about how your system develops over the span of a few years, but if you don't have to have any specific part tomorrow, you really can buy most of your brewery for cents on the dollar.

The industrial world spews mountains of choice goodies that end up in auctions, surplus outlets, junk shops, and scrapyards. Even if you are perfectly happy with your picnic cooler mash tun, it's worth it to learn where good second-hand parts sources are in your region and to become familiar with them. I even search them out on vacation; but then, I'm kind of a sicko when it comes to this topic.

Start haunting bargain equipment environments and buying anything that might be useful: pipes, tubing and fittings, pumps, valves, screen and perforated metals, instrumentation, and nuts and bolts. Buy every kind of stainless steel fitting you find. Keep collecting stuff until it becomes obvious that you have enough to use for your brewery. Whatever's leftover can probably be traded for something useful.

Anything made from nonmagnetic stainless steel that doesn't look like it fell off a satellite is probably 300 series stainless, also referred to as 18-8 in reference to its nickel and chromium content -- just what you need to build brewing equipment. You are likely to encounter two flavors of 300 series stainless steel: 304 and 316. The 316 metal has added molybdenum for extra resistance to acids and other corrosives. Both work equally well for brewery applications. Which brings us to the next point:

Stainless steel is the devil's own metal to work with: It is a beautiful, enduring, versatile, but obnoxious material. It is difficult to cut, weld, drill, tap, polish and bend. Once you get it together, though, it will last for centuries, resist all common cleaning and sanitizing chemicals, and impart nothing to the finished beer. Its only drawback is that it is a poor conductor of heat. As a direct-fired vessel -- and most people use it this way -- you could hardly engineer a worse material. Scorching and sticking are the main problems (which is why I went through the trouble to attach a copper bottom to mine).

Buy a serious die grinder: This Dremel tool on steroids (at right) can handle a wide variety of tasks. You can move a lot of metal in a short time with a 1/4-in. chuck spinning at 25,000 rpm, and if you want to grind down your welds and make them look nice you absolutely have to have one. The cost is about $100, which is well worth it for its versatility. You'll also need a bunch of cutoff wheels, grinding wheels, flap sanders, carbide burrs, and polishing buffs. All of these are industrial items, though your local home improvement store will have a smattering. Any large flea market will have a guy who sells drill bits, and usually he will have an assortment of carbide burrs and other useful tools at a fraction of their usual retail price.

Learn to weld: Learning on your own is commendable, but welding classes help immensely. A welding class will generally teach you basic techniques and may offer access to a large, well-equipped metalworking facility. Bring your project along; on an hourly basis, taking lessons is cheaper and far more sensible than renting or buying the equipment. Shop departments are disappearing from schools all over the country as we increasingly become a nation of people loath to get our hands dirty, but some do still exist in high schools and technical colleges; make a few calls and explore the offerings. Gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW or TIG) is considered an advanced technique; you will likely have to put in some time with an oxyacetylene torch to get a feel for joining metal (and to satisfy your welding instructors). For tips on welding stainless steel and other metals, see the box, "Welding Tips," on page 41.