After much thought and quite a bit of creative thinking I finally came up with a solution for building an affordable 3 tier gravity system that will house my brewing equipment. After reading many homebrewing discussion forums I’ve noticed many people either build a 3 tier system from wood or they fabricate it from steel. I didn’t like the idea of using wood because of the possible fire hazard and I did not like the notion of building one from steel for the simple reason that I do not know how to weld.
So what else could I use to build my system? How about using store bought shelves to build a 3 tier structure! This structure has to be strong enough to hold my brew pots and burners. It has to be steel so it doesn’t catch on fire and finally it has to be flexible enough to allow for a step design that is typical to a 3 tier brewing system.
Once I had this rough idea of what was needed I started to scour the internet for such modular shelving system. It took me quite a bit of time before I finally came across the Metro Commercial Shelves sold by the Container Store. Here is what they look like in different configurations:
They can be assembled in various configurations so what you see above are just examples of their standard “out of the box” setups.
What I needed was the ability to build my shelves from scratch and to accomplish this I found these components sold individually. Now I had to do a bit planning, things like measuring my burner with a pot on it, the total height of my garage where brewing will take place. Cost is another factor, although the overall structure will not be expensive it is will not be as cheap as a wood contraption.
To be continued…
