My New 10g eHERMS System

My new system had it's second run this weekend. Things went very well. I thought I would post a few pics of my set-up and hope that others can draw some ideas from it.
The basics of the Nieuw Sassenheim Brewery are as follows:
-Stainless Steel Prep Table for base, casters added for movement
-Cooler as Mash Tun, adjustable height sparge arm, and copper manifold at the bottom, the bulkhead is a copper fitting, press fit into the cooler with silicone hose
-50ft Copper Coil in HLT as HEX run through a March pump
-HLT is heated with two 1500W Elements. Each element is on it's own circuit from the house, allowing me to run this set-up on standard 120V, eventually I will rig the boil kettle with 220V
-PID controls both elements
-Toggle Switches to control, elements, and pump, as well as stirrer if I decide it is necessary in the future. So far temps have been held within a degree with no stirrer
-Whole House Filter for incoming cold water
-No Quick Connects utilized. The silicone hose naturally slips over all the fittings in my brewery, I add a hose clamp on the HEX inlet and outlet, but everything else slips over a 1/2" hose barb. Just pinch it off and you can keep the wort/water in the line and transfer to the next barb. I highly recommend this approach, the silicone lines are the one of the best improvements I've made in a long time
-Hand Made Mash Paddle, 3x larger than necessary...dream BIG!

Cheers

nice setup.... I like the stainless table & split top MLT. Do you manually stir the HLT?

XXguy said:

nice setup.... I like the stainless table & split top MLT. Do you manually stir the HLT?

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I think I stirred the HLT 3 times the entire brew day. I think the mass of the 50' of copper helps to keep things pretty even. I thought I was going to use a stirrer, but in my two runs with the syste, I haven't seen a need for one yet.

Generally the need to stir would be greatest when you are heating your strike water. All of the heat goes up and the bottom of the kettle stays cold a lot longer. Stirring should help speed up the time it takes to heat things up.