Why herms, or why rims?

Which one and why?

I made a HERMS because I already had an immersion chiller I could chop into a heat exchange coil, I had three kegs to use, and I like the idea of no direct contact between a heating element and the mash liquid.

The HERMS vs RIMS debate is almost religious ... there's really no right or wrong answer.

Some reasons why I went HERMS:

- No direct contact between the heating element and the mash liquid in an enclosed area I can't see. If (for some reason) the liquid stops moving for whatever reason (pump turned off, clog) you can get almost instant burnt/charred wort.

- Simplified control/possibly lower power usage: I was already going to heat with two 5500W elements (only one on at a time): One in the BK, one in the HLT. Running one of these at a time along with a couple of pumps pretty much fills a 30A line to code in terms of power usage. Adding another 1500W or so watts with a RIMS heater would have pushed me into 40A territory. There may have been way to only allow one of the 3 elements to be on at once (similar to what I do today with the 2 elements) but the process gets messy quick: You'd need to heat up the mash and the sparge water separately and one would be cooling off while the other heated. This leads to:

- Simplified control panel setup and simplified process. A RIMS setup can be thought of as almos a 4-vessel setup instead of 3. It makes it more complex.

These are just off the top of my head. I spent many months looking at the process flow and steps to brew with each and decided that HERMS had everything I wanted without making it overly complex, so HERMS it was.

Kal

Also, a HERMs coil may be used for cooling the wort as well. You can fill the HLT with cold tap water + jug or 2 of ice, and then just trickle flow in/out of the HLT as you pump the wort thru the coil.

With a 50ft coil im able to cool 10gal to 65 in about 20ish mins.

kal said:

- No direct contact between the heating element and the mash liquid in an enclosed area I can't see.

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thats my main reason as well. having water between the heating element and the wort provides a good buffer and overheat protection. however, in the case of the HERMS coil being in the HLT, having too much water severely limits how fast you can change temperatures.

this is why my HERMS is a seperate 2 gallon container with its own heating element.

Either one, cause they work.

I would think a RIMS tube would be a PITA to clean. Tri clover makes it nicer, but a HERMS coil just needs to be flushed out.

jtkratzer said:

I would think a RIMS tube would be a PITA to clean. Tri clover makes it nicer, but a HERMS coil just needs to be flushed out.

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That was one of my concerns as well. I wanted to keep cleaning as easy as possible. I run my sparge water throug the HERMS coil when sparging, so it self cleans itself. Nothing needs to be done to clean the HERMS coil at the end of the brew day.

Kal

I run PBW through the rims tube during kettle boil and then follow that up with an acid wash while I am cleaning teh kettle.

Rims tube sparkles every time.

kal said:

That was one of my concerns as well. I wanted to keep cleaning as easy as possible. I run my sparge water throug the HERMS coil when sparging, so it self cleans itself. Nothing needs to be done to clean the HERMS coil at the end of the brew day.

Kal

Click to expand...

That's an awesome idea!

aquenne said:

Also, a HERMs coil may be used for cooling the wort as well. You can fill the HLT with cold tap water + jug or 2 of ice, and then just trickle flow in/out of the HLT as you pump the wort thru the coil.

With a 50ft coil im able to cool 10gal to 65 in about 20ish mins.

Click to expand...

If you use a plate chiller such as the Therminator, and you filled the HLT with ice water and recirculated that water to the plate chiller (instead of using a garden hose and letting the warm water go down the drain), would the "coldness" last long enough to chill all the wort? This way you don't have to sanitize the HERMS coil, or clean it afterwords.