Electric Brewery Control Panel on the Cheap

The following are guidelines when selecting components:

Burner Lights: The burner lights illuminate when the SSR and contacting relay are active. Meaning that the burner select switch is enabled to either the HLT or Boil and the PID controller is energizing the SSR. When this happens, the lights will have 240VAC across them so you need a light rated for 240VAC and they will illuminate. A 120VAC light will draw twice its design current and burn out quickly. Neon, incandescent, and LED lights for this duty are available. I recommend you head to your nearest electronics surplus store or pull from salvage equipment. Nothing fancy is needed. You could eliminate these but since it is handy to know when the big heaters are being made hot the lights are a nice to have. Keep them.

Keyswitch: A keyed switch isn’t really needed, but it adds a cool factor especially if you need to turn two keys in unison to arm the system. Also a keyed switch will keep random passers-by from firing up your brewery, as long as you hide the keys somewhere. If you hide the keys somewhere you are sure to forget where you put them because hey, we’re brewing beer here and you can’t brew beer without making room in kegs for that beer by drinking beer. Make sure you have a second key made. Any keyswitch rated for 120VAC will work. No real current handling capacity is needed since the keyswitch just enables the main relay.

Burner enable switch: The important spec on this switch is that it have an off and two separate on states and be rated for 120VAC. An on-off-on toggle is a good cheap choice and is what I used.

Heater element receptacles: You will need to be sure that the plugs on the end of your heater element wires are compatible with the receptacles you have on your control panel but as long as everything is rated for 240VAC and 30A you can choose what you like. I went with locking receptacles to prevent pull out, but those are a little pricey. As you can see from the pictures I used 4-wire plugs and receptacles but only 3-wire is needed (2 hots and a ground). However I had the 4-wire parts lying around so…

PIDs: Go for it. You can do it. If you find a cheaper PID or have some sitting around you can likely mod them to work. SSR output preferred. The specifics will be up to you, feel the burn.

Pump Switch: All you need is on-off and capable of handling the voltage and current of the pumps. The pumps are not a big load nominally but since they are motors their start up current can be large. So oversize the switches here. Rate them the same as your pump receptacles for peace of mind. 120VAC and 15A on-off toggles are not that expensive.

Pump outlet receptacles: Just use whatever household 120VAC 15A double outlet you have sitting around. Failing that, buy the cheapest at your local big box store. Nothing fancy here. 

Temperature probe sockets: Use a socket that matches the cables on your temperature probes. Anything will work, no current capacity or special voltage requirements needed. XLR is used here to match the probes specified by Kal at The Electric Brewery.