Therminator money pit

Cake said:

I brewed up the 115th Dream Hopbursted IPA from NB a few weeks ago. I also have the therminator and it still worked like a dream. I use a 15gal megapot along with the hopstopper (http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/hop-stopper). I had absolutely no issues whatsoever, even after using a pound of pellet hops. Once done with the therminator, I cycle PBW through it using my steelhead pump, it works perfectly.

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What is the mesh size of that hop stopper?
Judging from the pictures it seems relatively coarse, like a 30x30 mesh perhaps (30 wires per inch). That would make a 500 micron filter, roughly, depending on wire thickness. Yet it seems to hold a lot of sludge back. How much does go through? I'm trying to eliminate as much hop sludge being transferred to the fermentor as possible, and at the same time keep my plate chiller clean too. I spend more time cleaning the chiller than anything else from brewday.

The hop baskets from Stainless Brewing are 400 micron, Chad's are 300 micron with a 400 micron option. Most people seem to prefer the 300 micron for tighter filtering.

IslandLizard said:

What is the mesh size of that hop stopper?
Judging from the pictures it seems relatively coarse, like a 30x30 mesh perhaps (30 wires per inch). That would make a 500 micron filter, roughly, depending on wire thickness. Yet it seems to hold a lot of sludge back. How much does go through? I'm trying to eliminate as much hop sludge being transferred to the fermentor as possible, and at the same time keep my plate chiller clean too. I spend more time cleaning the chiller than anything else from brewday.

The hop baskets from Stainless Brewing are 400 micron, Chad's are 300 micron with a 400 micron option. Most people seem to prefer the 300 micron for tighter filtering.

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Honestly I am not sure what the mesh is. It's stainless steel and does the job for me. I looked at the website where I bought it and couldn't find the specs of it. Here is a picture of it doing it's job though, this is from the 16 oz of hops I put in.

Xpertskir said:

After much consideration on the topic the issues brought up in this thread is EXACTLY why I have avoided plate chillers and to a lesser degree CFC's.


I just have a beefy whirlpool chiller which a recirculation arm, like this one. http://morebeer.com/products/wort-chiller-superchiller-recirculation.html

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I was thinking of a plate chiller, but glad I saw this post first. I'm gonna do just as above. 1/2 copper recirc. arm. I have a pump, brand new. I have hose. All I have to do is get the quick disconnects. I also have a sump pump for ice water like the configuration in the Mr. Malty post. In the Mr. Malty post I couldn't quite figure out the reason to have the lid on the kettle while chilling, unless for splashing?

dirtydingus said:

In the Mr. Malty post I couldn't quite figure out the reason to have the lid on the kettle while chilling, unless for splashing?

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Once the temperature drops a bit, your wort becomes bacteria heaven. It's good sanitation practice to put the lid on the kettle as soon as boiling ends and chilling begins.

eastoak said:

i've recently started experimenting with all flameout hop additions, about 10 batches now with very consistent results. one of the reasons was the hops getting into the plate chiller. the chiller never clogged on me but whenever i would run boiling PBW water through it i would get gunk coming out for a good 30 minutes or more. another reason was to see how much bitterness i would get without boiling the hops for 60 min. beersmith said zero and some people claimed that it was little more than zero, i figured i would get a beer just as bitter with a 20-30 min hopstand; X amount at flameout, X amount at 10-15 minutes and X amount at 25-30 min depending on the alpha acid of a given hop but it's usually 3-5 oz in the kettle. what i don't know is if i'm missing something by not boiling the hops, some other element in the hops that may need a boil. the resulting beer has been very good, nobody can guess that it did not have a bittering addition. the aroma and flavor is noticeably brighter, more intense and longer lasting in the keg.

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I'm with you 100% on this. I prefer super hoppy pale ales and IPAs with less bitterness; I also like "kettle hop flavor" better than dry hop flavor so I've switched to ALMOST 100% flame out additions, too. (First time I forgot to hop stand and had very low bitterness but I got it right this last time.)


Adam

corax said:

Once the temperature drops a bit, your wort becomes bacteria heaven. It's good sanitation practice to put the lid on the kettle as soon as boiling ends and chilling begins.

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Yep, that's part of it. Fruit flies are also another huge consideration. (As they carry acetobacter that turns our precious alcohol into vinegar.)

I like to add my flame out hops then chill to 141F if DMS is even a possibility and then do my hop stand at that temp and then finish chilling (all while covered).

Adam

I use a duda 30 plate, because I have always tried to cool the wort as quick as possible. I have always been told this is when the wort is the most vulnerable to infection. I don't spend 20 minutes whirlpooling either. I do have a hop basket that filters leaf hops and use micron bags inside the basket with pellets. I also recirculate everything back into the boil kettle. I can cool 5.5 gallons down to 65 degrees in only 10 minutes. I know I am circulating all of the break material through the plate chiller, but once again, I am trying to cool it as fast as possible. I backflush the plate chiller, and only see some material in the first 10 seconds or so. I then soak in pbw and flush again, but see little to no material when doing this. Maybe the duda chilller has more space between the plates than the therminator, don't know for sure, but I could never imagine clogging it.

gunmetal said:

I use a duda 30 plate, because I have always tried to cool the wort as quick as possible. I have always been told this is when the wort is the most vulnerable to infection. I don't spend 20 minutes whirlpooling either. I do have a hop basket that filters leaf hops and use micron bags inside the basket with pellets. I also recirculate everything back into the boil kettle. I can cool 5.5 gallons down to 65 degrees in only 10 minutes. I know I am circulating all of the break material through the plate chiller, but once again, I am trying to cool it as fast as possible. I backflush the plate chiller, and only see some material in the first 10 seconds or so. I then soak in pbw and flush again, but see little to no material when doing this. Maybe the duda chilller has more space between the plates than the therminator, don't know for sure, but I could never imagine clogging it.

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Boil some PBW, fill your plate chiller & let it sit for a half hour or so; dump the contents into a glass container, report back. (I have a Duda as well, the previous experiment shocked me)

Cake said:

Honestly I am not sure what the mesh is. It's stainless steel and does the job for me. I looked at the website where I bought it and couldn't find the specs of it. Here is a picture of it doing it's job though, this is from the 16 oz of hops I put in.

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Thank you for the picture. That's a nice hop cake you got there!

If you feel inclined, you could put a ruler on the mesh (along the mesh grain) and take a good sharp hi-res picture of it. Then count the # of wires within the inch. Or count directly.

One thing you guys could add, would be secondary filtration, like I got from NorCal. These stands go under my false bottom, and add even more filtration.

http://www.norcalbrewingsolutions.com/store/False_Bottom_Stands.html

logdrum said:

Boil some PBW, fill your plate chiller & let it sit for a half hour or so; dump the contents into a glass container, report back. (I have a Duda as well, the previous experiment shocked me)

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Does the boiling increase the effectiveness of the PBW? I usually don't heat mine, just run it through the therminator for about 10 minutes.

I was listening to a pod cast recently and I think the five star guy said to not heat PBW past 170 or 180 IIRC.

He did say that the heat speeds up the cleaning action. I usually just take it up to 140 or so for my HERMS coil and convoluted CFC.

Here's the podcast I referenced: http://s125483039.onlinehome.us/archive/bs_cleaning11-10-08.mp3

It's an interview with five star's John Herskovits. At around 39:00 in he says not to take PBW over 180 mainly because the surfactants can come out of solution.

jsguitar said:

Here's the podcast I referenced: http://s125483039.onlinehome.us/archive/bs_cleaning11-10-08.mp3 It's an interview with five star's John Herskovits. At around 39:00 in he says not to take PBW over 180 mainly because the surfactants can come out of solution.

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That's good to know, I'm actually using homemade PBW, but I'll start using a lower temp.

Tried to clean out my therminator using hot tap water ( mine gets up to 140 if I set the instant water heater to max) and about 4 oz PBW in a gallon of water, hooked to a sump and pumped for a few hours in each direction, then let soak for several days. Not a huge amount of crud is coming out, but the water has turned an odd aqua blue/green color. I don't think from hops. Copper oxide or something??

TD

TrickyDick said:

Tried to clean out my therminator using hot tap water ( mine gets up to 140 if I set the instant water heater to max) and about 4 oz PBW in a gallon of water, hooked to a sump and pumped for a few hours in each direction, then let soak for several days. Not a huge amount of crud is coming out, but the water has turned an odd aqua blue/green color. I don't think from hops. Copper oxide or something??

TD

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Copper oxides are red, brown or black.
Many copper salts are bluish/greenish. Could be from the brazing filler...

I used to store my Duda Diesel plate chiller with Starsan in it. I could always smell a strong metallic odor when emptying it, but there was no perceptable color. So to clean that out, I circulated a while with hot PBW, followed by water before running wort through it.

After I read somewhere here that Starsan can corrode or dissolve the copper in the brazing filler, I now store it as dry as I can get by shaking the water out after PBW recirculation followed by rinsing. Then bake it at 350-450 every 5 brew cycles or so. Goes in with the bread or the pizza.

I think if we brewed every day we wouldn't have these problems

I like the thinking!

I suppose that I should bake mine though I've never had issues with infection when using it.

I think I'm going to hit it with another round of PBW to see if still runs green/blue. Thanks for the chemistry refresher, I think copper salts are unsafe to consume. I think I'm going to try and connect my new 1/4 HP submersible pump that I got for my plastic conical build and the CIP ball this time, which will have more power than the small pump it's hooked my to now..

TD

dipole said:

I have a therminator and it worked well until it got clogged once during a transfer. That sucked. I then bought a trub strainer to keep gunk out of the chiller.
(This is the one I bought. http://www.brewershardware.com/FILTER1.html.)

I was brewing an IPA with pellet hops last weekend and well, that somehow clogged the trub filter and it was hell finishing the transfer. I typically whirlpool but sometimes there is just a lot of junk at the bottom of the kettle that seems to make it's way through. I realize that this was probably a one off occurrence but now I have this worry/anxiety of having a stuck transfer and scrambling to save my batch.

So now I am considering adding on a hop spider and the thought occurred to me, when is enough enough? Just to use a plate chiller that is a bear to clean I will probably spend another $200 just to be able to use it.

I am thinking about just getting a nice whirlpool immersion chiller and being done with it.

Just wondering if anyone else traveled this road before and what you did.

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I use a hop spider of sorts. But then again, I read the best way to clean a plate chiller. It is guaranteed to both sterilize and clean out any gunk:

Place it in your oven at 400-500 for an hour.
Rinse
Done

TrickyDick said:

I like the thinking!

I suppose that I should bake mine though I've never had issues with infection when using it.

I think I'm going to hit it with another round of PBW to see if still runs green/blue. Thanks for the chemistry refresher, I think copper salts are unsafe to consume. I think I'm going to try and connect my new 1/4 HP submersible pump that I got for my plastic conical build and the CIP ball this time, which will have more power than the small pump it's hooked my to now..

TD

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1/4 HP should do it! If it creates enough turbulence inside the chiller it will dislodge any hops and break crud. I use my March pump and even after 2 hours pumping, alternating direction a few times, small flakes of hops still emerge. Should we really worry about that anymore? We still pasteurize the chiller loop while recirculating before chilling.

Don't you love having camlocks? No more barbs!

IslandLizard said:

1/4 HP should do it! If it creates enough turbulence inside the chiller it will dislodge any hops and break crud. I use my March pump and even after 2 hours pumping, alternating direction a few times, small flakes of hops still emerge. Should we really worry about that anymore? We still pasteurize the chiller loop while recirculating before chilling.

Don't you love having camlocks? No more barbs!

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I don't recirculate wort in mine. I use StarSan. Haven't figured an effective way to drain it all before chilling, but usually run off a couple seconds of pure wort before directing into the fermenter.

I use QD fittings. I suppose camlocks are more sanitary. I haven't entirely committed to TC fittings, but have them on a handful of things.

So I think I'm going to bake my therminator and then use the new quarter horse pump.

TD

TrickyDick said:

I don't recirculate wort in mine. I use StarSan. Haven't figured an effective way to drain it all before chilling, but usually run off a couple seconds of pure wort before directing into the fermenter.

I use QD fittings. I suppose camlocks are more sanitary. I haven't entirely committed to TC fittings, but have them on a handful of things.

So I think I'm going to bake my therminator and then use the new quarter horse pump.

TD

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First I flush the chiller and pump with water, which I blow out, then connect to the kettle valve. 10 minutes before FO I start recirculating, making sure I get back to a boil. When it's time to chill, I turn on the cooling water. If I want to do hop stands I just turn off the water, add hops or spices and keep recirculating.

I would not bake it until the water comes out clear. Baking could create Cu oxides or other caked-on Cu salts, that will be harder to dissolve later.

TC is best since there are no threads but is $$$. Everything is 100% sanitizable. It does have "barbed" or bulged ends to connect to hoses, though. Camlocks are fast and simple, but still have exposed threads. So do NPT valves etc.

Is baking really a good idea? Seems that would just dry and harden any remaining crud to the point where it would never come out.

I don't know about other plate chillers, but a Therminator easily fits into most brew kettles. Boiling it for a half hour or so would not only kill anything that might be living inside, but would also have a better chance of loosening accumulated crud, making it easier to flush out.

Hmm... Interesting. Maybe I'll boil first.

TD

I've heard of people using the blichman hoprocket filled with rice hulls (or hops) as an inline fliter. If you're stuck spending money, perhaps consider it. At least you'd be spending money that can be used for more than one thing.

mjohnson said:

I've heard of people using the blichman hoprocket filled with rice hulls (or hops) as an inline fliter. If you're stuck spending money, perhaps consider it. At least you'd be spending money that can be used for more than one thing.

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Been there, done that. I think my problem dates back a few years... Long story, but it ended with a brew day, and several beers during brew day with a few friends who stopped by and wanted to drink. I think the therminator "may" have been rinsed with garden hose, but am not entirely sure. Over a year passed before I had opportunity to brew again. Then the problems began.

I have the brewers hardware trub filter, which is really great. Invested in a stainless brewing hop spider, and trying to figure out how to conduct a whirlpool, which in conjunction with the trub filter should put me at ease for using the therminator, if I can get it back to working properly. I think I need some outlet restriction on the therminator to ensure full wort contact with the plates. My ground water isn't cold enough to hit pitching temps, so I use an ice bath. And run that through. Problem is, my ice maker reservoir only holds so much ice and I often run out of ice before it's fully chilled. I do not want to recirculate the wort through the therminator. I think if I planned ahead and pulled a bucket of ice the day before and put into the freezer, I would have enough ice to do the job.

TD

OK, so Next time I brew, gonna try the therminator again.

I soaked a few days in concentrated PBW solution 4oz to 1 gal approx after I ran the solution through it both ways for several hours each way. Initially solution was hot. 150 ish

Then I boiled in water for about 90 minutes.
Then I drained and baked in a 550 degree oven for a couple hours.
Then I ran HOT PBW concentrated solution through with a 1/4 hp pump for an hour or so in each direction.
Then I rinsed.

If that doesn't clear it out, I don't know what will....

Got the SB spider, its huge. about 1-1/5 inches between bottom of kettle and the bottom of the spider. I think I need to trim it back a few inches. I might consider recirculating the wort through the spider to clear the break material, then run off through the brewers hardware trub filter (I had been runnning through in wrong direction last time btw), then through the therminator. Depending on style, I could also pump through the hop rocket, but next brew is a KBS clone attempt, so no need to do that.

Anyhow. I'll let y'all know. I never did see a whole ton of crud coming out. a few flakes and sediment, and the auqumarine colored water after the initial pbw pump/soak routine...

This will possibly be my last brew for the year. Need to break down the fittings on everything and give those a good cleaning on New Years Day.

TD

I have a plate chiller, but it was almost a necessity for the 20 gallon batches I do. Anything less than that and I do not recommend getting a plate chiller. WAY more expensive that what's actually necessary and way more work to keep it clean.

mpcluever said:

I have a plate chiller, but it was almost a necessity for the 20 gallon batches I do. Anything less than that and I do not recommend getting a plate chiller. WAY more expensive that what's actually necessary and way more work to keep it clean.

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this is absolutely true....for you. plate chillers are widely used by thousands of home brewers for all batch sizes. as far as them being more expensive than their utility, so are many other brewing hardware, anything by blichmann for example. a keggle is cheaper than a boilermaker and does exactly the same thing, a top tier stand does the same thing as a home built gravity stand, and so on. in my case i went to a plate chiller because i thought it would simplify my brew day and it does. someone else using an immersion chiller may think they have the simplest system and they do, for them.

Great thread. Thanks for all the info on this topic!