Single Tier RIMS with only two pots

I am starting to think that I can build a single tier, direct fired, RIMS using only two keggles. Maybe I am just behind the times and these are common but I don't see them and can't find them on this site. I would love to hear from anyone that has one or can tell me the errors of my thinking. I will gas fire but I am sure you could electric heat the same way. Here are my thoughts, what am I forgetting??? Use one keggle as the Mash Tun and the second as the Boil Kettle. Heat inital H20 in the MT and heat additional sparge H20 in the BK. Recycle through the MT applying direct heat to it durring the mash. Add sparge from the BK when ready and then return the whole batch to the BK for the boil. After the boil is finished recycle through a plate chiller back into the BK until temp is good and then run off into a fermenter. I would need only one March pump. I would have to move hoses so I would use quick connects and at this point do not see me ever automating. The foot print would obviously be 1/3 smaller and the cost would be substantially less. Again please let me know if you have one of these, what I have missed or any other ideas that you have.

There are plenty of advocates and users of 2-vessel systems but they do have some downsides. The first thing is that there really is no sparging in a system like this. Once the wort/water becomes homogeneous across the two vessels, it is by definition "no sparge". The only thing this lets you do that a single vessel can't do is to maintain a thicker mash and make a larger batch than would fit in a single vessel of the same size.

If you read up on "no sparge", basically anything that can be said there applies. Lowered efficiency is one of the considerations, especially when it comes to big beers.

Duh!!! I guess I missed that part about not mixing the sparge with the mash before it is darined to the BK So if I were to get a third Keggle and not heat it, I could drain hot sparge H20 into it from the BK and then from it into the MT. I would have a three pot system and would have a bigger footprint but I wouldn't need to have a heat source for that third pot, just heat a little above final sparge temp befor sparging into MT while draining into the BK. Or is it worth it, just get the third heat source and make it the HLT??? Any other thoughts?

The third vessel would by definition be the HLT. I have had good results with no-sparge brewing. It really does reduce the hassle, and if you have your system dialed in, then you can still get good efficiencies (>70%). There is no reason a two-vessel system won't work, but if you are fly-sparging with three vessels, you will either need a two tier, or a pump. With single tier, you will need two pumps. These are all considerations you will have to make based on the space and resources you have. I have a two tiered system, and when the bucket heater I was using to heat the HLT fried, then I moved to no-sparge until I can get a water heater element installed in the HLT.

I don't understand why I would need two pumps. I can't see a time when I would need to move or circulate water in two places at the same time. Why wouldn't one pump and quick disconnects work? What am I missing?

badhabit said:

I don't understand why I would need two pumps. I can't see a time when I would need to move or circulate water in two places at the same time. Why wouldn't one pump and quick disconnects work? What am I missing?

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For fly sparging you would need two pumps because you would be pumping from the HLT to the MLT and from the MLT to the BK at the same time.
Batch sparging would work with one pump and quick disconnects.

If you're batch sparging you only need one pump. Move from MT to BK and then xfer sparge water from HLT to MT. If you're fly sparging, moving sparge water into the MT while simultaneously moving the same amount of liquid from the MT to the BK you would need 2 pumps on a single tier.

When considering "no sparge", if the system has the ability to recirculate and heat at the same time, wouldn't ramping the wort up to sparge temp and continuing to recirculating for the sparge period essentially be a batch sparge?

Got it, I'm a batch sparge guy so hadn't thought about fly. Back again the question from before of not heating the third tank, just using it to hold hot H20 for the sparge.

badhabit said:

Got it, I'm a batch sparge guy so hadn't thought about fly. Back again the question from before of not heating the third tank, just using it to hold hot H20 for the sparge.

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I'm still waiting for my 10g kettle but I do have my MLT and HLT completed, so I can't speak from experience yet. Both are HD coolers with ball valves installed. The MLT has the braided SS mod and the HLT does not. My plan is to have the 2nd cooler hold the sparge water till ready.

I guess it's your preference more than anything. It'll probably be less work in the long run to have the 3rd burner but more expense up front.
I'ma cheap SOB so I'm good with moving H2O around if it saves me a some $.

badhabit said:

Got it, I'm a batch sparge guy so hadn't thought about fly. Back again the question from before of not heating the third tank, just using it to hold hot H20 for the sparge.

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I used to work at a brewery and we would fill an HLT every day before going home just to have a supply of hot water when we came back the next day. It was an insulated elevated tank, and we would fill it from the kettle with boiling water. It would be just the right temp when we came back to start the next brew. I don't think it had the capacity to heat itself, but the purpose was the same.

JonesCreek said:

When considering "no sparge", if the system has the ability to recirculate and heat at the same time, wouldn't ramping the wort up to sparge temp and continuing to recirculating for the sparge period essentially be a batch sparge?

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The problem with doing that is that the wort is washing off and adding at the same time. The old dirty rinse water story is that once the water is full of soap it won't rinse any more soap off the dishes.

I've got a one vessel* RIMS system that works quite well for me. I single batch sparge and hit 73-75% efficiency pretty consistently for medium gravity beers. (* I temporarily hold my runnings in my stainless fermentor, so I guess this is technically a one vessel + fermentor system. But, I figure that's what everyone means when they talk about how many vessels they use anyway.)

It's a simple process, and I'm pretty pleased with it. It started as a way to brew in my small apartment, but I'll probably keep it even if I end up moving to a thousand acre ranch in Kansas.

Pour strike water into pot and heat to temp. Add grain and stir. Recirculate for length of mash, maintaining temperatures with RIMS controller. Once mash is complete, mashout to 168. Drain to fermentor.

For my sparge, I just use cold tap water. Stir, recirculate a bit to make sure everything is mixed up properly, and then drain to fermentor. Sometimes I'll heat the sparge water up to 168º while it recirculates, but I've never really noticed any difference from doing so.

Then, dump the grains, kettle gets a quick rinse, and the runnings get pumped back in to the kettle. Ready to go!

I figure I'd save about 15-20 minutes with a HLT, but I don't really mind. Beats brewing in a cold garage as far as I'm concerned.

badhabit said:

Got it, I'm a batch sparge guy so hadn't thought about fly. Back again the question from before of not heating the third tank, just using it to hold hot H20 for the sparge.

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Sounds like you're thinking in the direction of an unheated third vessel.

I use a 10-gallon cooler as my third vessel. I run the mash off into the cooler and set it aside (keeps the temp nicely); I run the sparge off into the kettle, then add the mash runnings to the kettle and start the boil.

That system works fine as-is, but eventually I added a false bottom and ball valve to the cooler. That gives me a few different configuration options, and it lets me move all the liquids with just one pump.

badhabit said:

The problem with doing that is that the wort is washing off and adding at the same time. The old dirty rinse water story is that once the water is full of soap it won't rinse any more soap off the dishes.

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Definitely not trying to argue, just understand and help plan out my brewery as well.

If you are recirculating and sparging at the same time with the full amount of boil volume, wouldn't that be the same as "mash, drain, batch sparge"?

I agree that a certain volume of water can only extract and hold a certain amount of sugars. But if the total volume is calculated and used, what is the difference between two separate inductions of water vs one? Especially when recirculating, I would think (maybe my biggest problem!) that this would even out the efficiencies.

Todd.

JonesCreek said:

Definitely not trying to argue, just understand and help plan out my brewery as well.

If you are recirculating and sparging at the same time with the full amount of boil volume, wouldn't that be the same as "mash, drain, batch sparge"?

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That would seem to be the case, but it's not. Grains soaked in ten gallons of water and then drained recover fewer of the sugars than do grains soaked in five gallons, drained, then soaked in another five gallons and drained again. The smaller increments leave less behind. I'll see if I can pull up a graph illustrating this principle.

JonesCreek said:

I agree that a certain volume of water can only extract and hold a certain amount of sugars.

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This might be the source of some confusion. Even at room temperature, water can absorb a much, much larger amount of sugar than we ever ask it to.

Thanks, the information helps a lot. I have another question that is related, or at least related to the build.
I am looking everywhere for some half barrel kegs to convert with no luck. The plan at this point is to find the kegs and convert them. The question is to weld or go weldless? I don't have a TIG so I would have to get someone to help if I weld fittings for sight glass temp gage and valves. What are your thoughts and "If I had to do it over again..."
I also saw recently a sculpture with old non straight sided kegs on it. Is there any problem using the old non straight side style if I can only get those?

badhabit said:

Thanks, the information helps a lot. I have another question that is related, or at least related to the build.
I am looking everywhere for some half barrel kegs to convert with no luck. The plan at this point is to find the kegs and convert them. The question is to weld or go weldless? I don't have a TIG so I would have to get someone to help if I weld fittings for sight glass temp gage and valves. What are your thoughts and "If I had to do it over again..."
I also saw recently a sculpture with old non straight sided kegs on it. Is there any problem using the old non straight side style if I can only get those?

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Two words: silver solder.

I've got 3 kegs and they all have weldless fittings. They don't leak if you get them tightened right but I can definitely see the benefit in just screwing a ball valve in w/out worrying about silicone o-rings and overtightening.

JonesCreek said:

When considering "no sparge", if the system has the ability to recirculate and heat at the same time, wouldn't ramping the wort up to sparge temp and continuing to recirculating for the sparge period essentially be a batch sparge?

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No, the issue is that of nuanced terminology. If a closed system containing grist and liquor (wort + water) is allowed to completely homogenize (all liquid is exactly the same gravity or concentration of sugar) prior to running off to the boil kettle, then it is a no sparge.

Batch sparging runs off high gravity liquor, then new water is added to the damp grain, stirred and then that homogenized wort is drained off (repeat if necessary).

Fly sparging is such that the wort being run off is of significantly higher gravity than the liquid being added on top. If you were to sample the gravity of the liquid in the tun during a fly sparge, there should be a perfect gradient of sugar going from high at the bottom to zero at the top.

If you were to runoff a concentrated mash wort into a 3rd holding vessel before recirculating a new sparge addition into the mash, I'd call that a three vessel batch sparge system where one of the three vessels is temporary (since it's not a built in part of the rig). The only real reason to bother with the recirculation bit is if you would like to apply direct heat to make temp changes or to maintain the temps.

Where does this fit in with a BIAB setup setup then? Efficiency wise?

I'd expect a BIAB to yield a slightly higher efficiency (5% or so) than a no sparge two vessel system simply due to the ability to run a finer grist and how much more wort is forced out of the grain when removing the bag.

I hope your explanations are benefiting more than just me as I've "jacked" this thread. Sorry.

I'm just not grasping the concept that not sparging is that much less effective. Possibly need to mash a little longer? But if your mash and sparge normally takes 60/30 mins (90 total), why wouldn't a no sparge for 90 or even 120 mins, ramping up the temp to 170 for the last 30 be equivalent?

Todd.

Because the point of sparging isn't to get more conversion, it's to rinse the grains of any more sugar. Quick hands-on example: next time you are doing a no-sparge brew, just dunk your grains in a pot of water and you'll see/taste it.

That said, there's lots of members on her with two-vessel systems that claim upper 70s efficiency. Good 'nuff for me. I'm building a constant recirc Brutus 20 system... hope it works ;p

JonesCreek said:

I hope your explanations are benefiting more than just me as I've "jacked" this thread. Sorry.

I'm just not grasping the concept that not sparging is that much less effective. Possibly need to mash a little longer? But if your mash and sparge normally takes 60/30 mins (90 total), why wouldn't a no sparge for 90 or even 120 mins, ramping up the temp to 170 for the last 30 be equivalent?

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I'm contemplating going in a similar direction (no-sparge 2 vessel with a RIMS tube for recirc) and basically what I've gathered is that you're going to reach a saturation level where the sugar content of the wort equals that of the grain.

So what you're missing in no-sparge is the rinsing action of clean water. Granted, that rinsing action produces increasingly diluted wort so it's possible you could achieve sufficient initial volume and preboil gravity by bumping up the grain bill but you're leaving a fair amount for sugars in the mash tun too.

As I do an equipment upgrade, I'll figure out if it works for me or not. If not, I just go back to a three vessel, not that difficult to switch back.

JonesCreek said:

I hope your explanations are benefiting more than just me as I've "jacked" this thread. Sorry.

I'm just not grasping the concept that not sparging is that much less effective. Possibly need to mash a little longer? But if your mash and sparge normally takes 60/30 mins (90 total), why wouldn't a no sparge for 90 or even 120 mins, ramping up the temp to 170 for the last 30 be equivalent?

Todd.

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I think others have explained it but a no sparge leaves sugar behind in the volume of wort that is absorbed by the grain. In bigger beers, obviously this sugar loss is more significant. Here's some simple math and if you follow along, it will be quite clear.

10lbs of grain that has a sugar potential of 36 points per pound per gallon.
10 x 36 = 360 points.

Mashed in with 7 gallons of strike water (this is where the "per gallon" comes in). 360 points diluted by 7 gallons means this mash when fully converted should be at 1.045 (that's 360/7).

Since a typical grain bed will hold on to .1 to .125 gallons per pound, we can figure out either how much sugar is available for draining or how much is left behind.

1.051 or 51 points x (10lbs of grain x .125 gallons) = 63.75 gravity units/points left in the grain after draining off your 5.75 gallons. This would be 82% efficiency assuming 100% conversion and zero deadspace which is not bad for no sparge, but it's also a moderate gravity beer.


Do the same exercise with 16 pounds of grain (approximately 1.080 OG IIPA for example).

16 x 36ppg= 576 PPG. Knowing we leave 16x.125 (2 gallons) behind, we'll need to strike with 7.75 gallons if we want the same 5.75 gallons preboil.

576 points diluted to 7.75g = mash gravity of 1.074. 2 gallons left behind at 74points means 148 points lost. 74% theoretical efficiency. Again, this assumes 100% conversion and no dead space in the tun.

All that figuring can easily be summarized by braukaiser.com in this handy chart (note the lower gravity as there is some dead space assumed).

Do you think constant recirculation has any benefit to efficiency, Bobby? I've been wondering why some like JKarp can manage pretty respectable efficiency when most people on 2-pot setups do not.

Honestly, the only benefit to constant recirculation is heat distribution and wort clarity.

I recently built a no sparge 2 vessel HERMS rig with a single pump. I constantly recirculate during the mash and have been consistently hitting efficiency from 73-77% on beers up to 1.070. Our single tier 3 vessel rig gets an efficiency of 80-85%. For an average 5 gallon batch of beer with an OG of 1.050 this equates to about an extra pound of grain. Since we buy our grain in bulk with 2 row at approx. 60 cents a pound ($29.95 for a 50# bag) the difference in cost per batch is negligible. Plus if you factor in the cost to add another vessel, fittings, burner, etc...it would take several hundred 5 gallon batches to even break even. burn Plus I am able to shave about 30 minutes off an average brew day. But if you are only interested in high gravity beers this might not be the rig for you.

kmat - so do you plan for the slight in-efficiencies of the two vessel system and increase grain levels accordingly? At a percentage for each grain, or typically just the base grain?

Todd.

Bobby M I am interested in your thoughts about welded vs no weld fittings on a keggle. In plain english, which is the best way to go over time.

If you can weld / know someone that can, there's no reason to go weldless. Not that there's anything wrong with weldless... they're just not as ideal. Welded will never, ever leak.

Wish I had a welder =\

SmokingDog said:

kmat - so do you plan for the slight in-efficiencies of the two vessel system and increase grain levels accordingly? At a percentage for each grain, or typically just the base grain?

Todd.

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Brewers debate this point, but I personally just tweak base malts in my system.

badhabit said:

Bobby M I am interested in your thoughts about welded vs no weld fittings on a keggle. In plain english, which is the best way to go over time.

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I'd say the best way to decide is to try to find a welder and get some quotes to weld all the bulkheads you're interested in. If it's going to cost you more than $100, I'd say go weldless.

If you know someone who will do it as a favor or for a six pack (this is homebrewer's urban myth for all intents and purposes) then It's a no brainer to have it welded.

All the weldless parts are a small premium price over the weldable versions.

jkarp said:

Brewers debate this point, but I personally just tweak base malts in my system.

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I agree with jkarp. I usually just lower the efficiency to 70% when planning my brews in Beersmith and it does the math for me.

Bobby_M said:

I'd say the best way to decide is to try to find a welder and get some quotes to weld all the bulkheads you're interested in. If it's going to cost you more than $100, I'd say go weldless.

If you know someone who will do it as a favor or for a six pack (this is homebrewer's urban myth for all intents and purposes) then It's a no brainer to have it welded.

All the weldless parts are a small premium price over the weldable versions.

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Thanks, I have no TIG set up so I will see what I can get for a price estimate.

Revisiting the un-heated HLT concept: I use a 10 gallon military surplus coffee thermos to hold my sparge water (any decent cooler would work). I start the brew day heating sparge water in the BK to about 190 degrees. I use this time to weigh and mill grains, and do any other setup. I pump the hot water over to the thermos, slowly dilute with tap water until I get the temp to 170, then seal it closed. It will hold the temp while I heat strike water, conduct the mash, and recirculate. The sparge water is drained by gravity into the MLT from which the runnings are pumped up into the boil kettle.

It's not quite one tier, but I only use one pump and one burner. I will certainly expand later with more hardware, a fancy stand, etc. ,but for now it serves me well. It sounds like the only equipment you need (besides what you already plan on using) is an extra cooler (+ valve) that can also still be used as a cooler when you aren't brewing beer. Better yet, you can fill it with ice-water at the end of the brew day for wort chilling, if you're so inclined.