HERMS System Questions

I'm trying to understand how a HERMS system works. I've done some searching and find all kinds of material on how to build them and such but I don’t understand a few things about a some details and I’m hoping some of you guys can help out.

If I have a HERMs coil in my HLT then I can “recirculate” the wort from my MT through the HERMS coil to maintain a constant temperature. Currently I batch sparge so obviously, after a 60 minute rest, I vourlauf, then drain, sparge and drain again. Since we vourlauf to basically get a “clear” wort to the BK, which at the beginning may have some grain particles and such in it, how would this work in a HERMS system if you need to recirculate to heat up your wort to mash temp? Do you vourlauf first? I wouldn’t think that grain pieces and such would be good to go through your pump. What do you guys who use this setup do?

This seems like the way I’d like to grow my system. I already have a keg HLT. BK and a cooler MT. I would go ahead and get a keg for the MT as well but would I really need to?

Thanks for any help!

Since your recirculating the mash water during the mash your basically doing a 60 minute vorlauf. It is not necessary to do another vorlauf after your mash. I fly sparge now with my setup so after my mash I start to transfer from MT to BK and HLT to MT and then do a 45-60 minute sparge. First and only brew so far I did I got 85% efficiency on it.

i do a small vourlauf at the beginning of my mash to get rid of the big particles, then circulate through my HERMS coil in my HLT. i monitor the output of the HERMS coil to determine if the temp is what i want. my wort is amazingly clear at the end of a 60 minute mash

Have a look at the link below. It is a guide to brewing with HERMS. The bottom link not the top one.

Cheers hope it helps.

Thanks, Dustin, that's exactly what I was looking for! I didn't realize that you can recirculate the wort through the entire mash. That makes more sense. But Dustin, it looks like you don't and only recirculate when the temperature needs to be adjusted. I like that. I will read through your blog today and may have more questions.