Anyone had experience converting dairy equipment?

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Calidin

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I know Sante Adairius converted dairy equipment into a mash-tun and a lipton boil-kettle into their boil kettle?

Curious if anyone has specifics on how that was done or has seen any articles/papers on it. My research has yielded some pictures and high-level articles, but most of them are of the mash-tun full (hard to tell what's below the mash).
 
I know Sante Adairius converted dairy equipment into a mash-tun and a lipton boil-kettle into their boil kettle?

Curious if anyone has specifics on how that was done or has seen any articles/papers on it. My research has yielded some pictures and high-level articles, but most of them are of the mash-tun full (hard to tell what's below the mash).
I believe Sante bought the system off someone who had already converted it. It's pretty easy for the mash tun. People usually get the bulk tanks that have a bunch of surface area and then just add Copper/Stainless piping with holes drilled in or get false bottoms made. Get a welder to weld the fittings on and your good to go. You can also use those types of tanks as open top fermentors. As far as boil kettles go you could use something like a the tea kettle you mentioned if you plan on using steam(sante does). Or there are also dairy tanks that are shaped similar to boil kettles that you can have welded and fitted. I'm not sure if there are any specific blue prints out there but if you build your own home-brew equipment its fairly similar.
 
Interesting. I'm trying to wrap my head around how they empty the grains post mash for clean up. I can work through in my head how to build the mash tun and do the piping, but where I'm at a bit of a loss is the grain removal.

Ideally you don't jump in and shovel it out, but that is a possibility.

Any idea how Sante handles this? Or anyone else for that matter
 
Interesting. I'm trying to wrap my head around how they empty the grains post mash for clean up. I can work through in my head how to build the mash tun and do the piping, but where I'm at a bit of a loss is the grain removal.

Ideally you don't jump in and shovel it out, but that is a possibility.

Any idea how Sante handles this? Or anyone else for that matter
It's possible to have a bottom drain welded in with a big butterfly valve to hose all the grain out, but the tun would have to have a pipe manifold for lautering. A false bottom wouldn't work if you went this route.
 
A lot of craft breweries started using dairy equipment. This used to be referred to as a frankenbrew system. If you google that term you'll find a lot of info about building that kind of system. I seem to think there were a couple books written by brewers about how to build them.
 
Interesting. I'm trying to wrap my head around how they empty the grains post mash for clean up. I can work through in my head how to build the mash tun and do the piping, but where I'm at a bit of a loss is the grain removal.

Ideally you don't jump in and shovel it out, but that is a possibility.

Any idea how Sante handles this? Or anyone else for that matter

They jump in and shove it out fam.

I've brewed on a 5ish bbl steam kettle like Sante uses once. It hooks up to steam like any other kettle would, that's how they use it in a dairy.
 
Thanks for posting. Wasn’t sure if there was a better solution, but that makes complete sense. Appreciate it!
 
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