No hassle MLT + HLT Combo Cooler (Will it Work?)

Basically the concept is;

-I dump 20 gallons of water into a cooler

- Plug it in and wait 30 minutes

- Dump a thirty pound Grain bill in there

-Come back an hour later , throw a couple valves

-Send 15 gallons of of 1.051 SG wort out to my Kettle

Here's a basic drawing that demonstrates what I'm planning. It's basically a 30 -50 gallon cooler divided in half vertically. I'm thinking I could build this for less than $500...



Will it work?

Looks like it should work. It's as if you put a rims in your mash tun. It would be pretty cool to see something like this built. The only suggestion i would make is maybe add some sort of manifold to distribute the water evenly over the grain bed.

I was brainstorming an idea similar to this. I thought of using an Omega CS-2110J-R as a temperature controller with a Fluke 80PK-22 K-Type thermocouple immersion probe. The problem that I ran into is the heating element. What electric heating element can heat 10 to 15 gallons of water with a low power requirement. It seems anything strong enough to heat that amount of water would draw too much current. Any ideas?

scott7116 said:

I was brainstorming an idea similar to this. I thought of using an Omega CS-2110J-R as a temperature controller with a Fluke 80PK-22 K-Type thermocouple immersion probe. The problem that I ran into is the heating element. What electric heating element can heat 10 to 15 gallons of water with a low power requirement. It seems anything strong enough to heat that amount of water would draw too much current. Any ideas?

Click to expand...

I'm thinking a 2000 watt 120Volt hotwater heater element will pull about 16.66 amps, and should do the job effectively, plug it into a receptacle in your house that's fed from a 20 amp breaker and not sharing any load. Or get an element that's 208/220 volt and plug it in the receptacle for your clothes dryer or electric stove.

Just a warning, a 2000W element will take significantly longer than 30 minutes to heat 20 gallons of water to strike temps.

MalFet said:

Just a warning, a 2000W element will take significantly longer than 30 minutes to heat 20 gallons of water to strike temps.

Click to expand...

How long do you think it would take?

Premnasbiaculeatus said:

How long do you think it would take?

Click to expand...

Well, figure like this:

1 BTU will heat 1 pound of water 1 degree F, and you want to take 20 gallons of water (166 pounds) from roughly 70ºF to 150ºF (80ºF). That means 13280 BTUs.

1 kwh = 3414 BTUs, so a 2kw element will put out 6828 BTUs per hour.

Assuming you have no heat loss at all, you'd be looking at around 2 hours or so.

MalFet said:

Well, figure like this:

1 BTU will heat 1 pound of water 1 degree F, and you want to take 20 gallons of water (166 pounds) from roughly 70ºF to 150ºF (80ºF). That means 13280 BTUs.

1 kwh = 3414 BTUs, so a 2kw element will put out 6828 BTUs per hour.

Assuming you have no heat loss at all, you'd be looking at around 2 hours or so.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that math, I'm a bad engineer for not figuring that out myself. I guess I'm going to have to go 240V, and use a 6KW element. Should get me to mashable temps in about 45 minutes.

I built it!!! Needs a little bit of redesign, but over all it works really well, made my first 15 gallon all grain batch with it on Saturday. Check out the video:

http://youtu.be/ZRpLAgMz-lQ

Pretty sweet, let us know what kind of efficiency you are able to get out of that system.

So how is this different than a typical mashtun? I'm obviously missing something here. Are you sparging with wort that has already been pulling from the grains?


Edit: Oh...it's a RIMS system.

Jsslack said:

Pretty sweet, let us know what kind of efficiency you are able to get out of that system.

Click to expand...

My First Run I got 79%

That flotec pump is not food grade as far as I can tell.

Seems like an excellent idea.

It's basically a rims setup, without the tube.

With a rims system, you're going to have better control of the temperature and no hot spots.

With the temp sensor the way you have it, if you don't implement a manifold to evenly distribute the heated wort over the grain bed you're going to be developing hot spots as you'll be measuring the temperature only at the spot where the sensor is located and other areas in the grain bed can get colder or hotter.

If the temp sensor reads too low, the element is going to apply more heat. If that heat wort is sent back to the tun but away from where the temp sensor is, the setup will develop a much hotter spot where the work is coming back in until the temperature spreads over to the temp sensor. It's pretty much analogous to building a rims where the temp sensor is placed before the element in the tube.

Rims takes that possibility away by measuring the wort temp just as it has been heated by the element.

One thing to keep in mind is that if the temp sensor reads low and the element overheats the work to compensate, you'll end up with denatured proteins before your grain bed reaches the appropriate temperature. Once proteins are denatured, there is no process to revert that. You may end up with beer in the end, but you may have problems with obtaining your desired body profile.

mendesm said:

It's basically a rims setup, without the tube.

With a rims system, you're going to have better control of the temperature and no hot spots.

With the temp sensor the way you have it, if you don't implement a manifold to evenly distribute the heated wort over the grain bed you're going to be developing hot spots as you'll be measuring the temperature only at the spot where the sensor is located and other areas in the grain bed can get colder or hotter.

If the temp sensor reads too low, the element is going to apply more heat. If that heat wort is sent back to the tun but away from where the temp sensor is, the setup will develop a much hotter spot where the work is coming back in until the temperature spreads over to the temp sensor. It's pretty much analogous to building a rims where the temp sensor is placed before the element in the tube.

Rims takes that possibility away by measuring the wort temp just as it has been heated by the element.

Click to expand...

You can do this with a direct fire RIMS, too. You just need to keep the temperature probe down in the space under the false bottom.

I should mention that I ultimately mounted the temp sensor in the bottom half, and not in the grain bed as indicated by the preliminary drawing.

This is a no-sparge, electrically heated RIMS system which is similar to the commercially available http://www.speidels-braumeister.de/The-Braumeister:_:21.html. The only real difference is that the braumeister is more like a BIAB system because the wort is also boiled in the same vessel.

The only real downside to a no sparge system is diminished efficiency as the OG goes up.

Bobby_M said:

This is a no-sparge, electrically heated RIMS system which is similar to the commercially available http://www.speidels-braumeister.de/The-Braumeister:_:21.html. The only real difference is that the braumeister is more like a BIAB system because the wort is also boiled in the same vessel.

The only real downside to a no sparge system is diminished efficiency as the OG goes up.

Click to expand...

This is also homemade for a mere $380, and larger than their 50L model, which is over 2000 euros (close $2,7000USD). My False bottom space is comparable in size to the portion above the divider that holds the grain bed, my pump is also moving close to the entire volume of liquid through the grain bed every 3 minutes and the grain is in an almost constantly fluidized state. I think this might be one of the reasons I'm getting much higher efficiency than I've ever had with BIAB.

Just to be sure, I wasn't suggesting someone would be better off buying the Speidel rather than build one. I was just classifying the system type and offering up an example of a commercial unit for those playing along.