First Run of the eHERMS - Questions!

OK... so my panel is done, though the mount is still 'mostly' done.
The kettles are done... I'm waiting on USPS to take their sweet time getting me a few final hoses from Bobby so I can actually recirculate water at the same time as running through the HERMS... but I had some yeast that I made a starter for, and 2 empty kegs, and threw my hands in the air and brewed.

First issue - my PIDs are WAY overshooting. I haven't run the auto-learn cycle yet, but I had my mash temperature set for 152 and it's at 163 right now, though the PID finally decided to stop firing. Lesson learned - run the auto-learn cycle.

Second issue - I'm having trouble with the recirculation through the HEX. I was running full bore for a while, but that caused my bazooka tube to jam up. Some action with the mash paddle cleared it up. But now I find myself sucking air into the intake line, which makes no sense. There are no leaks that I can see anywhere, but I'm getting bubbles in the line. A few small ones are no big deal, but I'm also getting some fairly large ones, so that's concerning. I'm not running a particularly thick mash...

10# Marris Otter
1.5# White What Malt
1# Crystal 60
1# Flaked Red Wheat
8oz Crystal 120
8oz Caravienne
1#6oz roasted pecans

5.15gal H2O...

Is the Bazooka tube a POS and I need a false bottom, or did I do something wrong, or could I have milled the grains too fine?

I'm sure I'll have other issues as the day goes on...
-Kevin

For continuous recirculation, you really should use a FB, and not a bazooka tube.

Also, not all PIDs will be properly tuned after the auto tune cycle(s) necessarily. I had to adjust some of the constants on my HLT PID slightly after the auto tune to get it where I wanted it. Do a few cycles with water only and pay attention to the on/off activity and adjust as needed. It helps to read the manual and fully understand the constants and what their impacts are on the process before manually adjusting.

Hope this helps

You news a better filtering mech. I used a copper manifold with a ton of slits and it worked great.

If you set your pids to kal suggest on his site they will be real close.

I'm using two SWA-2451s, which Kal doesn't use.... I will set my SYL-2352 to his settings, though I just got some weird mode now where it says A100 / A17 / A29 / A whatever number in the green field. Doesn't display my set temp anymore.

Guess I need to get real real in touch with that manual... I got excited.

BadNewsBrewery said:

I'm using two SWA-2451s, which Kal doesn't use.... I will set my SYL-2352 to his settings, though I just got some weird mode now where it says A100 / A17 / A29 / A whatever number in the green field. Doesn't display my set temp anymore.

Guess I need to get real real in touch with that manual... I got excited.

Click to expand...

Definitely become familiar with the PIDs and their operation before using them! The A-numbers might be error codes possibly due to lack of temperature input or faulty signal, but I'm not sure since I have a different model. Check your manual!

Pretty sure the A code was telling me what % the system was running at in auto during each cycle. Clearly I got ahead of myself and got too excited. If this batch turns out it'll be a miracle but now I know where I need to focus my attention!

My other issue was with the 'hop quesadilla' I built. It clogged right off the bat, and I only had 2oz of pellet hops in there. This of course meant I couldn't use my pump and I kept losing syphon and I only ended up getting about 4 gallons out of the keggle. I built myself a hop spyder to use, but it was too short to reach down into the kettle (another thing I should have checked). So it looks like when I order my Jaybird FB for the mash tun, I should pick up another for the BK... or pick up one of those sexy stainless hop tubes...

All in all, a total disaster of a brew, but it was bubbling away like a happy carboy this morning.

+1 on using a false botom for a recirculating mash. I brewed with my brother last month and we swapped out his copper manifold with a 10" Perforated stainless steel false bottom ($24 from more beer) and it resolved a lot of his mash temperature variation he was experiencing and made the brewday really smooth.

Also when starting your recirculation only open the valve part way when starting the pump. when it is full bore in can create a local vacuum in the grain bed, causing it it collaps around your outlet port and giving you a stuck mash. A fals bottom and feathering open the outlet valve will help to get an even compaction of the grain bed an improve you recirculation and temperature variations in the mash.

Where is the sensor for your mash PID located? in the mash or on the return port?

For your boil kettle problem, I've tried lots of different methods(false botoms, ss filters, etc) the best I have come up with is set up a side pick up tube, and do a whirlpool step at flame out and wait 5-20 min for a good trub cone to form before emptying your kettle.

Bsquared said:

Where is the sensor for your mash PID located? in the mash or on the return port?

Click to expand...

I use two sensors, set up the same way Kal did his. One is in a Tee in the outlet from the MLT, and it's simply there for reference (the PID doesn't have an associated SSR or element). The other is in a Tee in the outlet from the HLT, which will be constantly recirculated while mashing to make sure I don't get any isloated hot / cold spots. That RTD is the one that goes to the PID with the SSR that controls the element in the HLT (acronym soup?). Because I didn't have all the fittings I needed to run both pumps, I swapped the probe connections and used the output from the MLT to fire the element in the HLT.

Bsquared said:

For your boil kettle problem, I've tried lots of different methods(false botoms, ss filters, etc) the best I have come up with is set up a side pick up tube, and do a whirlpool step at flame out and wait 5-20 min for a good trub cone to form before emptying your kettle.

Click to expand...

What do you use to whirlpool? Just spin it all around with a spoon? I've got my return tube in the BK set up to cause the return to spiral, not sure if it would put out enough force to actually whirlpool though. I'm wondering if the combination of a Hop Spider and a false bottom would be enough to keep most of the hop gunk out of the pickup tube. Part of the reason I don't want to go the whirlpool route is that I plan to recirculate my chilled wort back into the BK, so that I basically do the opposite of a RIMS design, and cool the whole volume to get cold-break inside the kettle, not inside the fermenter. Is that just a worthless plan?

-Kevin

Cool, sounds like you have the temp probes set up right.

Yes the way I do a whirlpool is buy using a big spoon to get a good whirlpool going then let the kettle settle and the cone to form.

What kind of chiller are you using?

For what you want to do you might want to consider setting up a whirlpool immersion chiller, where you recirculate the wort in the kettle past an immersion chiller and cool your wort down in the kettle before transferring. for this I would still recommend an open side pick up (don't try picking up from the center because thats where the trub wants to be) . you can recirculate the wort (trub and all) until you reach your desired temp then turn off the pump and let the cooled wort settle and the trub cone to form before transferring to your fermenter.

Alternatively you could consider using an inline filter, like this one
http://www.brewershardware.com/Trub-Filter/
or
http://www.glaciertanks.com/TriClamp_Strainers-TriClamp_1_1_2_Sanitary_Strainer_SS316L_90_Inlet.html

or even add a hop back
http://conical-fermenter.com/products/hop-backs/

I used to use an IC, but it was always a pain in the ass. I use a plate chiller now, or at least will when I get this all to work right. What amount of wort I did get to pass through it chilled off amazingly fast.

Not too interested in an in-line filter, seems like it's just begging to get gunked up, and I don't care about small stuff getting through as it'll settle in the primary. And I'm not a hop-head, so a hop back is just a poor idea in my book.

If you are not limited by water, and your input water is cool enough you should be able to get your wort cooled in one pass with a plate and eliminate the need to recirculate.

The inline filter is will not get clogged up. check out Derin's testing of it. http://www.brewershardware.com/FILTER1-Testing.html
It might be a bit overkill for your application though.

Personally I would recommend to you to try to get your cooling system worked out so you can cool to pitching temps in one pass, and do a whirlpool in the kettle before transferring.You can utilise your old IC in a bucket of ice water as a pre chiller to get you cooling water as cool as posable. And be sure that your cooling water if flowing at the same rate as your hose if the valve is fully open, if you are using a pump for your cooling water (I think thats about 10 GPM).

If you are not using a lot of hops in your beer then you should not have any problem to set up your pickup tube to the side of where the trub cone will form,and you will have minimal transfer in to your fermenter.

I forgot how big Derrin's filter is - I was thinking one of the smaller ones folks use for final filter between a fermenter and keg.

The only reason I considered recirculating the wort is to try and keep the cold break proteins in the BK and out of the fermenter. It sounds like that's probably more trouble than it's worth, honestly. I've got some old hops sitting around with no mission, so I think I'll make up some hop-tea using a few different techniques and see which is the least amount of headache.

I had plate chiller clogs a couple times at the start too and tried all sorts of things. In the end I did as Bsquared said spoon whirlpool and have my kettle dip tube pointed way to the outside edge. I also bought one of the filters from brewers hardware which works really great. This setup is working great and there is hardly any sediment in my chiller when I clean it out. I found I don't even necessarily need to whirlpool but it can't hurt keeping as much gunk from going downstream as possible.

The other thing I found was to turn the pump waaay down when you get to the bottom of the kettle or the dip tube, even if it's pointed to the side will just suck away the nice cone you made!

That filter is a beast, I had to mod my table a bit to get it in a usable spot. I knew I saved that worn out ring for something.

Well, after reading some of the PID information and getting everything set up, it does a great job of holding temperatures. I'm seeing about a 5* delta between the HLT and the MLT temps, though I only ran my test for about 15 minutes so maybe over an hour it'll get closer to steady. Not a big deal though, as long as I know what that difference is.

Also got my False Bottom from NorCal and got that situated, so no more stuck mashes.

Refined the hop spider so it actually reaches the wort, so that should keep most of the pellet hop gunk down. I also plan to do some testing with the whirlpool option to keep the hops out of the plate chiller.

All in all - batch two should be better than batch one. Can't wait for the weekend!