Wort pumps

davidkrau · 05-20-2006, 12:45 PM

I know nothing about wort pumps. I've never even seen one. I'm not Arnold Schwarzennegfer. I'm sure he would have no trouble lifting a keggle filled with 5 or 6 gallons of boiling wort from a burner at ground level to a picnic tabe so he could siphon the wort through a counterflow chiller into a corboy. My question is will a wort pump, pump boiling wort through a counterflow and then into a corboy?Can the rate of flow be controlled? I read that they pump 7 gals a minute. That's way to fast for my purposes. In fact that's faster than a gas station pump.

MrSaLTy · 05-20-2006, 05:54 PM

I'm no expert on pumps but I believe that a good high temp pump like this one at B3 can be throttled down by using a ball valve to control flow.

http://morebeer.com/product.html?product_id=17311

read the text on this item..... it explains better then I can.

KA6GZJ · 05-20-2006, 09:59 PM

I used a heavy duty dimmer switch to control the speed for my rims pump, works great.

jim

smorris · 05-21-2006, 05:34 PM

When using a valve to control flow from a pump, always put it on the exit side of the pump.

davidkrau · 05-21-2006, 08:13 PM

Thnks for the info.

tnlandsailor · 05-22-2006, 02:13 PM

Wort pumps are a great asset to any brewery. Lifting a full kettle of hot wort is never a good idea. Coupling a pump with a counter-flow chiller works great. You may find that when the chill water is a bit warmer (like now), you will have to throttle the wort flow through the pump down a bit to get adequate chilling, either that or pre-chill your water.

Although I am not an electrician, I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that using a dimmer switch to control your flow is not a good idea. Electric motors are a funny lot, they are typically designed to run at a certain voltage or else bad things can happen. I've read more than one account of pump motors going up in a puff of smoke over time by doing this. The mag drive pumps for wort are really designed to be regulated on the outflow side via a valve.

Prosit!