New concept herms/rims idea?

So I have an idea, but I wanted to know if I am crazy or not. Here goes.......

I bought 50 ft of 3/8 copper tube for use in a counter flow chiller.

I bought 50 ft of high temp 5/8 heater hose.

I bought brass fittings to combine the heater hose onto the copper tube like everyone else does.

I am flaring the copper tube to connect directly to my stainless flair fittings. No wort will touch brass.

I built a stainless steel rims tube for a ULWD straight heating element.

Then the crazy thoughts came in.

What if I connect the counter flow chiller directly to my chugger pump output. Always!!!! Then use one of my cheap Chinese tan pump to circulate hot water from the rims tube to the jacket of the counter flow chiller and back to the rims tube forming a loop. Then "T" in a cold water line and at the top of the apparatus have a drain "T" that will overflow when the water is on into my sink drain.

My counter flow chiller would function like a herms coil when mashing and a cfc when done boiling. I have less equipment to clean and fewer valves. Plus, if I elevate my HLT, then I only need the one pump. I also have another tan Chinese pump if I don't elevate it.

What do you think?

Oh, one more thing. The heater hose I selected is good for 250 F so I can run boiling wort or water through my cfc to sterilize it.

I have read where other folks have used a CFC for a HERMs, you could eliminate the RIMs and just run HLT water through the CFC, cycling the wort pump with a temp controller.

The problem is that my heater hose is not food grade. And the HLT water would be touching brass, which some say is bad.

Also, I have the rims tube, so I thought I should use it, but I was worried about one more item to clean. Plus the water from the herms would buffer it a little.

And a detail I did not mention yet......

I have a water chiller from an old film developing apparatus. I wanted to see if I could cool my tap water down further prior to the cfc. I am pretty sure that thing is not food safe. I am not sure I will have the flow rate I need through the machine, but it would be neat to try.

Based on these added details, I reached my design concept. I just wanted to see what everyone else thought.

Thanks for your feed back though. Had I not gone down the path I did, I would have looked further at idea you mentioned.

Ramdough said:

Thanks for your feed back though. Had I not gone down the path I did, I would have looked further at idea you mentioned.

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I think your idea will work fine. With the small quantity of water in the RIMs loop you could use a controller to keep that at maybe mash temp +2 and have pretty precise mash temps...it might even be able to step mash.

is this going to be a closed loop system? because that could be dangerous

No, it will have an open overflow path. When I turn on the cold water, the system overflows to the drain and flushes the cfc with cold water.

Ramdough said:

The problem is that my heater hose is not food grade. And the HLT water would be touching brass, which some say is bad.

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The brass fittings that are made and sold for plumbing these days are lead free... besides it would have only been in contact with water not wort... you likely drink water that comes through copper pipes and brass fittings that are not lead free (copper plumbing in older homes and buildings does not have lead free solder joints) My point being that this is a non issue for multiple reasons.
The real legitimate reason most dont like brass in a brew system is that when it comes in contact with wort it will turn black over time...

It's not the brass that is the big concern, it's the non food grade rubber tubing.

So, one other concept would be to use the rims tube in series before the cfc. It just seamed like more cleaning.

I am trying to reduce the number of valves/steps required between brewing steps.

I appreciate all of the feedback. There is a wealth of knowledge here and I appreciate the help.

Hi Ramdough,
Wondering if you had any success with this. I have been considering a similar system. Would love to know if you got it going.