Sparge O Matic

Been putting alot of thought into gadgets I haven' seen/read about and wanted to get some input from anyone who might be able to help.

Living in an 80 year old row house in Richmond presents several problems for the average brewer with larger than average dreams. I am making the move to AG slowly but surely and thought of an interesting way to forego the HLT, saving space for other projects and keeping SWMBO happy.

Using my bottling bucket w/spigot and using gravity to pull water down and through the heating element of an old coffee maker. I did several tests of water temp on the unit looks like I can get the H20 to about 158F just running it through normal brew cycle. Thinking of ways to increase/decrease temp and possibly have it adjustable for mash water then up to sparge temp.

This element and a few other pieces would be mounted inside a box and clamp to the side of my mashtun (48qt cube cooler) with a quick disconnect to attach my sparge arm (built into top of mashtun) or just a tube for filling with mash water.

Any input/thoughts? Looking at building the prototype soon.

One thing to think about is for the mash, you'll need to account for the temp drop when you add the water to the grain. Usually I'll heat up the strike water to around 167 to hit a 154 mash temp.

Good point. Talking with one of our Nuclear engineers at work, he suggested a few ways of juicing up the power in order to increase the temp. He is going to play around with some wiring ideas and get back to me next week.

The whole process behind the coffee maker is that the water boils and is forced up a tube and out into the filter. Just need a way to flash the water fast enough and get it up so it retains some of that heat.

BrewSpook said:

Good point. Talking with one of our Nuclear engineers at work, he suggested a few ways of juicing up the power in order to increase the temp. He is going to play around with some wiring ideas and get back to me next week.

The whole process behind the coffee maker is that the water boils and is forced up a tube and out into the filter. Just need a way to flash the water fast enough and get it up so it retains some of that heat.

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I don't want to persuade you away from the coffee-pot idea, but have you looking into hot water elements? You could make RIMS rims chamber (basically a heating inside of a pipe) that you could run the water through. Considering how long it takes to make a pot of coffee, you may find it challenging to heat up enough water hot enough to have a decent mash. The heating element route would cost some more money, but it would heat up water faster.

If you go the coffee pot route, I would see about hacking the output after the heating element, and have it drain directly into your HLT or MLT ,assuming it's not your primary coffee pot.

HomebrewJeff said:

If you go the coffee pot route, I would see about hacking the output after the heating element, and have it drain directly into your HLT or MLT ,assuming it's not your primary coffee pot.

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Absolutely, the whole plan was to strip out the heating element from an old coffee maker and fit it on one side with my bottling bucket (that way I can gauge the amount of water used by the graduated markings on my bucket) the line in is fitted with a check valve to prevent backflow of the boiling water. the line out that usually goes into the filter area for brewing coffee will be fit with some sort of a shower head, or sparge arm that would put the water directly into my MLT.



Of course I will enclose it in a case and make it look cool once I get the electrical adjustments done. Maybe a digital controller to set specified temp ranges. You could probably even skip the bucket and use a hose if you needed to, just set the hose on low flow.

Be careful with those elements, and make sure you keep whatever interlocks they have in place. I almost lit a workbench on fire with one... it gets damn hot without any water in it. Like glowing orange, melt the casing hot.

do you have an attic?
just make you brewer up there
or at least store you stuff there

Have you thought about BIAB (Brew in a Bag)? One pot = less equipment, faster/easier clean up. I've only brewed 2 batches and got 75% and 77% efficiency. I'm doing a 50/60/70 mash very easily with this way.

i use an old 100cup restaurant coffee urn. heats to around 184 or so then keeps it about 175 for as long as i need. so i heat to around 170 then dump into my tun and refill the coffee pot. this works out to about 4g per fill