So, after brewing a stout with my dad last Saturday, we looked at how the brewing process went, and both decided we should build a brew stand in my garage to get rid of some of the "inefficient" manual steps that we had to perform throughout the process.
So, we built a stand out of 2x4 and plywood...so on the real cheap.
AS seen in the pic, it's three tier, with the sparge tun on the top tier to the
left, the mash tun on the middle tier to the right, and a bottom (the ground) tier for the boil kettle and propane burner. The whole thing took about 2 hours to build, and can be used as a storage area for brew equipment. On the bottom tier beside the kettle is a wash station for automotive parts, but will be giving this to a buddy and putting in a plastic wash basin for brewing.
Being that the sparge tun is at the top, sitting on wood, and no propane burner, I was forced to turn it into an electric kettle so I ran "to code" a 40amp 240V line to the top of the brew stand for the 4500W hot water heater element that is goin to be installed in the kettle this week. A stainless element isn't necessary in this kettle as I'll only be heating up water and nothing else. I'm actually going to install a pivot arm over the sparge tun, plummed into a garden hose attachment at the bottom of the stand so I can just hook up a garden hose and turn on the tap to fill the sparge tun.
The only thing that typically would have to be moved is the boil kettle so the hot wort can be gravity fed through the CFC...well not anymore. I have an impeller pump with a stainless top on it for potable water. Issue is, it's not rated for high temperatures, so I'm, going to hook it up on the cold side of the wort chiller and "suck" wort from the kettle through the CFC as opposed to pushing hot liquid through...
So, all that remains is to hard plum in water to the top tier, anchor the pump, and plum in some lines with quick disconnects. I think I'm even going to use a pivot arm type tap to fill up fermentors, then swing the tap back in against the brew station when not in use.
Is this my ideal brew stand? Definitely not, but it's a damn good first one using materials around the garage. Big plus with this stand is I'll no longer have to lift or touch hot liquid containers throughout the entire brew process.