Brewie and Brewie+ Internals

The last time I brewed with my Brewie+ was July 12, 2019. The machine failed during that brew, leaving wort slowly cooling in the boil kettle. I saved the batch by pumping it to another kettle and finishing it out there, but the Brewie itself was out of commission. I contacted the manufacturer that evening for help. Two days later, I was told that parts were on the way to repair it. It's now September 7, and those parts haven't arrived.

In the meantime, there are strong indications that the company making the Brewie has gone out of business. I'm hopeful those are just rumors, but there are a number of facts that suggest otherwise. Although their web site is still active, their tech support system reports "Account suspended" if you try to post a case or ask a question. Their support email address, if you email it, comes back as non-existent. Right now, eBay is filled with a number of broken "customer return" systems that you can purchase inexpensive for parts. (These are the older "Brewie" model rather than the "Brewie+" but that doesn't seem like a good sign.)

I have a friend who enjoys repairing broken devices and appliances. He wanted a crack at the Brewie+ in my basement, so last night we cracked it open and had a look. If nothing else, when the repair parts arrive from the Brewie folks, we'd have a good idea how to install them.

Here's the bottom of the kettle, with the heating element removed:

Bottom of the boil kettle

And the heating element itself:

Close-up of the heating element connections

Evidence of burning at the heating element

So you can see that during one of the previous brew sessions, issues with the wiring attached to the heating element and the thermal cut-out switch caused the wiring to burn out at the connector end. This happened badly enough on the side with the thermal cut-out switch that the terminal broke right off that switch. I'm probably fortunate that there wasn't a serious fire.

For those curious about what the inside of a Brewie+ looks like, I'm sharing some other photos, taken during parts of the disassembly.

The Brewie+ partially disassembled, to allow access to the heating element

Close-up view of the plumbing - dirty because I couldn't run a cleaning cycle in it after it failed

Close-up of connections that had to be unhooked to get to the heating element

Close-up of the wiring on the boil side of the Brewie+

I bought one of the original Brewie units for sale on eBay. It turned out to have suffered a serious drop and showed a lot of mangled metal. The mash compartment was misshapen, the base plate was damaged, the lids no longer lined up, etc. It also failed its power-on self-test, possibly due to a power supply issue. Here are a few photos of that broken one:

The customer-returned broken Brewie (original)

Inside the bottom plate of the original Brewie

Power and control boards inside the original Brewie

At left, what I think is a pump with the lid broken, off, on the mash side

Close-up view of the internals on the boil side, note the plate chiller at bottom

Close up of the broken pump(?)

Two lights indicate a successful self-test, I presume one indicates only a partial success

My friend and I are still in the midst of trying to get the Brewie+ to work again. At this point, we are waiting on the arrival of some replacement thermal cut-out switches I ordered from eBay to arrive.

The Brewie and Brewie+ share a number of internal components, which makes the older machine a good donor parts system for the new one. I may buy another broken one on eBay and see if we can't get it working with parts from this one.

Yellow Label Angel Yeast vs. Typical Brewing Yeast

I currently have my second batch of rice wine fermenting with the "magical" yellow-label Angel Yeast from China, and wanted to share some of the more unusual aspects of using it. If you've never seen or used this yeast, I suspect you're not alone. It ships in a 500 gram package that looks like this: What makes it "yellow label" is that yellow box you see in the upper left corner of the package. This implies that it's yeast for distilling (though you do not need to have a still or distill the output to use it). As I understand it, inside the package is a mix of yeast and other materials which will convert starch into sugar and directly ferment it, without the need for a traditional mash step. This can radically shorten your brewing time. For my most-recent batch of rice wine, I heated 3 gallons of water to 155F, poured it over 13+ pounds of uncooked rice straight out of the bag, let that soak for an hour, rehydrated some of this yeast in warm water,

2021 Batch 1 - Rice Wine made with Yellow Label Angel Yeast

I've become a big fan of the Still It channel on YouTube. About a month ago, Jesse posted a video about how he made rice wine using nothing more than water, rice, and a purported "magic" yeast from China called Yellow Label Angel Yeast. Perhaps even more amazing was the fact that he was able to make the rice wine without gelatinizing or mashing the rice. He shows three batches in the video. One was made by cooking the rice before adding the yeast mixture. Another was made by adding uncooked rice to boiling water. The last was made by adding uncooked rice to room temperature water. All three fermented out to roughly the same amount of alcohol in about two weeks. He was amazed by this, as was I. I resolved to buy some of this magical yeast from Aliexpress.com and try it out. In the Still It video, the rice is ground up in the grain mill into smaller chunks to make it easier for the enzymes in the yellow label yeast to convert and ferment. I'm changing this up s

Making Alton Brown's Immersion Cooker Fennel Cardamon Cordial

Alton Brown's "Good Eats" series is my favorite cooking show. I love the way he explains the "why" and "how" of a recipe in detail, which helps you understand (if things don't go right) where you may have gone wrong. In his episode on immersion cooking (also known as sous vide), he shows you how to make a cordial in an hour using an immersion cooker. It took me a while to locate all the ingredients here in Columbus. I ended up getting the fennel and vodka at Giant Eagle. The cardamom seeds, pods, and anise stars came from Amazon. The Fennel fronds and bulb came from Trader Joe's at Easton. Ingredients 32 ounces of 80-proof vodka 2 cups of fennel fronds 10 green cardamom pods 3 ounces granulated sugar 1 tablespoon fennel seeds 1 teaspoon black cardamom seeds 1 whole star anise Begin by loading your sous vide vessel with hot water and set your immersion cooker to 140F. While the cooker is getting up to that temperature, meas

Begin Brewing!

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