I already tried heating water in my cooler. That's how I tested if it worked in the first place instead of doing a mash. And it does work.
One could set up a pressure vessel to heat an HLT (strike/mash water) and/or it could go into the MLT to heat the mash.
There will be a small amount of heat lost from the pressure cooker, but its minimal. Pressure cookers have thick walls and they seem to keep the heat really well. One could also insulate the pressure cooker. There is a small amount of heat lost in the hose, but that is pretty small too. I am really impressed with how efficient it is. I agree that coolers would keep sparge water hot with much less heat loss than would a keg. Overall, heating with a pressure cooker is probably more efficient.
One thing I would be concerned about though is putting a pressure cooker on a really big propane burner. They are aluminum, which melts at 1400F ish, and I'd be a little concerned about over heating them. On a big 5KW electric burner, I think its an excellent idea. I'd love to heat my pressure cooker with a burner though.
I'm finding its really handy to have a pressure cooker around in its own right. Yesterday I used it for sterilizing equipment for a yeast experiment.
For that matter there is nothing saying that a pressure cooker couldn't heat the boil too. Commercial breweries do this, in various ways. One of the nice things about heating in this manner would be the natural bubbling/stirring action of the steam. The other interesting thing about it is that one can have the pressure cooker fully charged (heated) up, ready to go at the start of the boil. It would very quickly heat the wort, at least for a 5-6 gallon batch. I'd have to run the numbers on it to be sure.
Hmmm... lots of interesting things to think about here.
I need to say something here about heating straight water, as you would in the HLT.
When you inject steam into a liquid, it starts out as a vapor bubble. As the heat of that bubble is absorbed the bubble collapses and all is well.
It turns out that heating water is different than heating mash. When I used steam to heat water, the bubbles were huge and if you injected the steam too fast the bubbles didn't break before they hit the surface. And thus not all the steam heat was absorbed by the water, some of it released above the water, but still inside the cooler.
But for some reason, mash behaves somewhat differently. The bubbles seem to be smaller and they seem to break before they hit the surface of the mash. Thus its easier to get the steam heat absorbed in a mash than it is plain water.
But with a little bit of fooling around with a proper manifold, one should be able to get the heat of the steam absorbed in water as well as it does in mash and thus it should be easy to heat water as rapidly as mash.
About putting a pressure cooker over a big burner:
If your cooker has a pressure relief it will blow long before you melt the pot unless you run it dry. If you run out of water, though, you're in trouble because there isn't anything to keep the metal cool. If you happen to run dry over a fire, you probably don't want to add water without cooling the cooker off first...the steam flash could get a little warm for you. One nice thing is there should be no risk of scorching from a pressure cooker, and the steam *does* stir everything up.
We steam heat 65 tons of wood chips at a time at work, and it does an excellent job. If you were really interested in stirring with the steam, you may need to thin the mash out some and/or blow the steam in on one side (although it sounds like the braided hose does that already). It might also help to use a taller, narrower HLT. The steam and temperature difference in our digesters is enough to flip the contents two or three times within about 30 minutes, although they're about 40' tall.
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Hi folks,
Brewman, any updates on this?
I wonder if you can clarify something also. Are we saying that we could do away with a HLT altogether?
Could we dough in cold and steam ramp up to desired rest quickly enough?
For the sake of this thought experiment, let's assume batch sparging is preffered.
The possibility is then to open to drain first runnings - infuse with cold sparge water - and ramp up with steam again for the batch sparge.
This assumes the tap water is suitable for the brew.
1) what are you using to heat your pressure cooker? (i am currently in the process of building something similar and was considering installing a 2000W element into the pressure cooker itself, similar to what you did for your corny)
2) to fix the problem you are having with heating water in your HLT you could use ceramic raschig rings, these are commonly used in distillation/gas-liquid exchange towers to facilitate surface area requirements. They are inert and since they are ceramic they will be able to withstand high temps (this is what i am planning on using for my HLT, PM me if you want the name of the supplier)
So I brewed a Corona clone lager last night using my modified steam mashing system.
The mash schedule for this beer called for 30 minutes at 122F, followed by an hour at 148-152F. The reason for the first step is that 25% of the grain bill was cracked corn and one needs all the enzyme power one can get to convert it to sugars.
You say you used cracked corn for 25% of the grain bill, but I see no mention of a cereal mash. Corn meal and such needs to be cooked (30-60 minutes is typical) in order to gelatinize the starches before it can be effectively mashed. Never heard of anyone using whole cracked corn before. It's also best to avoid corn meal that has not been de-germed. The oil in the germ can seriously interfere with head retention. How did the beer turn out?
I think your are being a little optimistic on the 75% efficiency. More like 6 x 36 pppg= 216 gravity units. Then 216/3.5 gal=61.7 potentially. You got 42, so 42/61.7=.68 or more like 68%. That's not all that bad, but it's also not 75%.
Maybe the OP was killed by the exploding pressure cooker. He was much too nonchalant about using a pressurized steam vessel IMO. And who brews with chicken feed anyway? Cracked corn? Come on! I use corn meal regularly, but never ordinary cracked feed corn. A Corona clone? It's beyond me why one would go to all the trouble to brew that swill. It also seemed like a lot of trouble to go through for a 3.5 gallon batch or whatever it was. He'd have been lucky to get 3 gallons out of the fermenter.
Maybe the OP was killed by the exploding pressure cooker. He was much too nonchalant about using a pressurized steam vessel IMO. And who brews with chicken feed anyway? Cracked corn? Come on! I use corn meal regularly, but never ordinary cracked feed corn. A Corona clone? It's beyond me why one would go to all the trouble to brew that swill. It also seemed like a lot of trouble to go through for a 3.5 gallon batch or whatever it was. He'd have been lucky to get 3 gallons out of the fermenter.
Too much negativity dude. You would think Brewman shot your dog or something...
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