foolsgambit
Member
So, I'm thinking about how best (read cheapest) to go the HERMS route with my brewing, but to be honest I don't really know that much about it, save what I've been reading up on here in the forums. I'm trying to design something that uses the equipment I already have to the greatest extent possible - I'm not too worried about automation, etc. I want to have control of my mash temp, both for holding and raising for step mashing. I only have one burner. I mash and sparge using coolers, one with a false bottom, obviously, and I've got both a immersion and a counterflow wort chiller, and a temperature controller. I've got one pump at the moment, but am going to add a second so I can go single-tier and fly sparge.
At first I was going to use a single pump and the immersion chiller, but it seemed like setting the kettle water temp would have to be pretty precise, or you'd overheat the mash, or at the very least, denature a portion of the enzymes that were in solution in the wort that went through the chiller. So then I thought I'd use the temperature controller on the outlet side of the immersion chiller to control the pump, which would mitigate the problem by reducing the amount of wort that would be heated too high, but then I wouldn't have continuous recirculation (I'm not sure how important that really is, though, since I've been fine with a standard non-recirc mash up till now). Finally, I settled on using my counterflow chiller as the heat exchanger and water in my kettle as a heat source. The wort would be continuously pumped through, and a pump from the kettle through the heat exchanger would be controlled by a temperature controller reading the wort outflow temperature, so there would only be counterflow against the wort when it needed to be heated. This would seem to make the temperature of the water in the kettle less critical. I would probably also put valves after both pumps to set flow rates to reduce how often the kettle pump would cycle on and off. I've attached an image of what I mean.
I'm interested in any observations about this method people may have. Will this effectively control mash temps, and allow me to do steps easily by adjusting the temp controller settings? Will it be fairly kettle-temperature insensitive? Or will the restart delay on the temperature controller keep the pump from cycling effectively to maintain steady temps? Will this cause excessive scaling in the counterflow chiller, or are the passages inside (it's a Blichmann Therminator) too small for the inevitable grain bits, causing them to get stuck? Or any of a thousand other things I may not have thought of?
Any help/suggestions would be most welcome.
At first I was going to use a single pump and the immersion chiller, but it seemed like setting the kettle water temp would have to be pretty precise, or you'd overheat the mash, or at the very least, denature a portion of the enzymes that were in solution in the wort that went through the chiller. So then I thought I'd use the temperature controller on the outlet side of the immersion chiller to control the pump, which would mitigate the problem by reducing the amount of wort that would be heated too high, but then I wouldn't have continuous recirculation (I'm not sure how important that really is, though, since I've been fine with a standard non-recirc mash up till now). Finally, I settled on using my counterflow chiller as the heat exchanger and water in my kettle as a heat source. The wort would be continuously pumped through, and a pump from the kettle through the heat exchanger would be controlled by a temperature controller reading the wort outflow temperature, so there would only be counterflow against the wort when it needed to be heated. This would seem to make the temperature of the water in the kettle less critical. I would probably also put valves after both pumps to set flow rates to reduce how often the kettle pump would cycle on and off. I've attached an image of what I mean.
I'm interested in any observations about this method people may have. Will this effectively control mash temps, and allow me to do steps easily by adjusting the temp controller settings? Will it be fairly kettle-temperature insensitive? Or will the restart delay on the temperature controller keep the pump from cycling effectively to maintain steady temps? Will this cause excessive scaling in the counterflow chiller, or are the passages inside (it's a Blichmann Therminator) too small for the inevitable grain bits, causing them to get stuck? Or any of a thousand other things I may not have thought of?
Any help/suggestions would be most welcome.