Brewer_Steve
Well-Known Member
I have an idea for on-demand sparge water which I'd like to bounce off you guys before I spend too much effort playing around.
I currently have a very simple electric setup. It's only 2-vessels. I have a MLT and a kettle. The kettle doubles as a HLT and BK. I collect wort from the MLT in buckets, and after the sparge I pour it into my kettle and boil it.
I'm about to add a HLT of some sort, and I'd like to get some kind of HERMS coil to better control mash temps. I was thinking of using an old cornie keg with a 4500W element and a copper coil inside.
Brew day would go like this:
Use kettle to heat strike water.
pump water to MLT and dough in.
Recirculate mash through Cornie-HERMS coil
Start lauter and collect runnings in the kettle.
Run tap water through the Cornie-HERMS to raise the temp to sparge temps.
Question: Is 4500W running full blast enough to get water close to sparge temps at a reasonable rate? Obviously this depends on the tap water temp and the flow rate and how well the heat exchanger works. I'm not sure if it's possible to get decent results by doing this. Any ideas if this will work or not? Anyone tried something like this?
I currently have a very simple electric setup. It's only 2-vessels. I have a MLT and a kettle. The kettle doubles as a HLT and BK. I collect wort from the MLT in buckets, and after the sparge I pour it into my kettle and boil it.
I'm about to add a HLT of some sort, and I'd like to get some kind of HERMS coil to better control mash temps. I was thinking of using an old cornie keg with a 4500W element and a copper coil inside.
Brew day would go like this:
Use kettle to heat strike water.
pump water to MLT and dough in.
Recirculate mash through Cornie-HERMS coil
Start lauter and collect runnings in the kettle.
Run tap water through the Cornie-HERMS to raise the temp to sparge temps.
Question: Is 4500W running full blast enough to get water close to sparge temps at a reasonable rate? Obviously this depends on the tap water temp and the flow rate and how well the heat exchanger works. I'm not sure if it's possible to get decent results by doing this. Any ideas if this will work or not? Anyone tried something like this?