HERMs Temp controlers and recirculating

I've been using my HERMs system for a few years now, and have been fairly happy with it, but the way I have it set up has all ways bugged me.

I have two temp controllers, one that controls the heating element in the heat exchanger, and the other controller runs the pump depending on the mash temp. So normally, heat up the heat exchanger to 165ºF and then I add my grist water to hit a strike temp of 130ºF.Then I set the pump to run till I get to my mash temp around 152-158ºF. It takes about 15min to get up to temp, then the pump switches off. I let it stand till an Iodine test is no longer positive for starch, then i turn up the Heat exchanger to 175 and the pump up to 170 for a mash out.

This has worked well for most beers, but I would really like to do continuous recirculation, especially on higher gravity beers, but keeping the temperature from over shooting is difficult using just the controller on the heat exchanger to manage the mash temp.

Lately I've been thinking that if I just run the pump continuously and used the mash temp controller to manage the heat exchanger heating element, I could achieve this.

Does this make sense? any experience mashing like this?

That's how I do it. I mash in and try to get around 122* then allow the HE to bring the mash to 150* and then let the HE cycle on and off in order to maintain the mash temp. I recirculate through the entire process.

So this weekend I had the chance to try this out finally,

1.Dough in at 125
2.Turn up the temp to 156
hold @ 156 for 20min
3. turn up heat to 165
mash out at 165 for 10min
(All with continuous circulation.)

For this I used the Controller measuring the mash temp to control the temp in the Heat exchanger.

It worked our great. Complete conversion in 15min, and efficiency around 80%,only problem was I had about 1 gallons of 1.048 wort left over, because I I was shooting for 70%.

How long does it take you to get from 125F to 156F in the mash??

With todays highly modified malts, conversion may be complete before you hit 156F, thusly giving you a very fermentable wort and dry beer.

Depends on how long it takes to get there.

I takes just under 15 min to get from 125 to 156, I have a small volume Heat exchanger so my 1500w element can heat it up fairly well, but I usually add some carapils to add some mouth fee.

Thats a good point though, I will have to make sure my FG is where I expect it to be for this batch, because I did not add any Cara to it.