electric brewery build with rims

[sictransit701]

I’m in the planning stages of my electric brewery build. My question is about the mashing stage. I’m transitioning...from a cooler to a kettle with rims tube. I plan on doing 5 gallon batches with full volume mashes. I guess it’s like biab with full volume mashes. My mashes are usually 10ish gallons of wort.
My question is...
Will a 120v rims tube be sufficient to maintain mash temps? Will I be able to do step mashes? Never done step mashes anyways, but maybe in the future I might want to try. Deciding whether or not to go with a 120v or a 240v rims tube.

 

[FunkedOut]

yes, 120v is more than enough to maintain temps.
step mashes will be slow.

my RIMS tube is 1600W.
I was mashing at 1.5qt/lb.
I was using an insulated mash tun in FL (think 80*F - 100*F ambient).
recirculating with a little tan solar pump, it would take me 10 minutes to raise the mash tun 10 degrees F.
That little pump was enough to let the element stay on 100% of the time without scorching.
And never had a stuck mash with it wide open.

Moving up to 15 gallons batches now, I'll probably end up with more wattage on the element.
Still working out the kinks on the new mash tun and stronger pump; crush setting, flow rate and a few stuck mashes.

 

[ITV]

I also agree that a 120V RIMS is sufficient for a mash tun.

I have a 1650W RIMS tube @120V, I can get 10 deg rise in 6 minutes which I have done step mashes sucessfully.

If you were to use your RIMS to boil, then I would go with a 220V setup.

 

[doug293cz]

I also agree that a 120V RIMS is sufficient for a mash tun.

I have a 1650W RIMS tube @120V, I can get 10 deg rise in 6 minutes which I have done step mashes sucessfully.

If you were to use your RIMS to boil, then I would go with a 220V setup.

You really don't want to try to boil with a RIMS tube. You will only boil in the tube, and boiling in the tube could lead to some undesirable outcomes, such as scorching the wort.

Brew on

 

[Bobby_M]

The question I have for you is, what exactly are you hoping to achieve? If you're building a full electric system with an element in the HLT and an element in the BK, I strongly feel that a separate RIMS element is redundant and overly complex. If you already have a strong element in the HLT, a HERMS coil would take the place of a RIMS and you'd be using that HLT element as double duty. The other benefit to HERMS is that it is incapable of scorching the wort. Quite the opposite with RIMS.

If you're really open to suggestions, my opinion is you can do all the same things in a single vessel eBIAB. It's like having a RIMS but it's inside the mash tun/kettle. That really makes efficient use of one element because it does all the heating for the whole brew day.

 

[sicktght311]

Other option

2 Vessel BIAB/Herms

Kettle 1 is your Mash Tun. Use a bag, or dont use a bag. Whatever is easier for cleanup
Kettle 2 is HLT with Herms coil to maintain Mash Temps during mashing. Fill it to submerge the coil, bring it to your mash temp, and hold it there during mashing qhile recirculating to maintain temps. When done mashing, you drain the clean water out into a bucket or other standby kettle on the floor.

Now your HLT becomes your boil kettle. Transfer from the Mash tun to the boil kettle, start your boil. Take the water you drained and put it in your mash tun for cleaning. When your boil is done, your herms coil now becomes a stainless chiller coil in your boil kettle to use for cooling your wort. Transfer to fermenter, then transfer the cleaning water from the mash tun to your dirty Kettle 2, clean that, rinse both, and you're done!

Nice little best of both worlds situation. No scorching chance during mash, water set aside for cleaning, no pulling a chilling coil in and out of the boil kettle, works with a BIAB controller, small footprint, plenty of flexibility.

 

[sictransit701]

I like this idea. I plan on doing no sparge.

 

[micraftbeer]

I use a Blichmann RIMS Rocket with a "regular" mash tun (not BIAB). I mainly brew 5.5 gallon batches, with the rare occasion of brewing 11 gallon batches (in a 15 gallon kettle) I started off with the 120V coil, which was 2000W. No problem holding temps during mash at all, and I do step mashes quite a bit (100F, 122F, 149-156F, 168F), which was fine as well.

The temperature steps were slower than I wanted, so I update to the 240V coil, which is 3500W. I am happy with the step response/performance now. That is probably because my point of reference before was 2000W. If it were faster, I might be more at risk for wort scorching, so I'm fine where it is. Plus the RIMS Rocket holds a large amount of wort, versus a skinnier RIMS tube, so it already is less likely to have scorching. In fact, the only time I've ever scorched was when I had a stuck mash or a pump problem, and I wasn't recirculating wort. And even in that case, the beer was fine, the coil was just a mess to clean.

Blichmann has this formula for heating speed of their RIMS Rocket, and it has been pretty accurate for me. With my 240V/3500W coil, the heating between my steps is 3.1 degrees/minute.

• RIMS Rocket ramp rate formula in °F/minute = .0068 Watts/gallons

 

[mabrungard]

As already mentioned, the 120v option will work. But I can tell you that having a good PID controller and locating the temp sensor immediately downstream of the heating element enables you to work very well with the 240v option and that does enhance your system's ability to step temperatures quickly.

I can't recommend HERMS over RIMS though. With RIMS, you have the ability to go to zero heat input instantly. That's not the case with HERMS.

Another very important point to remember, is that you shouldn't care what the temperature in the mash bed is CURRENTLY. Care more about what the temperature of the wort is as it exits the RIMS tube and base ALL of your control on that. If the exiting wort temp is where you want it, the mash bed temperature will get there...eventually. Overheating the exiting wort to get the mash bed to a particular temperature, is a recipe for disaster.

 

[ITV]

Another very important point to remember, is that you shouldn't care what the temperature in the mash bed is CURRENTLY. Care more about what the temperature of the wort is as it exits the RIMS tube and base ALL of your control on that. If the exiting wort temp is where you want it, the mash bed temperature will get there...eventually. Overheating the exiting wort to get the mash bed to a particular temperature, is a recipe for disaster.

Great Point!
I have a thermowell on my mash tun with a seperate inkbird displaying the temperature. I find that it only takes about 5 minutes for the mash tun temperature to stabilize to the temperature set on the RIMS controller.

 

[Bobby_M]

I can't recommend HERMS over RIMS though. With RIMS, you have the ability to go to zero heat input instantly. That's not the case with HERMS.

I'm not following. With herms, you can run the HLT temp at the exact wort output temp you want, accounting for system temp losses (known as offset). Heat will only be input if the wort entrance temp is too low. The hlt probe would be in the tank or the stirring pump flow.

No one has ever ruined a batch due to herms temp runaway. The opposite is true of almost every rims brewer eventually. I hear from people weekly about scorched batches. About half the time its user error based on inexperience with such systems or misunderstanding

 

[day_trippr]

Yeah, that's a red herring in context.
You can't instantly singe wort in a herms, but we herms users don't beat rims users over the head with that fact...

Cheers!