on devices can be risky so if you want to use castor wheels always lock them before using the brewery and also make sure the castor wheels are substantially wider than the brewery/fermenter/pot diameter. For instance, notice how these dolly wheels have a wider base than the brewery itself. This is ideal. Electrical Safety: Obviously when using high- amperage devices that contain liquid there are some inherent dangers. Some things to keep an eye on are: Ensure you have property-earthed vessels. For any electrical device, all metal parts for that electrical device you can touch with your hand should be earthed. I have attached a photo showing how this can be done with a multimeter. What we want to check is that the earth terminal on the plug has “continuity” with the stainless steel vessel. Some multimeters will make a beeping sound when you join the two. Alternatively, if you check the resistance, the resistance should be close to zero (or less than a couple of ohms). Any decent manufacturer of electrical hardware should check this during the manufacturing process, but if you have made the brewery yourself or you purchased a second-hand device, I would definitely take the time to check this as it’s the single most important electrical check. Ensure you have taken precautions to separate electrical and liquids. This may sound obvious, but you really have to look at the likely failure modes in a brew day. Things that are spilling over, boiling over, or hoses getting intentionally or accidentally disconnected. When this happens and liquid spills where is the liquid going to go? Try and keep AC power cables as far away from the wet areas or areas where the liquid is likely going to spill. Use properly rated extension cables. Most brewery hardware draws a lot of amps. As a result, you need to make sure sufficient copper thickness is used, and you are not going to burn out your connections. Generally speaking, your household power cables will be made to a certain electrical standard. With that said customers often have extension cables or double adaptors that are old, worn out, or simply insufficient thickness to do the job, resulting in fire risk or wasted power. Often, people are brewing outside and using cheap extension cables with thin internal wires. The longer and thinner the power cables the more loss you will have too. So customers who are using long and poor-quality extension cables may notice the brewery itself is not getting a vigorous boil, or it’s slow
to heat up; this is also a telltale sign. If you feel the cable and it’s getting warm to the touch, this is also a good indication your extension cable is not of suitable thickness for the high-powered device, or possibly it’s too long. GAS Safety: Probably the safest thing you can do is to simply get rid of gas altogether. Gas does have its safety concerns and generally speaking on a home scale there is no reason to use gas so simply upgrading to an electric brewery is probably one of the fastest ways to improve safety. If however, you have a large brewery that requires more power than what you can deliver using your electrical system gas may be required. If you can’t get enough power through your home power connection and are forced to use gas, then the main things you need to check are: Make sure you do not have gas leaks. Do a pressure check to make sure all your gas lines hold pressure. Ensure that either your gas flame cannot blow out.
108 SPOTLIGHT MAGAZINE ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • VOL 24 ISSUE 3
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