My Electric HERMS build w/ Brewtroller in charge - Page 2

**pompeiisneaks** · 03-30-2009, 02:13 AM

I boiled some water on the side and reheated my mlt manually and its in range and going but still dropping temps... crappy 40ish temps here in utah today suck!

I'm boiling more water because my HLT is nowhere close to the 180 or so I need to sparge

**pompeiisneaks** · 03-30-2009, 02:15 AM

Its kinda crappy its a 120v and the only one I could find at the local lowes that was 120, its like 1500 w I think... really bad, fine in warm weather, horrible in cold. I have both tuns wrapped in that aluminium refletix stuff, but I just put sweaters on top to keep the heat from escaping the top. We'll see. I'm maintaining 153 now so I may hit my mash, and hope to hit sparge lol.

The Pol · 03-30-2009, 02:18 AM

Your element in the HLT looks small... how many watts?

40ish isnt that cold really... I presume that you do not have lids, insulated lids, and the reflectix is pretty thin? That sucks man...

I know not many people like coolers for HERMS, but I can set my HLT at 155 and hold 152 in my MLT at 30F. I also have enough insulation to ramp up to mashout at 168F at 30F ambient easily with 1500W in the HLT.

I am sure you could get some lids and better insulation to better your heating capability.

**JVD_X** · 03-30-2009, 02:41 AM

Yea... I went electric (with 1500 watts) about two months ago and brewed a few beers where the ambient temp was in the low 30's... but I have a lid.

**pompeiisneaks** · 03-30-2009, 02:19 PM

well I'll have to remember RDWHAHB... I couldn't ever get my sparge temps up to 168 like I wanted, it stayed about 158 ish... post boil... 1.055 OG, and 80% EFF !!! My best ever....

I love my new HERMS

missing link · 03-30-2009, 02:28 PM

My HLT is a bare keg with no lid. My MLT is a cooler. I use 1500 watt elements for both and have no trouble at all reaching or holding temps. I pump my wort and water through a heat exchanger to get better flow over the element. Are you doing anything to help stir or agitate the liquid as your heating it?

My HLT ramps right up to 185 with no issues. For me the trouble I am having is temp loss in the hoses during the sparge. With the flow rate slowed way down, my 185 degree HLT water is down in the 165 - 170 range when it gets to the top of my mash. I'd prefer to use 170 degree water and have it reach the mash at that temp but I don't think that is going to happen.

Linc

jcdillin · 03-30-2009, 02:40 PM

Woohoo, great to hear!

**pompeiisneaks** · 04-06-2009, 04:35 PM

So I wanted to update... I replaced my 1200ish watt element w/ a 1650 and it did great keeping temps, and this was yet again another cold brew day, did a double batch and got 74% eff. But this time I attribute it to having too much water, I had almost 2 gallons extra, and I saved it for yeast wort, but could have boiled it down and woudl have had probably some huge eff instead... I need to dial in my strike and sparge volumes better :P Last single batch had 1 gall extra and I still hit 80%...

jcdillin · 04-06-2009, 04:47 PM

great to hear!

I think the brewtroller developers could use a few beer care packages with all this super 80% eff beer you've been making ;-)

**pompeiisneaks** · 04-06-2009, 06:12 PM

hehehe smuggling it out of Utah is still dangerous until the law is official like May 1st or Jun 1st ;P J/k I need to figure out how to bottle from keg, I saw the thread on a DIY beer wand, I'll have to do that, send you and mattreba some of my first brew, that esb... Its still in primary now, been about 8 days, will move to a secondary next week when I brew a big beer on the brewtroller rig, so I have that primary available.