- But, why build my own?
There are a lot of reasons to build your own
stir plate. The biggest reason is that most of us are tinkerers and
we love projects. And a home built stir plate fits right in with
home built brew kettles, chillers, kegerators, etc, etc.
There is also cost savings or at least the
perception of a cost savings. Assuming your time is free and most of
the parts are just laying around then you can save quite a bit of
money building your own stir plate.
Then you might also have this neat wooden
cigar box laying around that you think might make a nice stir plate.
Just remember that after a couple of years use, that wooden cigar
box won't be so nice anymore.
Actually, you could even build your stir
plate in a cheap clear food container, the kind you can put 2
sandwiches in. Just don't expect the plastic to last more than 2 - 3
years!
Stir Plate Instruction Links
There are a lot of personal sites on the web
with instructions for building your own stir plate. Some are
excellent while others are, well, kind of iffy. We researched the
web for stir plate designs and these are a few of our favorites.
Here's a rheostat based design. It's elegent,
simple and cheap!
http://redkettlebrew.blogspot.com/2008/02/stir-plate-parts-and-pics.html
Here's another one, also rheostat based.
http://www.thebitterbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=64
Here's a third rheostat based stir plate. At
least find a decent box for your stir plate! This one's in a cheap
plastic food container.
http://freakbrothershomebrew.blogspot.com/2009/01/freakin-stirplate-is-complete.html
This one's based on a LM317 regulator. Also,
he claims to need a spacer to lift the magnet away from the fan
motor because the magnetic field interfered with the motor.
http://www.stirstarters.com/instructions.html
This guy writes an excellent set of
instructions. He even tells where he initially went wrong. It's
another LM317 regulator design.
http://brewiki.org/StirPlate
Here's one based on a 555 timer PWM circuit.
No, it's not our design - we designed our own.
http://brewznet.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/stir-plate-prototype/
|
