Sparge arm

I made this last night to help eveny disribute the return from the HERMS. I don't know if it works any better than my old silicone tubing but we'll see.

looks good to me. One question, why do you have the holes pointing up?

I pointed the holes up to reduce preferencial flow. I was thinking the whole manifold would fill with wort and drain evenly out of the hole rather than draining more out of the holes closest to the supply. I'm probably over thinking thing but it seemed to make sence to me. for cleaning I'm going to pump hot oxyclean free through everything like usual at high flow with the lid on.

Hmm.. are the holes large enough as to not clog with the grain that makes it through the FB?

ikonis said:

Hmm.. are the holes large enough as to not clog with the grain that makes it through the FB?

Click to expand...

Thats a great question. When I originally built my sparge arm I used 3/16" holes and wasn't even thinking of clogs until its first use when I learned about the whole hole size topic. I ended up drilling 1/2" holes. My sparge arm sits directly on top of the grain bed and point upwards to mix the wort into the upper layer of the wort. I also use the sparge arm while mashing for better heat distribution. Your design is different than mine (vertical placement of the arm itself) but I think it will work so long as you don't get clogs.

Looks good. I expect that larger holes will be needed. I've got holes around 1/4 inch diameter and still get slight collection of husk, but no clogging.

I figured I would recirc to clear under the false bottom and then attach the sparge arm with the union when running clear. The holes right now are 1/8 inch but I thought I might have to open them up a bit more if the test run gives me trouble. djsethall did you find that yours gave you more even heating?

Yesssiree bob. Also with the 1/2" holes, when I sparge, there is a stratification layer between the wort and the sparge water which is kinda cool to watch. As far as the temp goes, you can put a thermometer anywhere in the tun and it always reads the same.

That's what I was hoping to hear.