MikeRussell
The Brew Shed!
Hello!
A brief background on my brewing system: I put together a BrewTroller controlled electric single-tier all grain HERMS system. The night before I brew, I set up my grain hopper with the entire grain bill and fill the HLT and MLT with the amount of water I need for the batch. Some time in the night, the electric elements heat the water to strike temperatures and my grain hopper drops a trap door, allowing the grain to splash into the tun. Temperatures are stabilized and maintained by pumping wort out of the bottom of the tun, through a coil in the HLT and back into the top of the tun.
While working on my automated grain hopper I found my current sparge system (hose on top of grain OR stainless spinning sparge arm) was getting in the way so I put this little ring thing together to accomplish a few things:
Grain hydrator - grain dumps through the center of the ring and gets all splashy, avoiding dough balls
Adjustable height wort spreader - we don't need to get started on the whole hot-side aeration topic since this ring is adjustable (per-batch or on the fly) to the height of the grain bed with water. Double batch or barleywine brew? no problem, just use the shorter pieces. Mini batch or low-alcohol brew? Use the longer section to keep your ring closer to the top of the grain bed.
Sparge ring - fresh hot water flows through the ring during the sparge, cleaning the insides and rinsing the grain.
Okay, now, how does it work? The pictures should be sufficient to make your own, but why not waste your time by reading the words I typed while drinking coffee or homebrew?
I used copper throughout because it is easy to drill, easy to find locally and relatively inexpensive and I used stainless steel screws to hold things in place. To do this, just push the fittings together so they are snug in the position you want them, drill through both pieces of copper, and drive in the stainless screws. Your drill bit diameter and screw shank size should be pretty close. Just figure out what fits best for you.
Start with the vessel wall. Mine has a 1/2" male NPT fitting protruding into the tun. Connected to this is an elbow, which attaches to the variable-length piece, attached straight down, which connects to a tee. These pieces can all be rigid copper. Then connect the tee to a piece of soft copper bent into what loosely resembles a circle. You'll need a stainless screw in each connection to make sure things stay together when they're in use.
The next piece to get sorted is the holes in the ring. Yours will likely be a different diameter than mine since I use very weak solar pumps to transfer wort. I wanted the full-speed wort to leave the ring without a tun (heehee) of pressure so I made them larger. You may want to do some tests with small holes and make them bigger a step at a time until you find what works best for your system.
I am sorry for whatever typos or lost thoughts. Feel free to reply and discuss!
Edit - added links to the images in case they don't display correctly on the forum.
Side:
http://s16.postimg.org/jim04wwcl/sparge_ring_side.jpg
Top view:
http://s23.postimg.org/6i0vv1c0b/sparge_ring_top.jpg
A brief background on my brewing system: I put together a BrewTroller controlled electric single-tier all grain HERMS system. The night before I brew, I set up my grain hopper with the entire grain bill and fill the HLT and MLT with the amount of water I need for the batch. Some time in the night, the electric elements heat the water to strike temperatures and my grain hopper drops a trap door, allowing the grain to splash into the tun. Temperatures are stabilized and maintained by pumping wort out of the bottom of the tun, through a coil in the HLT and back into the top of the tun.
While working on my automated grain hopper I found my current sparge system (hose on top of grain OR stainless spinning sparge arm) was getting in the way so I put this little ring thing together to accomplish a few things:
Grain hydrator - grain dumps through the center of the ring and gets all splashy, avoiding dough balls
Adjustable height wort spreader - we don't need to get started on the whole hot-side aeration topic since this ring is adjustable (per-batch or on the fly) to the height of the grain bed with water. Double batch or barleywine brew? no problem, just use the shorter pieces. Mini batch or low-alcohol brew? Use the longer section to keep your ring closer to the top of the grain bed.
Sparge ring - fresh hot water flows through the ring during the sparge, cleaning the insides and rinsing the grain.
Okay, now, how does it work? The pictures should be sufficient to make your own, but why not waste your time by reading the words I typed while drinking coffee or homebrew?
I used copper throughout because it is easy to drill, easy to find locally and relatively inexpensive and I used stainless steel screws to hold things in place. To do this, just push the fittings together so they are snug in the position you want them, drill through both pieces of copper, and drive in the stainless screws. Your drill bit diameter and screw shank size should be pretty close. Just figure out what fits best for you.
Start with the vessel wall. Mine has a 1/2" male NPT fitting protruding into the tun. Connected to this is an elbow, which attaches to the variable-length piece, attached straight down, which connects to a tee. These pieces can all be rigid copper. Then connect the tee to a piece of soft copper bent into what loosely resembles a circle. You'll need a stainless screw in each connection to make sure things stay together when they're in use.
The next piece to get sorted is the holes in the ring. Yours will likely be a different diameter than mine since I use very weak solar pumps to transfer wort. I wanted the full-speed wort to leave the ring without a tun (heehee) of pressure so I made them larger. You may want to do some tests with small holes and make them bigger a step at a time until you find what works best for your system.
I am sorry for whatever typos or lost thoughts. Feel free to reply and discuss!
Edit - added links to the images in case they don't display correctly on the forum.
Side:
http://s16.postimg.org/jim04wwcl/sparge_ring_side.jpg
Top view:
http://s23.postimg.org/6i0vv1c0b/sparge_ring_top.jpg
