My HERMS Build - ready for criticism

Walker your system control panel is nearly identical to mine. One side pwm for kettle the other pid for hlt switches at the bottom. I have not yet installed my pid as I am still batch sparging using my kettle to heat water. I am using a dual pole relay for main power on/off as well.

Nice Job I know from all your posts I have read that you have been working hard on this.

gunner65 said:

Walker your system control panel is nearly identical to mine. One side pwm for kettle the other pid for hlt switches at the bottom. I have not yet installed my pid as I am still batch sparging using my kettle to heat water. I am using a dual pole relay for main power on/off as well.

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The HLT actually has no heat source because I batch sparge, too. The BK serves as the HEX for the recirculation part. The HLT only needs to hold hot water for a few minutes while I take my first runnings. I'm going to pump the hot water from the BK to HLT to empty out the bK and then pump runnings to BK, and then pump HLT to MLT for batch sparge.

The plan was to eventually add the electronics to make the HLT have a heat source so that the BK didn't have to serve double duty.

After building the manifold, I walked through a session in my head to go over which valves and switches need to be messed with at various times and I realized that even if the HLT was dedicated and electric, I would never need to run the element in the BK and the HLT at the same time. The only thing I would be gaining by putting an element in the HLT and the electronics into the box would be eliminating one pumping step and mot having to move my coil out of the BK before taking 1st runnings.

So, the future plans now are to move the false bottom from my cooler MLT into the non-electric keggle and make that keggle my MLT. The cooler would then be the HLT that only gets a few minutes of use during a brew.

The other thing this offers me is the option building a RIMs tube if I want at a later time and adding the electronics to the box for that as the second electric heat source.

The system would then be able to do all three:
(1) electric HERMS - as laid out already
(2) electric RIMS - if I want to spend more money and do more work
(3) portable propane and gravity - by moving the false bottom back to the cooler for the MLT and sitting the non-electric keggle on the propane burner for a BK.

That third option is what I would need to do if I decide to take the brewery on the road to a gathering of other GRABASS folks.

gunner65 said:

Nice Job I know from all your posts I have read that you have been working hard on this.

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Thanks. I tried to not talk about it toooooooo much because this thing is not some shiny stainless eye candy. It's purpose is to make beer and not gawk at.

I feel the same way that is the reason I went with pwm instead of pid to control the kettle, simple and cheap. Though I admire the craftsmanship of the bling systems the common goal is to get me drunk

Walker said:

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The manifold has hose bibs at either end of it. At the start of the session, I will actually fill my tanks with water by using the hose to send water in through the manifold and into the tanks via their spigots.
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A random thought just popped into my head...
I'm sure you are aware, but be careful when you attach a garden hose to your manifold. Under that pressure, your silicon tube will turn into a water balloon. I use mostly thermoplastic hose instead of silicon, but nearly popped one when a friend helping me tried to prime a pump with a garden hose.
You should be OK if you make sure you have a valve open to relieve pressure anytime the garden hose is connected.

Ohio-Ed said:

A random thought just popped into my head...
I'm sure you are aware, but be careful when you attach a garden hose to your manifold. Under that pressure, your silicon tube will turn into a water balloon. I use mostly thermoplastic hose instead of silicon, but nearly popped one when a friend helping me tried to prime a pump with a garden hose.
You should be OK if you make sure you have a valve open to relieve pressure anytime the garden hose is connected.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I am aware that the silicon hose can swell and pop. It almost happened to me when I first built up the coil because I had the ball valve all the way at the very end of the thing, about as far away from the pump's outlet as it could be. I forgot to open the output valve and turned on the hose and the two lenghts of hose on that path started to swell up pretty quickly. The ball valve has since been relocated and is screwed directly onto the pump now.

But, as you said, the only time I'll be running hose through the manifold is at the very beginning of the day when I am measuring out the water for the brew session. There are three valves that must be opened before water can get into the manifold (hosebib on manifold, ball valve on the plastic hose splitter, and the actual spigot on the side of the house), so hopefully when I do my "ready check" at the beginning I won't have made the mistake of opening all three of those valves before remembering to open at least one valve on one of the vessels.

On a side note, I did my final water test last night and actually wanted to test the hose swelling issue, so I closed all the valves and turned on the garden hose to see how much/quickly the silicon hoses would swell.

They actually didn't swell much at all. No where near enough to pop, just a barely visible swelling. I don't know if that is because the lengths of silicon hose attached to the manifold are so short (6 inches each or so) or what, but it looks like I'll have a grace period if I do in fact pull a bonehead move and forget to open an output on the manifold when running the garden hose into it.

Oh.... and there were no leaks on all of the copper I sweated together, but there was a tiny leak arounf the weldless keggle's hose bib. I think I forgot to wrap it in teflon tape when I swapped some valves around the other day.

Getting anxious here!

I made jackets for my kegs out of reflectix last night and, according to USPS, the sight glass I ordered from Bobby_M arrived today.

I'm going to attempt to actually use this thing Sunday evening. I'd like to do it sooner, but tonight is my weekly guitar jamming session and tomorrow is a big night out for SWMBO's birthday.

My expectations for the first session are low, so if it's a total disaster, then I will have met my expectations!

Beta testing tonight (link to brewcast in my sig is live). I had to settle for flakey mash temps on this batch while I autotuned my PID with an actualy batch of grain instead of just water, but other than that things seems to be going REALLY well.

Mash is done. About to take 1st runnings and sparge.

this is the clearest wort I have ever seen.

Just looked at your brewcast... I am not a register user and didn't feel like taking the time to register right now, but wanted to say Congratulations!! I've been anxious to hear how this brew went for you.

i don't know if you heard my verbal response to the webcam, but I *DID* almost bust a couple hoses.

made a few mistakes which lead to inefficient cooling as well as a mess to clean up that I hadn't anticipated. My efficiency was a couple percentage points lower than normal, too.

There were a few moments of panic, though. Three of my neighbors have automatic sprinkler systems and they all kicked on at some point during the session. The noise of those sprinklers made me think I had sprung a leak somewhere, so I would scramble to figure out what was wrong every time one of them kicked on.

But, all in all it went fairly well and I've got 5 gallons of APA in the fermentation chamber.

Walker -
I appreciate you hosting the Brewcast of your first run on the new system.
I was late to the party, but found the Brewcast thing really cool (my first time attending). I know you probably felt like a cat on a hot roof, but from where I was watching, it looked like things went pretty smooth. I didn't see the mess you referred to on the webcam, so I'm not sure what happened. Looks like your setup (with the possible exception of your stand), is pretty solid. With a little fine tuning and the experience of a few more runs, I think you will be real happy.

Ed

The mess happened while I was chilling. I got it down to about 100 and then started running the recirculating wort through that fine mesh screen to filter out the hops. The hose wiggled off to the side when I wasn't looking and a pint or so of wort spilled down the back-side of the kettle, onto the table, and onto the floor.

It made for a longer clean-up because I had to remove the reflectix jacket on the kettle to wipe everything down, and I had to sort of mop the floor of the garage (just dumped a gallon of starsan on it and used the big broom to push it out the door.)

I definitely need to think about the stand. it's fairly sturdy, but it oscillated from side to side due to the hearty boil and sloshing of wort in the kettle. A few "X" braces and/or corner angles should help considerably.