Meet Dorothy, our brand new 10hL Brewhouse (10hL kettle, 12hL Mash tun, 20hL hot liquor tank) made by Grainbrew (Tiantai Shandong Grain Machinery) in Jinan, China. Dorothy is named after my late grandmother who always told me to follow your dreams... and here we are Dot!

We spent over a year working on the design of this lovely brewhouse and she is custom made to suit our requirements at Henry St. We worked closely with Josie from Grainbrew to make sure we got exactly what we wanted.

The system is a custom three vessel steam jacketed brewery, which will be heated by a locally sourced steam boiler. The three from left to right are: HLT (hot liquor tank), KWT (Kettle Whirlpool Tun), MLT (Mash Lauter Tun). The system has a 750L grist hopper that sits above the mash tun. This holds the malt before we dump it into hot water to start the mashing process (coversion of starch to fermentable sugar). We will be milling the grain from our mezzanine then pumping it using a grain auger straight into the grist hopper, no manual handling required! The hopper also has a built in weighing device so we can double check we haven't stuffed up the grain weight before we start the brew.

Dorothy is controlled from the massive control panel you can see in front of the HLT, we have built this for future expansion to allow up to 8 x 2000hL fermenters should things really get out of control (pardon the pun)! The control panel features controls for the brewhouse itself (pumps/temperature etc) and a programmable Seimes Logo controller to automate the mash temperatures/profile (we can preset our recipe program then walk away until the mash is complete). It also includes a flow meter and counter so we can check our transfer volumes quickly. It also controls the temperature of fermentation via a process of solenoid valves and cooling liquid from the 1000L glycol tank (not pictured).

Dorothy

The control panel:

Henry St Controls

Inside the mash tun:

Mash Tun (inside)

Grainbrew factory in Jinan, China: