blichmann top tier config question

Setting up top tier, i have 2 kettles and burners (boil kettle and hlt) and a cooler and shelf for mlt. No interest for now in direct fire mlt. Have it set up now as 3 tier. Its too tall for garage brewing.

So what i was looking to do is a two tier with hlt and boil kettle on lower tier and mlt on higher tier. So basically would pump hlt water up to mlt and gravity feed drom hlt to boil kettle. Any potential issues im not seeing with this set up?

swackattack said:

Setting up top tier, i have 2 kettles and burners (boil kettle and hlt) and a cooler and shelf for mlt. No interest for now in direct fire mlt. Have it set up now as 3 tier. Its too tall for garage brewing.

So what i was looking to do is a two tier with hlt and boil kettle on lower tier and mlt on higher tier. So basically would pump hlt water up to mlt and gravity feed drom hlt to boil kettle. Any potential issues im not seeing with this set up?

Click to expand...

I have mine set up as two tier. I have the boil kettle and MLT as the lower level and HLT above. I currently have two coolers for HLT and MLT, so I heat water in the boil kettle and pump it up to the HLT. During sparge, I pump out of the MLT, and let sparge water drain into MLT from the HLT via gravity. Makes sense to have the MLT lower as typically you want to see what is going on here. Nothing to see in the HLT.

Didn't consider that yet...any issues creating a stuck sparge with pumping out?

Markd27 said:

Makes sense to have the MLT lower as typically you want to see what is going on here. Nothing to see in the HLT.

Click to expand...

I don't see much difference in the setups if you batch sparge. There is a bigger difference if you fly sparge, in which case I would have the HLT high and the MLT lower. Having said this, I agree with the point made above. There is nothing to see in the HLT other than what your water level is.

Mark

When I was setting ours up, I was initially trying to emulate the MoreBeer tippy that has the mash tun directly above the hot liquor tank. I figured that layout was more compact and you'd possibly get some minor convection heat from the HLT to the MT above. After laying it out, I realized that it was not more "compact" going with that configuration since it didn't decrease the footprint of the stand at all, however it did make it much more "cramped" to work with by insisting the two burners be mounted above each other.

I now have the kettle at the lowest point, the MT just barely above it on the opposite side and my HLT on the back of the stand raised so it can gravity drain into the MT.

i have my boil kettle at the lowest point, the MLT just above it on the opposite side and the HLT higher up on the back side.