3 vessel, 2 tier, one pump, which to elevate?

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cyberwollf

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like the title says: 3 vessel, 2 tier, one pump.

elevate the HLT (requires a grant or something to pump wort from MLT to BK)

or

elevate MLT and throttle the pump to fly sparge (seems less popular)

good and bad of both from folk that have these setups?
 
I tend to lean towards that design. The idea and grants and float switches seem overly complicated.

Just want to keep the design open to fly sparging. When i get board in the future, I want to be able to tinker around with fly sparging.

Any reasons you chose to elevate the MLT instead of HLT?
 
Water is easier to pump when you think about cleaning hoses and the pump between mashing and cooling after the boil. A little water left in the hoses is fine, no sense in leaving beer in the hoses after pumping it. Water is also easier to prime the pump with, if you have a March pump or similar.
 
Water is easier to pump when you think about cleaning hoses and the pump between mashing and cooling after the boil. A little water left in the hoses is fine, no sense in leaving beer in the hoses after pumping it. Water is also easier to prime the pump with, if you have a March pump or similar.

^this+ It allows me to gravity feed to the BK, making fly or batch easy. Also, it's more compact than a single tier and more adaptable. If I wanted, I could add another burner to the top and direct fire the MLT. I'm pretty sure it would be difficult if not impossible(correct me if anyone does) to fly sparge with one pump.(KEY POINT)
 
Water is easier to pump when you think about cleaning hoses and the pump between mashing and cooling after the boil. A little water left in the hoses is fine, no sense in leaving beer in the hoses after pumping it. Water is also easier to prime the pump with, if you have a March pump or similar.

Already plan on RIMS during mash and whirlpool after boil. Gotta make the chugger pump worth its worth lol
 
I'm pretty sure it would be difficult if not impossible(correct me if anyone does) to fly sparge with one pump.(KEY POINT)

Your design would be fine for this (thats why im leaning that way). Just throttle your pump back and pump from your HLT up to your MLT and throttle the MLT valve gravity drain back to BK. Of course this requires balanceing 2 valves, but thats pretty common i think
 
cyberwollf said:
Your design would be fine for this (thats why im leaning that way). Just throttle your pump back and pump from your HLT up to your MLT and throttle the MLT valve gravity drain back to BK. Of course this requires balanceing 2 valves, but thats pretty common i think

A buddy of mine has a similar rig and uses the Blichmann Auto-Sparge for Fly.
 
I'm building a new system and placing the HLT and MLT on one level, then the BK on the lower level. Just like the sabco. This way my HERMS equipment is on the same level.
 
I'll be the voice of opposition to make you think. The HLT up high with the MLT at BK level has several advantages.

The vessel never needs to be cleaned or peered into but the MLT does.
MLT up high requires a stool or ladder to dough in and stir.

Negation of previous concerns:
If you throttle the flow rate of the pump properly, there is no difference between gravity feed and pumped MLT draining. In other words, there is no increased chance for grain compaction or stuck runoff unless it's user error. You'd have the same problem if you left the valve wide open during a gravity drain.

The only issue with pumping out of the MLT during a batch sparge is that you can lose prime right at the very end of runoff if you don't slow it down to allow for the last bit of wort to trickle through the grain bed. Of course, this can also happen with gravity draining and it's more an issue of using a siphon tube in the MLT.

Tell me again why you want your MLT up high enough to require a ladder?
 
I agree with the points Bobby makes and that configuration served me well for years. I even built my rig using slotted electrical strut so I could fine tune things easily, but I only made a couple of minor changes over the years....
 
My rig is set up to fly sparge with one pump, and I have the MLT (orange) above the HLT (blue).

To make my system work w/ the one burner, I start my strike water in the kettle, and pump it up to the MLT once the temp is right. As soon as the mash is set, I start heating 5 gallons of sparge water, and when that reaches 175F, I pump the sparge water from the kettle to the HLT. It sounds like a lot of effort, but it really isn't once you learn how to prime the pump.

Bobby is completely right that it is a misconception that a pump should not be used on the output of the MLT for fear of compacting the grain bed. If that happens, it is user error. Throttling the wort on the way out of the pump keeps the lauter tun from compacting by draining too fast - it only drains as fast as you allow it to be ejected from the pump. When I am running my sparge, I do rely on gravity to drain wort down to the kettle, but I also run a 15 minute automated vorlauf through the mash tun as part of my mash-out routine. IOW, the pump is working fine be it pumping from the kettle, the HLT, or the MLT.

There is a big reason I like the MLT on top of the HLT. The reasoning is kind of the opposite of what Bobby said - I need to reach into my MLT to stir and measure temps, but the HLT does not need to have easy access. My system is designed carefully so that the kettle is high enough to gravity drain to a carboy, the MLT is high enough to gravity drain to the kettle, and the HLT is high enough above the pump to prime - but with those constraints in mind, it is as short as possible. My rig is only for 5 gallon batches, but at it's highest point, it is barely at my chest.

1550 lite.jpg
 
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