stoutaholic
Well-Known Member
I'm building an electric HERMS and am in the design stage of my heat exchanger. This is a system that is going to have an HLT for doughing in and batch sparging, as well as a separate kettle with copper coil to be used as a heat exchanger.
The heat exchanger will be used to maintain the temperature in the mash tun, as well as to step temperatures when adding hot water from the HLT is not an option (for instance, when I want to do a step while keeping the mash thickness the same).
My question is what kind of performance should I shoot for when attempting to step from one temperature to the next when using a heat exchanger? For instance, if I wanted to step 10 gallons of mash from 122 degrees to 150 degrees. Does anyone have any data on how long this takes in their system? How many degrees per minute should I shoot for? If I heated the water in my heat exchanger to boiling, I could increase the mash temperature very quickly, but the wort going through the heat exchanger would undergo serious temperature fluctuations. So I assume that there is some ideal rate of increase.
The heat exchanger will be used to maintain the temperature in the mash tun, as well as to step temperatures when adding hot water from the HLT is not an option (for instance, when I want to do a step while keeping the mash thickness the same).
My question is what kind of performance should I shoot for when attempting to step from one temperature to the next when using a heat exchanger? For instance, if I wanted to step 10 gallons of mash from 122 degrees to 150 degrees. Does anyone have any data on how long this takes in their system? How many degrees per minute should I shoot for? If I heated the water in my heat exchanger to boiling, I could increase the mash temperature very quickly, but the wort going through the heat exchanger would undergo serious temperature fluctuations. So I assume that there is some ideal rate of increase.