German Brewing

So, I have this 2hl brew system dream, that might just come true one day, if I can think of an way to make for some reasonable amount of money (maybe 5000 bucks, certainly under 10k). I've been aware of how big of an issue oxygenation is in brewing, but after reading the "Helles"-article here, it really clicked: I've become more and more obsessed with quality beer and now I understand that fighting oxygenation is the key here, not malt or hop bills, crazy mash schedules etc.

So. I have a good friend who's a professional welder and an engineer, so I can count on him to take care of the actual fabrication, I would just need to come up with an idea and some rudimentary plans. From the top of my head, just to get the ball rolling:

- Hot water tank, that is able to actually boil water and from which the water can be directed through a chiller to mash, lauter, etc.
- Malt mill, suitable for wet milling and an outlet that goes into the mash tun
- Mash tun, malts coming in through the bottom? Through a slow rotating mixer of some kind? Needs a pump.
- Lauter tun, a transfer pump from mash to lauter, false bottom, way to sparge with preboiled and chilled water without spraying/dripping
- Boil kettle, again a pump for transfer, preferably steam jacketed kettle
- no whirlpool (?), that's a big time oxygenator isn't it? Or is it enough if the whirlpool vessel is tightly closed?
- Anyways, transfer through chiller into temp controlled (glycol)conical fermenter
- lagering and serving unfiltered from separate tanks

WHole idea would be to make this a small in-house pub brewery, serving straight from tap high quality traditional continental beers.

Not to dodge your question, but you need to buy Kunze. He diagrams a lot of this in there, and you'll get a lot of good ideas for your system. It's the best investment you can make at this point.

You beat me to it. Kunze is an enlightening read.

HI guys. I actually have good ol' Wolfgang's book available at my workplace have only flipped through it but maybe I'll take it home for the weekend then.

If I were you, I would look at the Braumeister 200L or 500L and copy it or buy one. For a small brewery, the small footprint is very appealing, and if you design the recirculation well and with no sparge, I do not see the oxygen pick up being very high. slow gradual lifting of the grain basket should minimize O2 pickup at that stage, the one with the highest risk.
Kúnze will indeed give you some ideas but the systems I recall may be too big and not anyone I can recall translates well to 200 L.
You can also go to the BrauKon website and send them an email requesting info about their systems. They specialize in mid size systems so you may be able to extrapolate from them a bit better.
Good luck !!