Sunday marked my first real brew on my newly revamped system. I'm cheating slightly as I still use propane for boiling, as I have a blichmann burner which works wonderfully so I see no real reason to change.
The heart of the new setup is a 12" RIMS tube from Brewhardware, which has a 4500W element from Kal installed in it along with an RTD from Auber. The element is driven by a MyPin PID controller in my newly completed panel.
Playing second fiddle is an eHLT, again another 4500W all stainless/Incoloy element from Kal and an RTD from Auber. Built out of a 10 gallon cooler from Home Depot, this heats sparge water super quickly and then keeps it hot.
I finished the calibration and tuning runs on Saturday, using my thermapen to calibrate both of the PID/RTDs at appropriate temperatures. My mill was freshly adjusted to a slightly wider 45 thou gap (previous recirculation experiments had taught me that my mash would always stick with the mill gapped with a credit card), so I added 4 gallons of water to the mash tun and brought it to temp recirculating through the RIMS tube. Turned off the pump and mashed in a total of 10lbs grain (8 MO, 2 Munich). After a good stir with my 24" whisk, I switched the pump back on and turned on the RIMS element.
The PID tuning worked beautifully, with the output gently ramping to bring the temperature up to the set 152F. A minor overshoot to 154F brought on a second bought of autotuning, and from then on it held 152F rock solid.
Mash temperature holding, I fired up the eHLT, which rapidly brought the 4.5 gallons of sparge water up to 170F, and pleasingly did not trip the 30A breaker in my main breaker panel.
With everything up to temperature and the mash happily recirculating I was at a short loss of things to do, as the whole experience happened so fast by comparison to manually adjusting temperatures, transferring hot liquor from the HLT to the mash tun, adjusting temperatures, mashing in etc etc.
I quickly busied myself weighing out the hop additions and belatedly weighed and added the gypsum and calcium chloride to the mash water, added a shot of lactic acid to the sparge water and hooked up the propane to the burner.
Eyeballing the recirculating wort through the silicone hoses showed beautifully clear wort after about 20 minutes. I let it run for another 5 minutes, then swapped hoses around to pump out to the kettle where the wort (again, beautifully clear) met the FWH charge of Willamette.
A little too much dicking around later, the hoses were drained and swapped to pump the sparge water into the mash tun through the RIMS tube, and then further hose swapping had the sparge recirculating through the mash tun, this time with the RIMS tube out of the loop. Five minutes for the sparge to run clear, and yet more hose swapping pumped the sparge out into the kettle.
From there on the rest of the brew day was fairly typical, I brought everything up to a boil and boiled for 60 minutes, with a hop addition and whirlfloc at 10 minutes, and a final hop addition at flameout for whirlpooling.
I am having some trouble with whirlpool additions in that it seems that hop pellets are getting sucked up the kettle dip tube, and they then expand in the pump head, blocking the pump inlet with partially hydrated leafy bits. Probably just need to switch off the pump before throwing in the whirlpool additions.
I am totally sold on the merits of electric brewing, especially for the tasks where more precise control is warranted, ie. sparge, mash temps. I can see switching over to electricity for boiling some time in the future, however that will need a lot more holes cut into the panel and also a dirty great hole cut into the kettle and a triclamp flange soldered into place, which I don't feel like tackling just yet.
Some predicted immediate improvements will be refining my hose routes and fluid pathway options. At the moment everything is built around cam locks and 3 piece valves, but I suspect that judicious addition of one or two three way valves and some carefully considered Tee pieces will remove almost all of my current hose switching woes.
In the mean time I am extremely pleased with my final graduation to a RIMS system, it has taken at least an hour out of my brew days (more and more important as the kids get older and with more on the way) and the automation of simple tasks means that my time is better spent either doing more manual tasks (weighing stuff) or more important stuff (looking after yeast, sanitation etc).
The heart of the new setup is a 12" RIMS tube from Brewhardware, which has a 4500W element from Kal installed in it along with an RTD from Auber. The element is driven by a MyPin PID controller in my newly completed panel.
Playing second fiddle is an eHLT, again another 4500W all stainless/Incoloy element from Kal and an RTD from Auber. Built out of a 10 gallon cooler from Home Depot, this heats sparge water super quickly and then keeps it hot.
I finished the calibration and tuning runs on Saturday, using my thermapen to calibrate both of the PID/RTDs at appropriate temperatures. My mill was freshly adjusted to a slightly wider 45 thou gap (previous recirculation experiments had taught me that my mash would always stick with the mill gapped with a credit card), so I added 4 gallons of water to the mash tun and brought it to temp recirculating through the RIMS tube. Turned off the pump and mashed in a total of 10lbs grain (8 MO, 2 Munich). After a good stir with my 24" whisk, I switched the pump back on and turned on the RIMS element.
The PID tuning worked beautifully, with the output gently ramping to bring the temperature up to the set 152F. A minor overshoot to 154F brought on a second bought of autotuning, and from then on it held 152F rock solid.
Mash temperature holding, I fired up the eHLT, which rapidly brought the 4.5 gallons of sparge water up to 170F, and pleasingly did not trip the 30A breaker in my main breaker panel.
With everything up to temperature and the mash happily recirculating I was at a short loss of things to do, as the whole experience happened so fast by comparison to manually adjusting temperatures, transferring hot liquor from the HLT to the mash tun, adjusting temperatures, mashing in etc etc.
I quickly busied myself weighing out the hop additions and belatedly weighed and added the gypsum and calcium chloride to the mash water, added a shot of lactic acid to the sparge water and hooked up the propane to the burner.
Eyeballing the recirculating wort through the silicone hoses showed beautifully clear wort after about 20 minutes. I let it run for another 5 minutes, then swapped hoses around to pump out to the kettle where the wort (again, beautifully clear) met the FWH charge of Willamette.
A little too much dicking around later, the hoses were drained and swapped to pump the sparge water into the mash tun through the RIMS tube, and then further hose swapping had the sparge recirculating through the mash tun, this time with the RIMS tube out of the loop. Five minutes for the sparge to run clear, and yet more hose swapping pumped the sparge out into the kettle.
From there on the rest of the brew day was fairly typical, I brought everything up to a boil and boiled for 60 minutes, with a hop addition and whirlfloc at 10 minutes, and a final hop addition at flameout for whirlpooling.
I am having some trouble with whirlpool additions in that it seems that hop pellets are getting sucked up the kettle dip tube, and they then expand in the pump head, blocking the pump inlet with partially hydrated leafy bits. Probably just need to switch off the pump before throwing in the whirlpool additions.
I am totally sold on the merits of electric brewing, especially for the tasks where more precise control is warranted, ie. sparge, mash temps. I can see switching over to electricity for boiling some time in the future, however that will need a lot more holes cut into the panel and also a dirty great hole cut into the kettle and a triclamp flange soldered into place, which I don't feel like tackling just yet.
Some predicted immediate improvements will be refining my hose routes and fluid pathway options. At the moment everything is built around cam locks and 3 piece valves, but I suspect that judicious addition of one or two three way valves and some carefully considered Tee pieces will remove almost all of my current hose switching woes.
In the mean time I am extremely pleased with my final graduation to a RIMS system, it has taken at least an hour out of my brew days (more and more important as the kids get older and with more on the way) and the automation of simple tasks means that my time is better spent either doing more manual tasks (weighing stuff) or more important stuff (looking after yeast, sanitation etc).
